Sorry, I sold the FS-4 and battery. The FS-4 is huge and too heavy for my needs. I purchased a ADS PYRO Drive, upgraged it's 30gb HD to a 80gb and it weighs in at 7oz versus 1lb and is 1/4 the size! The pyro drive is basic, no lcd display. I like the fact that I can switch out hard drives at will! I don't think I will be purchasing any more focus enhancements products in the future! The competition has them beat at the moment!

***Also no loud fan on the pyro drive***** That is the biggest design flaw in the FS-4

Good luck on a battery solution, the FS-4 eats it fast. I was happy with the power created by the battery pack listed in early posts. My pyro drive runs for the full 6 hours with a bescor 12v battery.

I sold mine to a guy on this forum, maybe he will respond.

Jon

Pyro Drive better than FS4?
 

John, I appreciate all your information on the FS 4 and fixing the battery life. After getting to the end of the post, I was somewhat surprised to see you ditched the FS4 in lieu of the Pyro Drive. From what I have read, many people have had problems with audio sync after the first 2gb file is recorded. Do you report similar problems? Can you also explain how your battery system is working on the pyro drive? And lastly, how easily are the hard drives swapped in and out? For the price, it looks like the PD can't be beat. Thanks again for your posts...

I haven't had any problems with the pyro drive. The audio has been fine during a catholic wedding, 1hr to 1 1/2 with no problems. As far as swapping out the hard drive, that is really easy. Remove a few screws and swap the HD. The Pyro drive has lights on the unit that communicate what is going on, ie Recording, Stopped, Out of Disc Space, recording mode(DV, Quicktime, AVI) I must say again NO ANNOYING FAN on the Pyro drive and it's much smaller. I purchased another one yesterday for $599. Once you add a 80gb laptop drive($115) it's is $714. I really need to post a couple of pictures of what the camera looks like with the pyro drive and the fs-4.

No matter what you choose, Hard Disk recording is the way to go. No more capturing tape and no more multiple syncing because you had to change tapes during your catholic wedding. We just sync all cameras before the wedding starts and when I get back to edit it takes me 2 minutes to sync 3 tracks and I am ready to edit. Versus capturing 3 tapes or 6 tapes depending on the length of the wedding and then syncing all the cameras.

Good luck, I would go with the unit that meets all of your needs. If you want to do HD some day the firestore is the way to go since the pyro isn't hd upgradeable. I plan on purchasing another unit once HD becomes main stream, by then the firestore and pyro drive will be outdated anyways.

Jon

i'm assuming that the pyro can be turned on manually to record the incoming dv signal, but there is no way to have the camera control the start/stop record function of the pyro, correct? control via the video camera is the big attraction of the firestore.

Hi Guy, i suspect pyro/quick stream and citidisc are all make by shining technologies. They all look the same when you look at the buttons setting etc. I have bothe the quick stream and firestore, i have to say that firestore is much more reliable than quick stream as the later had die on me and got replaced for a few times since i bought it early this year. I think it is the heat make it unstable.

I'm going to make a comment to these last two entries, in Frank's thread in the "Direct-to-Disk" topic heading.

The pyro drive can either be used in slave mode(camera controlled) or non-slave mode(meaning it will record until you tell it to stop even if the camera isn't recording to tape)

Jon

The pyro drive is definately made by Shining. The chips on the main board have Shinings name all over them.

I have recorded about 200 hrs with no problems on one of the pyro drives and about 80 on the other. Haven't had a problem yet. I think the main problem with either unit(firestore or shining) will be hard drive failure. I never opened the firestore but the shining unit is easy to replace the hard drive.

I will post again if I have a problem with the pyro drive.

Jon

Jon (or anyone else), which Pryo drive model are you using exactly? How do you select which recording mode to use on the drive? I thought the Pyro was only an external firewire drive?

I use three of them and they work great!

http://www.adorama.com/VDPYAPI820.html

If you are intested in one of these, I have a brand new one in the box that I have for a spare. I will sell it for $450.

No matter who you buy it from it is well worth the money. You can upgrade the hard drive up to a 120gb. We use 80gb drives.

Jon

Jon,

Can those be setup NTFS to avoid the 2GB limit? Also, will 24p mode from an AG still work on those. On upgrade of disk size, how? Lastly, maybe I will buy that from you.. is it still for sale?

Hi Jon -

I stumbled across your post while researching the FS3/FS4.

My bread and butter is deposition work. Power consumption is not an issue generally as I am usually plugged in. Big, and preferably swappable, drives definitely an issue, but also fan noise and it's sibling issue, heat buildup and related instability over extended use. I often shoot three or four 90 minute tapes a day.

Can you comment on the Pyro drive performance re above issues?

Thanks!

Jim Anderson aka buzzardboy

The pyro drive is very reliable. If I were you, I would buy a copy of DV Rack to use with a laptop. If you don't have a laptop and like the portability of the pyro drive, then it's a great option.

**********Always run a tape with the dv drive*************

You never know when your Hard Drive is going to die! I always run a tape along with the dv drive. The cost of tape isn't an issue, the best part of a dv drive is that you can go straight to edit.

The deposition work I have done in the past would make a dv drive worthless. I shoot and they ask for the tape and I go home. No editing.

As far as power goes, you can run a dv drive for about 12 hours on my bescor 12v battery pack. If you can plug it in, that's even better.
You could add a 120gb laptop drive, which would give you about 9 hours of record time. I use an 80gb drive and I get about 6 hours of record time.

Swapping drives would require disassembly of the unit and then reassembly. I have only done this two times. When 6 hours wasn't enough time. I think if you had a 120gb drive(10hrs) that you would never need to swap drives. It takes about 5 minutes or less to switch drives.

Buy a retractable zip link firewire cable, its much better than a standard fire wire cable.

My only other warning is to make sure your firewire cable is secure. If you knock it loose, you clip is DOA. *****always capture to tape for important stuff*********

Good Luck.

Jon

This ADS Pyro drive discussion has been split out from the "FS-4, not enough battery" thread.

Jon, when you speak of upgrading the drive, is this a "real" option, or is this one of those "do-it-yourself" things someone stumbled upon at home? Is it fairly easy and safe to replace the current 30GB drive in the unit? And what kind of drives will it accept?

Do you still have that spare? I have been talking to some of the A/V team at church, and we're in the market; however, I was just reading up on the new Bella Catapult units that are due out later this year. Any opinions on those?