firestore/ portable drives
 

Has anyone had experience with Firestore in an "out of studio " setting, that is, no AC available. Also what are the best portable drives for shooting up to 1 hour of video in the field.....again evrthing running on battery power....editing on MacG4 OS9.2 withFCP3 (Heard firestore does not work with OS10)

There are some other strings about this here. It's not that the Firestore won't work with OS-10; my DP G4 won't read the FW drive formatted as FAT32 volume when using OS-10.1.3. The end result is the same, but it's not a problem with the Firestore. I'm likely going to have one for sale soon, because OS-10 has been working well with FCP and I don't want to drop back to OS-9.2 just to use it. Great concept, but not ready for prime time in the OS-10 world yet.

Firestore
 

Vic,

will it read the HD if it's mounted via the Firestore device itself?
And as a Mac user of FCP- do you find it very useful- I've been eyeballing it myself lately.

Thanks- have fun.

Nope - doesn't matter how it's mounted. So far, it's not useful at all. If I can ever get it work with OS-10, it will be great. OS-9.2 reads it just fine--I just don't want to edit in "9". As mentioned, the problem is the inability of OS-10 to recognize it-- the fix that Videonics suggests doesn't work. Maybe some day....

Vic,

OS X 10.1.5 just released today and I'm reading many post on other boards that many new devices are now recognized by OS X. You might want to try upgrading to see if it helps. What did videonics suggest that didn't work? I'm currious.

Steve,

I'm an Avid editor from way back and I switched a year and a half ago and FCP is great. It is stable as a rock with version 3 and OS X. Each version just gets better and better. If you have specific questions fire away and I'll try to help.

Jeff

Jeff,

The fix is described on this page:

http://www.focusinfo.com/support/faq/firestorefaq.htm

I consists of going into the Unix shell and moving a file out of the /sbin subdirectory. I did that part OK, but it made no difference.

I'll download the latest OS upgrade -- I imagine that sooner or later, my machine would have adivsed me of the new version.

Thanks for the tip.

Well, I upgraded to 10.1.5. Still no joy reading the FW drive. Maybe it's just the Cooldrive model. I'll have to try a different brand.

I wish they made a "drive-bay" device which is just slightly
larger then a drive but does contain a place to but a battery
to power both the drive and the bay and that all the electronics
to store the streams in there too. I think the firestore is just
to big (especially since you can't put the drive in there too). It
shouldn't have to be this big. There seems to be a lot of wasted
space there.

Actually I'm here at the InfoComm show in Las Vegas right now and Focus Enchancements is here practically next door to our booth. I've shown this thread to Matt McEwen, the Product Manager for FireStore. Once he gets back to the office on Monday, Matt's going to e-mail Vic with a solution and then we'll post that process here as well. So Focus Enhancements is aware of this particular user issue and definitely will respond. Rest assured that they just now looked at this entire thread, plus I showed them the search feature to bring up other FireStore threads as well and they're going to go through all of them. Matt's going to register on our boards here and provide some direct feedback and assistance for you guys. Hope this helps,

Plus, Vic, the problem is definitely *not* with the CoolDrive. Matt just verified that.

Great -- I'm breathlessly awaiting the solution! Exhausting the various options has been a real exercise in frustration. The Firestore, I must say, does make a great paperweight, so far.

Have fun at the slots, Chris.

Hey, that's great news. it's got to be a driver issue. there are other products that are fat 32 working on OS X with no problem. thanks for your hard work Chris.

Jeff

Does anyone know if plans are in the works for a "portable" solution for the Firestore- something that perhaps incorporates an internal HD (or alloted space) and runs off battery power- hopefully a 1-piece unit???

....I am very enticed by the Firestore but thoughts of lugging a bag and the Firestore unit, batteries and HD seem a bit much- sorta kills the convienence for "outdoor use"....


....if it incorporated space inside the unit for user placeable HD's and internal power supply- this would be awesome!!!

Any clues as to a rework or similar product.
(Apple should make thier iPods work like this)

There is enough empty room inside FireStore for installing your own hard drive. But there is no provision for it, so you would have to fabricate your own internal mount.

Ashley Guy has a couple of photos showing the inside of FireStore. Go to http://www.guygraphics.com/ > Product Reviews > FireStore (at bottom of page).

I've seen the luggable bag and using it is no big deal... just sling it over your left shoulder or under the tripod. It's actually pretty convenient in my opinion. But I would like to see someone mount an internal drive and battery for it.

i've heard about "pulling the signal directly from the ccd chips" with the use of a break-out accessory, and i've seen a picture of one of these break-out boxes on the back of a camera (in Digital Moviemaking, by Scott Billups, p. 53).
1. i can't seem to find information on how to do this anywhere
2. i lay awake at night dreaming of getting the RGB signal or the next best thing out of my new PAL XL1, and into my new G4 with FCP3.
does anyone know how to do this?
when i first heard of Firestore, besides being very efficient once you get back to your editing computer, i thought it was a way to decrease "loss" compared to tape, but Chris tells me that dv is dv and using tapes or using firestore yeilds the same quality video.
so, how can i get better quality video going into my NLE?