Just Got My NextoDI!
 

I think most of you guys are aware that Convergent Design is now a Nexto dealer. I'd been looking to get a NextoDI for a few weeks, considering buying unit without a hard drive and supplying my own. Since they don't sell it that way anymore, I decided to just go ahead with the 500GB unit.

The Convergent Design guys fixed me up and sent me a 500GB unit, fully loaded with accessories.

For the last few days I've been "stress testing" the little box, so I know what too expect out in the field. While the box is a little slowish to copy a 32GB flash card to the internal hard drive, this thing is flawless in operation. This will definitely give me some confidence of footage backup out in the field.

With this box and hot swap card capability, I could literally shoot all day long with zero interruption!

I for one didn't know. No mention on the Web site.

I thought they were repped out of an outfit in Torrance, CA.

ONE STOP SHOPPING!

I didn't know they were either and then Dan mentioned it in another thread. I was going to buy it from B&H originally.

Hi Aaron:
What model number of Nexto did you purchase ?

Hi Aaron,
You are very lucky. Can u tell me how it takes you to cycle a full 32GB Card. In desperation I have had to resort to using Shotput Pro and a raid 1 drive on my Mac Book Pro which runs very slow and not ideal for field backup.

Dear Mark,

Aaron purchased a 2700, with a 500 GB hard drive.

(I do not think Aaron will mind me answering this question.)

It takes 17 minutes for my Nexto 2700 (500gb) to ingest a full 32GB Kingston 133x card.

FWIW.

Billy

Do I understand you can have an external drive (eSATA) attached to the NEXTO and therefore offload to two places at the same time?

....Hey Billy: Uhh, that's a long time break when you need to keep on shooting. This is probably a non-issue with an XDR stocked with four 32 GB CF cards and hot swap working. A Nano would need to be stuffed with 2 X 64 GB cards, but then it would take twice as long to dump. Who cares about 64 GB cards now, since the 128 GB will be out in time for Christmas !

Dear Mark,

The same company that says that their 128 GB is due out soon also announced a 100 GB card last year, about the same time as their 64 GB card was announced.

We have not seen the 100 GB card yet, and we could not get their 64 GB card to work.

I think it is highly unlikely that you will see a 128 GB card from this company before Christmas based on their track record, but this is a personal opinion.



On the other hand, another company, PhotoFast, has delivered a 64 GB card, at a reasonable price, that passes our tests and will be supported in our next release due out in approximately two weeks.

Actually, I was using the Nexto long after the shoot was over so that I didn't have to insert the CF cards into my Mac. I got a bunch of CF cards from a friend and didn't want to risk frying one of them; I had more than enough total CF cards to handle the long shoot without needing to offload. Since Lance asked, and I just got through transferring data from five cards, I thought I'd mention it. I am looking forward to getting a bunch of $300 64GB CF cards, now that CD has certified them.

Juggling the CF cards around while recording a four hour show is no fun, but thankfully the nano shows each card's usage, which makes it harder to screw up. I am REALLY looking forward to hot swapping. When the logical break time was after recording on one and a half cards, I had to stop the nano, remove the full card from slot one (put a piece of paper tape over its contacts area as a "record lockout tab"), remove the half used card from slot two and put it into slot one, and put a previously formatted empty card into slot two, then go back into record.

Well, maybe it wasn't really so bad, but it will be nice when i don't have to stop the recording, and I have 64GB cards.

Billy

Hey Guys how do you manage your media on the NEXTO are you able to create folders that you can name or assign numbers or do you just end up with a heap of noname folder?

Thanks

Hi Lance. The NextoDI automatically creates folders for each card you insert and copy, it's a very sensible system and you don't have to create any folders manually.

After I insert a bunch of cards and copy them, there are are bunch of folders in the root of the NextoDi, one for each card I copied. Like this:

20091101.001
20091101.002
20091101.003
and so on.

The entire contents of each card are in a top level folder

20 minutes is a long time to copy a card but I was able to continue shooting with hardly a break using 4 cards, for many hours. I did this by using two cards in the XDR and two out. When the first two filled up, I turned off the XDR, removed the cards quickly, put the two other cards in quickly, formatted them and continued recording.

While recording on the swap out cards, I downloaded the other two cards to the Nexto while recording.

I did this for over three hours and the break to power down the XDR and swap cards is very quick. On set during a production, this would be very reasonable to manage. Much faster than a film change or making everyone wait while a P2 card was offloaded or something.

If the XDR had hot swap, I could record an indefinite amount of time without ever stopping.

Hello Daniel,
I am unable to find information on that it's a great idea. I think the NVS2500 is the one I would go for that covers all the card stock that I use. It's go to better than carrying a laptop everywhere and 85 min to off load two 32GB cards to a raid 1 array.