I thought you would be doing this anyway, but going on from what Jason suggested, often many things happen before you can hit a button. So maybe optional on screen (or physical) record buttons, that the user can setup from the menue system, and mark buttons, where you can select to record the previouse footage or mark the exisyting footage. With good drives you have 50-72 MB/s capacity, so a single chip 720p can catch up. You could have 3+ buttons, 10, 20, 30, 1 minute etc, or just use double click (like the computer mouse does), triple, quad, pentaclicking of the record button to activate each (crude, but simple and effective). This is mainly for documentary and news gathers though.

I would not use more than half a buffer for this. You want room
to catch startup delays and harddisks not keeping up etc.

I was thinking something like 10-15sec max. The SDX900 has 15 seconds, and that seems like plenty when you think about it. A whole minute would be a PITA if you want to do something with the camera after recording, because you're going to have to nurse it for a whole minute aftewards as it's trying to record back to the hard-drives.

Thats why I suggested that the user be able to congfigure the times they want and ignore the other options (I minute is extreme, for most of us, but somebody will want 2 minutes) Besides with 50 or 70+MB/s sustained mentioned here for certain drives, is a number of times more than 24fps 720p 8-bit requires (talking more doco here), so you shouldn't need to cradle it for longer than 30sec after the shot, and likely only a few seconds most of the time. For Cinema shoots, it is a non issue, as you only have to cover a few seconds for disc startup. Actually, before the latest EC power requirements laws came into effect a few years ago, older drives used to stay spun up for ages, and server drives might still do this.

But just how robust are the drives, can we run around with it?

if you use the iPod drives like I'm thinking of using, they are rated at 500G's of shock in operational mode, and 1500G's shock non-operational. Even the 7K60 drive from Hitachi (2.5" 7200RPM) will take 250G's operating and 1000G's non-operational. That's like dropping it without breaking!

Jason I need your help..can you please download the latest SheerVideo codec and try it with some footage on your FCP HD system?

In 10bit..I need to know what the best export option is for CIneLink..we are working on that now and it seems that codeing for TIFF is not easy...I say we just go from RAW files to mov with the sheervideo codec if MAC can edit that at 10bit

how is the Convert software coming Rob S or Rob L?? maybe we should work with your stuff for conversion?

I can't remember what G's mean what anymore, but I think (only think mind you), 100G was like droping it from one meter on concrete (though I would imagine thats most of the times and not gauranteed). So that's definetly past cradeling it. For a doco configuration, I think IPOD drives would be excellent.

It's a pity we don't have more latitude in processing power for this project, as 50/100Mbit or cineform codecs would allow us to use cheaper single drives for news and doco configurations. I think Elphel will have newer codec FPGA out this year. If we could put together our own controller boards cheaply, I could suggest a raft of parts to use (I have looked into pocket 3D game system and PDA design in the past), but doing that gets very, very, expensive, even just using an advanced reference developement boards. Hopefully Sumix will do it.

Ouch! $1800 for one micro OLED display! from eMagin

Wayne:
What am I, chopped liver? If we can get a tested codec board with compression, I'll consider a camera with it built in.

Sorry Steve, I was refering to our pc projects, and what Sumix was doing with their compressed camera product, I wasn't refering to SI.

It's in pretty good shape, but I'm not sure when it will be ready for initial release. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

I think that's the problem Wayne, that you were only talking about Sumix and not about SI.

(How's that song go ... "Anything that Sumix can do, SI can do better" ...? ;-)

I was only kidding, dude!!!! :-) I have no axe to grind, SI vs. Sumix.

OK, I didn't think you were trying to grind an axe. I'm just irritated by people needlessly dancing on my toes in the past. I wasn't questioning you, just what was implied.

Toe dancing is fun ;)

BTW Wayne how can you post in this board after the email you sent me?

I would have thought you would NEVER come here again after that storm ...