I'm so excited! All of the pieces for our mobile uncompressed HD work station are coming together. Pictures will be posted in the coming week and footage soon after that.

I have to first give credit to DVInfo sponsor Zotz Digital and Brian Longley and Jason Warren. They recommended the parts and helped us get it together. Their service is great and their depth of knowledge is too.

Here's the breakdown:

- Canon XL H1
- MacPro 2.66 Quad Xeon w/ 7 gigs RAM, 250 gig system drive and 500 gig internal storage drive
- 2.5 terrabyte Ciprico (formerly Huge) 4210 Dual Channel 4Gb fibre channel media drive
- ATTO dual 4 gig fibre channel host
- Kona LHe and breakout box
- Blackmagic HDLink
- Samsung 244T 24" 1920x1200 LCD (for use with HDLink as field monitor)
- Sharp Aquos 26" HDTV (for use as production playback monitor)

About half of the stuff has arrived and for the first time since we've had the H1 I've finally been able to see what true pixel for pixel uncompressed HD looks like and I must say it is phenominal!

I tried the camera first connected to the Aquos HDTV from the component out on the H1 and it was fantastic. I then tried the same with the Samsung and it was great but the image was stretched to fill the 16:10 screen. Next I tried the Samsung using the Blackmagic HDLink for true 16:9 1920x1080 from the HD/SDI out of the H1 and I was blown away!

Now I know you are saying to your self "How is this stuff mobile?" Well, mobile is a relative term. Obviously this is not a run and gun type setup. HDV will be fine for that, but we are rack mounting all of the hardware in a TOV road case. It's a DJ style case that has 16 spaces vertically and on top has 11 spaces for mounting a mixer or other processing gear. I'm goin to use that space to mount a left over LCD screen from an older work station, and a keyboard. This will be used to log and capture with FCP. The Samsung will be placed where ever the DP needs it.

This coming week will be setup and testing time for me then the following week we are on a week long shoot in Atlanta using this new rig.

If any of you will be in the Atlanta area the week of Nov 12-17, let me know and we can hook up. I'd love to meet some DVInfo members.

I'll post pictures of the rig before I leave and post footage from the shoot when we get to HOT LANTA!

Can't wait!

Thanks Dave -- looking forward to the pics! Can't wait to see this set-up. Glad to hear that Brian took care of you guys so well... that's business as usual at Zotz.

I thought...when I read the Title you were attempting a way to stream the HD wirelessly.
Sounds great though,
yes please Dave, Pix

I knew there must have been some reason to move to atlanta. I'm in, and pretty free those days please let me know when a good time to come by would be I'd love to check out the rig. (am considering doing something very similar)

Hi Nick,

We will be shooting the 13th through the 17th at a hospital. I'm not sure which one but it's pretty much a closed set. I'm not even sure what hotel we'll be at yet but I'll let you know and we can hook up one evening. Maybe I can show you the rig before we shoot one morning.

I've got a few shoots that week I think the mornign would be great, really just want to see the work flow and rack setup ya know?

thanks
nick

Here are a couple of pictures of the project in progress. The Ciprico RAID and MacPro came yesterday. The Kona LHe and breakout box will be here tomorrow anf the Redrockmicro M2 on thursday.

Here are a few more pictures of the box. Almost everything is in. All cables fit with doors on front and back.

The Fedex man has been late 2 days in a row so we don't have the Kona card and breakout box yet. When we do, I'll post footage.

After setting up the RAID, I've learned that the ATTO dual fibre channel host card does NOT support MacPros with more than 2 gigs of RAM. In order to properly stripe the RAID I had to remove 5 of 7 gigs of RAM to get it to work properly. Ciprico (Huge) says updated ATTO drivers are to be release any day now. I hope it's before Monday so I can reinstall the RAM before our Atlanta shoot.

Wow, that sucks! I hope they get that fixed soon, I wonder why that would be an issue?

Hey, this is a very interesting setup. What brand is the cart you are using?

Also, are you installing some sort a field battery system to poert this whole thing without haveing to connect power elsewahere? Nice job with this setup!

It's mobile but not self powered. The rack is a standard road case made by TOV. 16 spaces vertical and 11 on top.

I just arrived in GA so tomorrow I'll have some more stuff to post.

Can you give the exact case model number? I'm very interested in your setup and may want to try doing the exact same thing. Did you have to do anything custom to the case to make everything fit?

Mike

Michael,

Go to www.tovcases.com and look at the "Combo Cases". Yes, I had to do some custom bracket fabrication to get the MacPro to fit. As soon as I can, I plan to post some more in depth info on the setup and its use. We had our first shoot with it last week and it worked flawlessly.

I just wanted to say that our shoot in Atlanta went well. The client was very pleased and our system worked flawlessly. I haven't had time to post any footage or more stills from the shoot but will be doing so shortly.

I'm posting a few stills I pulled from the initial review of footage. They are moderately compressed JPEGs so don't judge the HD/SDI quality based on them, but it'll give a good idea of lighting and color.

I'll have some footage to post next week.

As a software engineer.. I get this.. I'm guessing their card has a large buffer, and up until this year almost everyone wrote their code with the capability of 32 bit address range. If you figure out 32^2, you figure out the maximum addressing possible within that range. That happens to be 4 GB, so their card has a big chunk of memory on it that is mapped into the range (probably 1GB), so anything over 2GB on the MAC couldn't be done (next increment over 2GB is 4GB..woops.. its out of the address range).

So they are probably rewriting their drivers to be 64 bit capable (just like everyone else in the industry).. then you have 64^2 address capability (I have no idea what this is, but its big).

Brian

Hi Dave, since you have been using this setup for over a month now could I trouble you for your thoughts on quality and whether the exercise was worth it.

Glenn

Hi Dave, since you have been using this setup for over a month now could I trouble you for your thoughts on quality and whether the exercise was worth it.

Glenn

Hi Glenn,

Yes, it is most definitely worth it. The image quality is beautiful and our clients are quite impressed with the setup when they see it in action.

It also gives us another price point when quoting a job and allows us the potential to rent it out.

So how much more did you spend on this unit than the camera?
We have basically the same setup except we are using external sata raids instead of fiber channel.
It just irks me how much more support systems cost than the actual cameras.

Brian,

Support from Zotz is free if you buy from them. On the gear, I'd have to look at the records to see the total price but minus the camera, it was around 15K.

Sorry, I meant supporting systems for the camera, ie. computer, raid, matte box, controls, batteries, etc.

Just giving this a bump to see if there is any new information or footage that can be shared, as I'm interested in this type of setup as well. :)