Sound very promising Dan (and Mike). Thank you for the update.

Lots of us folks out here itching to get our grubby mitts on one of these jewels to test out the workflows within our individual systems to see the outcomes of increased quality and file based time savings at the same time.

Appreciated.
 

And I'm happy that you bothered to check! For me, that's a good sign.

Must have taken you all some time to develop. Presumably a fair share of this tech is in software and programmable chipsets, allowing for firmware updates and improvements? I'm very much looking forward to a 10bit augmentation of the feature set.

Dear Justin,

Thanks for the kind words.

Yes, this project has taken quite some time to develop.

While all of this may sound easy, there are some major technology hurdles to jump.

For example, it sounds easy: "When you reach the 4 GB file size limit", just close the file and open another." However, this takes a very innovative design to accomplish this feat. At the end of each MPEG2 file is quite of bit of data, items that are required by MPEG2, which has to be written. Then the new file has to be opened without missing a beat.

Then there is the task of updating the File Allocation Table (FAT) in the FAT32 file system. This keeps track of each "cluster" on each CompactFlash card. A lot of thought and programming went into this in order to do this quickly and efficiently.

On the hardware side, Convergent-Design had to custom design approximately five efficient power supplies to provide all of the voltages needed. Then there are the circuits that allow various portions of the unit to be powered off when not needed to save battery power. This would appear simple, but it does get complicated.

These are just a few of the complexities of designing the Flash XDR.

In my opinion, all of the difficult milestones have been achieved.

Our next milestone is to finish and test our design that will allow firmware updates in the field. It is my understanding that this is designed, but not tested, at this time. We are close, but not finished, to the best of my knowledge.

As you might imagine, this will be a great feature for our customers. Features that we have not even thought about at this time, features that our customers request, may just be future firmware upgrades. The ability to upgrade in the field is most important to us also.

Justin, you also asked about 10-bit.

You may be aware that MPEG2 is always 8-bit and uncompressed HD-SDI can be 8-bit or 10 bit.

The Sony EX1 and EX3 are 10-bit implementations. I have seen 8-bit HD-SDI also work very well. In demanding situations, one where I expected serious banding, I could not detect any.

Our uncompressed option, an extra-cost firmware upgrade, is expected to be available by the end of this year. This will provide 10-bit capability.

Be advised, dealing with the volumes of data that 10-bit HD-SDI provides, with the huge file sizes, is not for the faint of heart.

In my opinion, once users see the quality of 50 Mb and 100 Mb, many will choose these options for most of their recordings.

For the most demanding of shots, the uncompressed option will be available.

Flash XDR Progress Report
 

We can now report that the initial audio tests, using the production Flash XDR boards, have been run.

We are very pleased with the results.

The audio sounds good and looks good on an oscilloscope.

We have tested the external audio inputs, end to end, to the external audio outputs. The input levels were varied from -60dB to +24dB.

Initially we tested from 50 Hz to 20,000 Hz. We will be going back to test from 20 hz to 20,000 Hz. We know it will work from 20 to 50 Hz, but since we did not test this originally, we will test it down to 20 Hz, just to be thorough.

The above tests were performed with a Tektronics Audio Signal Generator.

Less formal tests were run using actual microphones and the results were good.

More testing will follow.

The headphone output remains to be tested, and this is scheduled for early next week.


We expect the feature that will allow "in the field" firmware updates to be completed before Wednesday.

Recording and Playback is working fine.

We will soon be testing the Flash XDR with a quality camera that supports a wide variety of frame rates. We have this camera in-house at this time.