Ok, so the current draw might be too great for a single Dionic 90. I have an Anton Bauer QBH, which allows me to gang up 4 batteries at once. I did a test with only two Dionic 90's fully charged. The Cinedeck has gone for over 1.5 hours with two Dionic 90 batteries. That is straight recording during the entire 1.5 hours.

I think that's reasonably good recording time for two Dionic 90 batteries.

Power Drain
 

Hi Aaron:
Two Dionic 90's equals 90 minutes. I think this is workable, but not very impressive. I can run my Flash XDR for over 4 hours continually in Record on one Anton Bauer Elipse battery (10.5 Ah @ 7.4 Volts nominal output voltage) This battery can only sustain a maximum drain rate of 6 Amperes. I suppose the heavy power drain of the cinedeckHD recorder unit in full operational mode is the price to be paid for having the level of functionality it offers.

I understand this a review however, if one were to be operating the Cinedeck you would want to use the DionicHC batteries and not the plain Dionics. You would kill them in no time and at $400 to $500 per batt, that would be an expensive mistake in my view.

Here are some product pages with some specs:

Anton/Bauer - Products - Dionic HC

Anton/Bauer - Products - Dionic 90

You're right Andrew. Except that I don't have any of those HCX batteries. I do have Dionic 90s, so I can't test what I don't have. Either way, all of this is not a big deal since my camera also draws an insane amount of power, having a recorder that does the same means I probably am not doing too many shoots battery powered. I have 6 batteries right now and that would really only get me through a few hours battery powered on this rig.

However, when using my XDR recorder, I've already done plenty of four hour concert events, completely handheld and with only a single battery change.

CinedeckHD New Features Coming !
 

Hey Aaron:
I understand that the cinedeckHD, since it is a glorified PC, will also have the ability to record uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2 & 4:4:4 12 bit in upcoming versions ! I understood Charles to have said they use a blackmagic capture card inside, and since the blackmagic card has the capability to capture in full raster uncompressed 10 & 12 bit in up to 4:4:4, then this launches this recorder into it's own orbit. I don't think there is anything which does uncompressed recording for under 40 K $.
You will finally have a SSDR (Sorry-Portable-Micro PC) capable of directly recording what your Viper camera can output in it's full resolution. You must be happy :) If only we could have gotten the Flash XDR uncompressed 10 bit option. How much is the cinedeckHD anyway ?

Hi Mark. I'm certain that the XDR will also have uncompressed recording capability. It really only makes sense for CD to create this feature for the XDR.

The Cinedeck Extreme (4:4:4) is around $8,000 if I recall correctly. The 4:2:2 recorder is priced closer to the cost of the XDR though.

Just to be clear, my understanding is that the Cinedeck will have all three codec options in the near future. That is, Cineform, DNxHD and Uncompressed. Currently the Cinedeck interface offers Cineform only as an option.

Sorry I forgot to address your other point. Yes, the Cinedeck can also run Windows OS. They do offer what they call a "dual boot" option so that you can boot the Cinedeck to Windows or to the Cinedeck interface. The dual boot option allows you to run a full blown NLE on the Cinedeck itself although, you'd probably want to connect to an external LCD to use it this way.

The dual boot option was not available yet so I don't have this option. I think it's more expensive too since it requires the internal storage to be large enough to install a complete Windows OS and NLE on. Maybe in the future they'd be able to bundle it with Premiere or Avid already installed. That would be pretty neat.

Holy Moly ! Wooo Hoooo !
 

////Oh wow ! How cool is that ! I could shoot, check, and post all on the same unit on location ?! Oh ! No way ! I think I'm going to faint ! Where do I send the check !

...Oh no way ! Wooooo Hoooooooo ! I'm so gonna buy this recorder - uh-micro PC - No -deck ! No ! - Recording NLE !

Flash XDR in Full Uncompressed HD 4:2:2 10 bit !
 

....Oh be still my fribulating heart ! Avid DNxHD recording ! Hello Avid Media Composer broadcast post workflow ! Imagine a documentary or news or Discovery Channel production team coming home from Asia with a rough cut or semi fine cut already completed on location !

Well, I sincerely hope you're right about the Flash XDR getting this option ! My SSDR project is going to be soooo eclipsed as I predicted it would be. It looks like Convergent Design & cinedeckHD (Charles Dautremont) are so way ahead of the curve ! Remind me to go tell that guy he's a genius !