"State of the nanoFlash"
 

Dear Friends,

Mike Schell of Convergent Design and Anthony Pidgeon of Symbiosis, our European distributor, have been at IBC 2010 for the past few days.

It has been a very rewarding show for them, and for me, as today I heard that we had a very large number of very happy and very satisfied nanoFlash users come by our booth.

I thought this might to a great time to reflect on the current status of the nanoFlash and our new nano3D.

We have sold over 2300 nanoFlashes so far. We know that they are used widely across the globe, from under the sea, for major broadcast networks, to major cable networks, to Hollywood studios, to extreme environments, both hot and cold, to civilian and military aircraft and to the edge of space.

Personally it is very rewarding for me, when a potential customer calls, and we have the features and functions, already built and tested in the nanoFlash, that are necessary to fulfill the customer’s needs.

The nanoFlash records in SD from 5 Mbps to 50 Mbps, including IMX 30, 40, and 50, records in HD, from 18 to 280 Mbps, records in native Quicktime for Final Cut Pro and others, and native MXF for Avid, Sony Vegas, Edius, and Adobe CS5.

People just love our nanoFlashes for recording greenscreen work.

For certain types of shooting, our MPG mode is ideal, in that we create a pre-rendered file, ready for DVD and Blu-ray burning software at a wide variety of bit-rates. This is a great time saver.

We support the more modern solid-state cameras, from the Sony EX1 up to the Sony F35 and including Sony's SRW-9000PL. And we support the PDW-700, the PDW-F800, and our files can even be archived on the Sony Professional Disk. Our 50 Mbps files can even play in these cameras and decks.

We support Panasonic's cameras, especially the tape-based Varicam, the HDX900, others, and the latest AF100/AF105, and their 3D cameras.

And, of course, we support Canon's cameras, including their latest XF series.

And, we support almost any camera with a clean HD-SDI or HDMI output.

For most cameras the quality of our recording, and the easy of editing our files, and the ability of the nanoFlash to work with both the Mac and PC world is unsurpassed. It is especially nice to know that one can go into a shoot expecting to create files for the Mac world, then be able to obtain clean files for the PC world without doing a transcode and with no loss of quality.

We support HD-SDI and HDMI embedded audio, up to 8-Channels, and two channels of analog audio.

We support embedded timecode, external LTC timecode, and internally generated timecode.

We support an extremely wide range of input formats, progressive, progressive segmented frames, and interlaced, for both typical frame rates and the rarer "true" frame rates.

We support pulldown removal, regardless of the pulldown cadence, for both HD-SDI and HDMI, which is unique in the industry.

We support Over and Under-Cranking, Time-Lapse, Conversion of 720p60 to 30 and 720p50 to 25 and many other functions that make the nanoFlash a full featured recorder and player.

We support Loop Recording for specialized applications such as earthquake monitoring, and a Pre-Record Buffer for wildlife and other shooting.

We support remote control of the nanoFlash via an RS-232 serial connection, a new feature.

For playback, the nanoFlash is superb. A major camera manufacturer has for two years now used the nanoFlash exclusively to drive their displays at trade shows. They like it because it is so small, creates very high quality images, and is so easy to operate: the staff, they just press the "Play" button.

A museum is using six of the nanoFlashes for coordinated simultaneous projections. The guide can start all projectors in sync, due to our "Cue Play" feature, then pause the presentation, and restart the presentation with a simple remote control.

The nanoFlash has been on shark hunts, major underwater photography, to the wreck of the sister ship of the Titanic, to the Amazon, and on many other professional shoots.

Last December, we found that our nanoFlashes were being used for professional stereographic (3D) shoots. This led us to develop the nano3D which is now being widely accepted.

We developed Image Flip, Image Flop and Flip + Flop for the nano3D, and we will soon incorporate these new options into our nanoFlash feature set, at no extra cost. At a recent 3D workshop I learned that it is sometimes desirable to mount both cameras upside down on a 3D mirror rig. Thus, we are adding this feature to our nano3D firmware.

For specialized operations, we have ASI (Asynchronous Serial Interface) for the transport of video and audio over microware and satellite links. This is one of the few, very specialized extra cost features that we have.

We have a proven track record of bringing new features to the nanoFlash, some expected, and some not, and almost all at no extra cost. These new features typically are released every month or two. And, of course, these releases attempt to correct any reported firmware problems.

Our nanoFlash is currently the smallest, lightest weight, most versatile, lowest power, highest image quality HD/SD recorder/player available today. And we feel that it is a very attractive value, reasonably priced, and readily available in many parts of the world.

And one's investment in the nanoFlash is preserved when one wants to record 3D.

Just throwing this out, but With Avid MC5, the MOV container is actually easier to work with now. So while other NLEs may benefit from the MXF container, Avid has solved this problem nicely.

Thank you.

Dear Perrone,

This is great to hear.

Mark Job had alerted us to the fact that Avid supports ProRes and it is great to hear that your are confirming it. Frankly, I wanted to call Avid today to get their opinion, but ran out of time.

This is a great feature for Avid.

Actually, what Avid has done is to read the .MOV container natively. So WHATEVER you put in there it can read natively through AMA. How fast is AMA? My 16GB cards are populated in the bins in just under 4 seconds. I am ready to cut an hour's worth of source in 4 seconds flat. No transcode, no import. And Avid now does this for anything in a .MOV container. Whether that's DNxHD, ProRes, XDCam, whatever.

Absolutely brilliant and stunning in operation. I can get my Sony EX1 files in a bin, sequence built, and color corrected faster than I can get the files loaded into any other NLE I've used.

Thank you Dan!,
This is a great summary of the capability of the NanoFlash... and I thought that the NanoFlash Release Notes and the Manual were good!!!?! This is brilliant post from CD and should be a sticky on its own as of what NF can do! WOW, so much in such a small unit... in such a short time!

Well, we all knew that, but, we never summarized it that way simply because we were so eager for more, like a spoiled child and a new toys. We've never actually clearly understood what CD is for all of us?!? We asked for more and more and the fact is that CD was trying to help and accommodate every reasonable request of features. The fact and the matter is that they have no obligations to do that. CD could charge for every firmware update and added features, but no, they listen to all of us, - whatever we wished to say - good or bad. I know, we helped them a lot with a firmware testing, they helped us with service! CD never let anyone down in trouble! My point here is the service we have from CD. Everything we have done for them (CD) on a personal level is based on free will. On other hand, everything from CD for us is based on higher professional ethics and standard!........ and a free will too!

The nice things comes in small packages......right? ;-)

Thank you for reading
Best Regards to all
L

Dan,

Can you more fully explain this comment?

"For playback, the nanoFlash is superb."

I have not found this to be the case. No realistic fast forward, no rewind. Maybe fine to play a whole card but very inconvenient for reviewing footage.

When can we expect a easier way to scan through footage?

Jeff

Dear Jeff,

My comment was intended in the context of playing back files for presentations, trade shows, museums, etc.

During playback of lower bit-rate recordings, we offer 1x, 2x, 4x and 6x playback.

> FF to 50 Mbit bit rate: max rate = 6x (SanDisk Extreme 3: 4x)
> FF 100 Mbit: max rate = 4x (SanDisk Extreme, Extreme 3: 2x)
> FF 140 / 180 Mbit: max rate = 2x (SanDisk Extreme 3: 1x)
> FF 220 / 280 Mbit: 1x only

The media limits how fast we can perform X times regular speed playback. Thus for higher bit-rates, we do not offer fast playback.

We do not offer Rewind at this time.

We do allow one to go to the next or previous files quickly, as we break large clips into smaller files.

If one wants to scrub the files, we recommend using a Non-Linear Editor.

Dan ...
 

Thanks for the summation ... we sometimes forget how great this little bit of kit really is!

Dear Luben and Dean,

Thank you for your kind words, I greatly appreciate your comments.

A good product
 

I have to admit I was immediately drawn to finding out more about the new contender but the bottom line is that the nanoFlash is a great product, it is field tested and I have received great customer service from the guys at Convergent Design. They continue to improve their products and I am sure that will continue....

David Wright
http://www.lunaseafilms.com