News posts from 2002
 

Just a note to let folks know that IBM has recently released its 120Gb Deskstar drives. These are Ultra ATA drives with a 7200 rpm rotational speed, yadda, yadda, yadda. Suffice it to say that these hummers are very big and more than fast enough to keep pace with your DV capture/edit needs. I've just replaced a 75Gb Deskstar with one of these 120Gb drives in my Mac G4 and I'm in hog-heaven. (Anecdotal speed comparison: it took 3.5 hrs to offload approx. 50Gb from the old 75Gb to an external Maxtor Firewire drive. It took only 2 hrs to reload the same files to the new 120Gb drive.)

I believe that the drives have an actual capaacity of around 135Gb but, nominally, it works out to an effective capacity of 120Gb.

The kicker: these drives will only set you back about $300! Geez, I'm old enough to remember when a 10Mb hard disk for an IBM AT cost $700.

The drives seem scarce right now (gee, I wonder why). I found mine at newegg.com.

Drive prices
 

I know what you mean. My first Mac was a 512k and then a Mac Plus. I drove to Sherman (Tx about 1 hr) to buy a 40MB SCSI driver for 499.00!

Then... paid around 4700.00 for a IIci WOW! 8 bit color with 8MB of RAM and a 100MB HD. What will I do with all that space!

We are the Jetsons

Once I finally join the G4+ club, I'll have to look for one of the new drives. BTW, I still have my SE30 that I paid aroung 4K for -- can't bear to part with it! Still works, as advertised, but mostly collects dust.

Cheers, Vic

Yo, Vic! Wanna buy a copy of Claris Works 1.0... cheap? How about MacDraw or MacWrite! Okay, I'll throw in a copy of MacPaint and Dark Castle for free.

Man, I'm feelin' old.

Ha! I recently found some software that I used on my Apple IIGS and IIc. Maybe they'll make a comeback!

Uh-oh...I think we got off-topic.....

Vic

I want two now! But I'm not sure I can justify the cost right now, oh well. I'll have to wait a bit before owning a 240GB RAID 0 storage system...

333 hour/month limit??
 

I have read about one potential problem with these drives - IBM recommends limiting their use to 333 hours per month. That is power-on use. See the following pdf:
http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/desk/ds120gxp.pdf

Not exactly confidence building, is it...

SD-Diver

Startling
 

No, it's not "confidence-building". Well, mine's installed and running fine. I'll report any trouble here.

Thanks for noticing this very odd recommendation.

So if you install two does it mean your NLE system will spontaneously combust and a huge winged demon will appear from the depths of Hades bringing forth an army of grey suit wearing, company song singing IBM execs.

...after 333 hrs.

Whew, I guess now we know why you call yourself "afterburner". <g>

120GB? Ha! My bladder has enough trouble handling 60GB drives!

Cheers, Vic

HA HA, I never thought of it like that.

I actually spent 8 years in the Australian Air Force working on F1-11's and F/A-18's and Afterburner just sounded catchy.

333 / 16 = 20.81
 

Hello all!

I just wanted to add that 333 hours a month translates into 20.81 16-hour days of drive use. I don't know who can take more editing than that?!? Oops, but I forgot about the all-night rendering jobs ;-)

There's another bit of interesting information concerning the retired IBM 75GXP series of HDs (from <http://www.arstechnica.com>):

Deskstar 75GXP lawsuit: A class action lawsuit has been filed against IBM regarding their Deskstar 75GXP drive. The suit alleges that: "IBM has represented to plaintiff and members of the class that the Deskstar 75GXP is a safe and reliable disk drive for accessing and storing data on a personal computer. To the contrary, due to a uniform defect in the design and/or manufacturing process, when such a defect manifests the Deskstar 75GXP 'crashes' without warning and results in the irretrievable loss of data and programs stored on the disk.

You have been warned ;-)

Cheers,

Ron

HD Is Getting Closer
 

According to a news brief on 2-pop Sony is preparing to release two news models of High-Def cameras, one for studio and one for more mobile use. While pricing and availability is not yet annouced (probably at April's NAB show) note the relatively low weight of these cams!

http://www.2-pop.com/brief/mainv/0,7220,33062,00.html

Hey Chris is there going to be a new CCD?
 

Chris on NPR this morning they said that a new CCD was going to be introduced at the convention interpreting color at various depths within the CCD. That appears to suggest a possible 3-CCD color resolution in a single CCD system.

Just see what you think.

Nathan Gifford

...and closer...
 

Panasonic just announced a new compact variable frame-rate HD camera. It's not in the prosumer realm yet but it's sure getting closer.

From Videography.com:

http://www.videography.com/brief/mainv/0,7220,33248,00.html

I wonder if this is the new Foveon(?) chip I've been hearing about. Really don't know anything about it... you can expect it to take some time to work its way into the marketplace, probably.

The press release can be found @
http://www.foveon.com/press_X3_business.html

Technical info, diagrams and other pictures
are at another site:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0202/02021102foveonx3tech.asp

Enjoy!

ResellerRatings.com Is Gone
 

I guess it's a sign of the times for dot.coms but sometime within the past 2 weeks this site has closed down. Too bad. They were a good resource. Now I guess we'll just have to rely on each other.

ResellerRatings.com is back
 

Maybe under new sponsorship? Maybe someone won the lottery? Whatever. The site's back in business.

A message I received yesterday via email
 

"My name is Scott Wainner and I am the founder of ResellerRatings.com as
well as TechIMO.com. I have announced today that I have purchased
ResellerRatings.com from its previous owner, internet.com!

ResellerRatings.com has long been known as the top resource on the
Internet to get customer opinions of online computer hardware retailers
and to give a voice to online buyers. The site was recently named Best
Retailer Ratings site in the November 2001 issue of Yahoo!ô Internet
Life magazine, above Gomez.comô and Bizrate.comô.

The site has been COMPLETELY redesigned. It is now database driven and
has many, many more features than the old site - plus, we think the design
looks really cool."

Good news. A most valuable online buyer's resource. Thanks,

Well, as Mark Twain had said:
"reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
Glad to see Scott rang in.

X3 Looks Impressive. But is it practical?
 

After looking at the X3, I do not know if its tremendously better than conventional systems.

Despite claims it is not a mosaic system, it still is. The difference is, that it does not need to mix RGB pixels to obtain an image. That is an advantage. Whether this is film like performance out of CCD array, is another question.

While the pictures they provide are interesting, I cannot tell if they are equivalent hardware. Are they comparing similarly priced single CCDs?

However, I would like to see how well the system performs against a 3 CCD system. 3 chippers offer roughly the same features as the X3 albeit with substantially more optics. The question here may be whether the X3 can beat mature 3 chipper technology.

Nathan Gifford

Yes, the Foveon technology looks very interesting. Like you, nathan, I wonder if it will represent a true advancement over ccd technology. It should be fun to watch the development.

The atual site for this product is at:

http://www.foveon.net/

Interesting Developments at Sony
 

Although this place centers around the XL1/s I know that some folks are involved in the professional / broadcast world. So I thought you might find this tidbit interesting.

During a session with Sony representatives today I learned that they are planning to introduce a hard-disk capture module for several of their cameras at the upcoming NAB show (the DSR370, DSR570 and probably several other models). Basically, this will be a module that connects to the back of the cameras (where the battery normally sits) into which a 40Gb hard disk can be mounted. Footage can then be captured directly to the disk which would later be removed and mounted to a (new) deck which would enable you to edit/download the footage. The disk module will communicate with the camera with "iLink" (Sony-speak for FireWire). It sounded as if the 1500 series of decks might be augmented or modified to facilitate this new twist.

I really don't know any more details but it's clear that Sony is trying to take proactive advantage of the shrinking costs of massive hard disks and their use with NLE's.

Pretty interesting! I'm sure it would look a lot cleaner than a Firestore and associated FW drive hung off the back of an XL-1!

Sony is actually taking a cue from JVC on this one. For the past two years at NAB, the "special secret room" at the JVC booth has been showing off a custom version of the DV500 that has this exact configuration... a hard drive mounted on the back of the camera for direct-to-disk recording. They had told me it would be out "within months" and then I never heard about it again... until now. Another DV500 they were showing had a drive mounted in place of the tape transport chassis itself. Now with Sony exploring this area as well, I think we're not far from the day when we'll all be completely tapeless.

Thanks Ken -- more stuff to explore at NAB if I can actually get to the Sony booth...

That's interesting, Chris. From Sony's perspective the stakes involved in an increasingly tapeless recording environment, or a diminishing secondary role for tape, might actually be high. I would imagine that blank tape sales represents a profitable business that requires little or no real engineering and R&D expense.

Has anyoneheard of...
 

I was sort of tossing this issue around with the head of the video dept. here at the camp and we were wondering if there was any possibility of a real time cd burning capability( eventually leading to a realtime dvd) for those of us that need to keep footage around. but at the same time dont have infinite hard drive space.

Personally i have no idea if ther is a realtime cdburner out yet. If so i would imagine that it would cost a pretty penny.

Off the wall? probably.

Lemme know!

Dennis

Sony already uses a CD burner in several of their still cameras. The problem is space -- you'd need a lot of CDs to record even a relaltively small amount of video.

The big issue I see is the reliabilty. Tape is a pretty mature and simple technology. Based on recent experiences with the Firestore, I'm still not too trusting of tapeless recording. On a couple of occasions, I got only empty files on the HD. Hopefully, that problem will go away when I get the unit back after the EPROM upgrade.

I expect tape will still be around, at least in a backup mode, for awhile.

Vic:

What other kinds of problems have you had with the Firestore?

Can you roll tape and record with the Firestore at the same time? And if so, is there any way to continue recording to the Firestore while changing a tape?

Thanks!

There is one camera which I know burns straight onto DVDRAM, its made by Hitachi. Brilliant picture but don't try to pan/ tilt or move the camera - It would tend to Jerk - Neat idea though.

Retail's at about £1000

Ed Smith

Howdy from Texas,

<< Can you roll tape and record with the Firestore at the same time? >>

Yes.

<< is there any way to continue recording to the Firestore while changing a tape? >>

Hmm. I don't *think* so.

Chris is correct -- if you anticipate running longer than the tape length, I'd leave the tape out of the camera (and put up with the flashing icon on the XL-1), if you can't tolerate the break in footage.

As far as the problems, an example is recording a live performance. The first act went onto the HD normally -- about an hours worth of data. The second act had all the files, with 9 minute breakpoints, but they were all empty (0KB). That's happened more than once. I reformatted the HD with the Firestore, and the one time I used it everything was OK. But, then I could no longer read the disk with OS-10. The V 2.0 upgrade apparently comes with a patch to fix that.

Hopefully, the upgrade will take care of these issues.

Ed, you say that the DVDRAM Hitachi has a "brilliant picture", but in a review I recently saw (somewhere on pcpro.co.uk) they said that the image was quite the opposite (they gave the cam something like 1/5).
Have you seen it yourself; and is the picture a bit improvement over the traditional tape?

Thanks.

Dan, I have not seen one myself. That was the understanding I got from talking to people, and remembering seeing it on 'Tomorrow's World'. Maybe not brilliant picture, but an improvement on 8mm, Hi8, VHS, VHS-C and S-VHS - if you don't mind the 'jerk'.

DVDRAM camcorder
 

A bit more about the resolution of the cameras as quoted from Hitachi's website, press release:

"For video recording a 1.1 million pixel, ¼ inch CCD with an effective area of 720,000 pixels is used. In still mode the effective area is one million pixels.

It has optical 12x zoom lens system. The multi-coated aspherical lens system is a high performance type designed specially for megapixel applications. Hitachi's DSP6 digital signal processor uses MPEG-2 compression technology for optimum image quality. The camcorder also has a 48x digital zoom mode."

To learn more visit:

http://www.hitachidigitalmedia.com/productFinder.jsp

If any one was wondering, I am *not* a salesman from Hitachi.

Hope this helps,
All the best

Ed

I would opt for a common drive connection.
 

Tapeless is just around the corner. Heck with P3s/P4s notebooks you really could use them in a tapeless system albeit a little unwieldy.

Whatever gets devised, it better use generic drives! I would not buy any system that was proprietary. I hate to be locked in on one manufacturer's design and suddenly that drive no longer available.

The draw back about add on drives is the user i/f. It would be nicer to have that i/f part of the cam. On the other hand, if the drive had a simple i/f it would make shot logging a breeze. Besides, with firewire, you could just pop out a drive and pop in a new one. The used drive could be dispatched to the editing station (Apple or PC) for editing.

Nathan Gifford

NAB 2002 Any News?
 

Okay, I'm probably jumping the gun on this one. I'm sure Chris Hurd is partying with the big boys with little thought to the Watchdog. Who can blame him?

So, if you've got some scoop on anything NAB please post it! We all want to live vicariously through your NAB eyes...