Dave,

I am considering the DRHD100 for my HD100A.

Have you been happy with yours?

I have had some bad tape problems and when I get my unit back from JVC I am planning on purchasing the DRHD100 to avoid further tape problems.

I have read of some people having problems with corrupted footage. I have several big projects coming up where I will be on location and reshooting in the case of either a tape or hard drive recorder problem is not an option.

I guess that after what I have experienced with the JVC for the past 2 weeks, I am a little gun shy.

I would appreciate any feedback you might have.

Thanks,

Dan Weber

JVC HD 100... please confirm !!!
 

hello im looking into a firestore unit ive done some homework on them but what some people are saying on here and what the focus website is saying are two different things

focus... DR HD 100 is what they claim to be the only model that will work with this camera

on here.... FS 4HD many people mention using it...

can i use both units the exact same way or are people who are using the fs4 having to rig something different to make it compatible.

the drhd100 are hard to find to purchase.
the fs4 seems very easy to buy and at much better prices. i can get a second hand 80g. for less than a new 40g.

please clarify this for me

thanks

MEKHAEL

I'm using a FIrestore FS4HD on my HD110. Straight plugin, nothing special done. I should tell you that the Firestore DTE drives are unreliable, with random dropped footage. This is true for all models, including the FS100.

Hi Mekhael

As you can see on this forum... people have chosen both models for various reasons, the biggest is probably down to budget.

We chose the DRHD100 Focus/JVC drives because they have been set up to talk to the JVC cameras, and with the number of problems there is with this type of technology (HDV) we need to try and keep technical issues down to a minimum. Or at least, it gives us a better argument with JVC technical when things are not working as they should.

Despite waiting to purchase the newer 60GB version2 software models (the one with the Quick Time wrapper) we have also experienced dropped frames.

The chaps at Focus were very helpful when we had some teething problems.

We continue to use Tape as a back up to the drives depending on what we are doing - all the best with your purchase, as with anything second hand - be careful.

Stu
www.studioscotland.co.uk

I bought a FS4HD 40 gb model earlier this year. All my teathing problems so far have been down to finger trouble at my end. To date (touch wood) I have had none of the problems others have. But I still use tape as a back up in case.

I made a power tap connector and power from my switt batteries. I can get through to the reception on one battery powering both cam and firestore

I had a theory based on posts that lost files were possibly attributed to an intermittent loss of firewire data so.... Watch the firewire connector on the cam, its not that tight a fit, I squeezed the outer shield in a little - it tightened the connector enough that it is less of a worry. I havent had any lost files to date!

One gripe I had was the length of the included fire wire cable with the right angled connector - 6 inches wont reach any where!!!

Cheers n beers

Ian

dr-hd100 face came off
 

I just got my first firestore from b&h this morning and I was shocked that the face was half glued on.

Is this normal?

I don't mind gluing it back together again but I just paid 1400 dollars for this piece of plastic that is far from professionally built. It reminds me of my old game boy except not as robust, lol.


So I am trying to decide whether I should return it or just glue it. The only issue I have about gluing it is that it might not hold very well.

It's not normal.

That's probably not much of a help to you, though.

Your choices are obvious - send it back and wait for a replacement, or fix it yourself and swallow the bitter pill of having spent your money on a less than perfect unit.

If it were I, I would check to see that nothing else is wrong with the unit. If the plastic face is really the only flaw, and I could fix it easily, I would just fix it, and use it. Maybe you should document the flaw with a digital camera before you modify the unit, in case you have to send it back on guarantee later. It is a bummer to get flawed merchandise, especially when it is expensive. But it may not be worth the fuss to get a cosmetically better unit.

good luck.

cheers,

DK

Thanks for your input. Since this is not normal, I am going to get a replacement.

Just my luck I guess but I am glad I bought it from b&h so it should be easy to get a new one.

I have something similar with my DR-HD100 V1.1 and HD100.
I'm loosing sync from time-to-time, while everything is set and connected properly.
When it happens the DR-HD100 is detected by the camera showing the dedicated DR-HD1000 Icon in the viewfinder. So this means there is physical contact.
When I press REC, it shows in my viewfinder 'Triggering ...', but the DR-HD100 does nothing, and the Icon in my viewfinder doesn't become RED. Unless I press Record on the DR-HD100 itself, it starts recording. So I started double checking the synchronization settings...

In the "Control" menu it has the JVC GY-HD selected while it doesn't do what it should do. When it happens I put it to something else like 'Local' and when I put it back to JVC GY-HD it suddenly works again, as if it forgot the setting.

It looks like I start to trace down when it happens. Looks like a bug.
It happens frequently after I used the DR-HD100 as HardDrive to my computer and then put it back on my camera the first time.
It freaks me out on-site with no tapes in my camera anymore. The customer is then looking like: what, is your camera broken? It doesn't want to record?
Anyone else having this same issue? Any ideas Focus?
Is there a battery I need to change inside the unit for example which remembers the settings?

It may not be normal, but my unit exhibits similar poor manufacture. I noticed the face of my unit does not quite align with the body.

It does not affect the function however.

I wonder if Focus Enhancements needs to look at their QC?

Avid and DR-HD100 OMF problems
 

When we import OMF's into our Avids of the DR-HD100 we occasionally get a problem where the clips do not properly attach themselves to the project. We end up with a bunch of projects in the media tool labelled with the clip name (usually a long date).

If we have an MXF project, strangely audio 2 gets correctly attached to the project and audio 1 and the mxf video file do not.

I'm wondering if this comes down to a user rights issue and if Focus Enhancements have a recommended setting for security on the drive itself (not even sure if this can be set)? All Avids are run with XP permissions set and simple file sharing turned off. Users must be members of the Administrator's group.

DR-HD100 F/W to PC problem
 

Just a note to others who are experiencing problems getting their unit to recognise. This is the frustrating process I have been through quite a few times.

Attach DR-HD100 to computer via F/W (I start with the unit off to avoid damaging the port). Make sure you attach it to the right port.

Go to enable PC menu. I get a SUCCESS at this point.

XP does not recognise unit.

We use the unit every day and the bottom line is it works everytime with the short firewire cable provided with the unit. We have tried with numerous other cables (known good ones, brand new ones etc) and on many different PC's and nothing works. This was not always the case.

I can't give you a technical explanation except to say that if you are having problems with PC connectivity, try a short cable (it's about 6 inches long).

It might have been normal...

I got my new firestore last monday and it is in slightly better shape then the first one. Looking at it though, I noticed that the clear plastic screen is missing some paint in some areas which is noticeable when the lcd light is on. Also, there is a few plastic parts that are "squishy" and far from solid.

I just find the quality of the FS-4 to be way under par of other professional electronics around the same price range. This thing is built cheaper then your average consumer electronics. I would be embarrassed if I was focus.

I had no idea they were made this cheap, I mean, this thing is cheap! I bought blind on this one so I am more mad at myself for not checking one out before hand.

I emailed focus about it a few weeks ago but it is apparent they could care less since they never sent me a reply.

I don't see myself buying focus products again.

Jonathan,
Sorry to hear about your run with the Focus drive.

I'm about to buy a drive and that just convinced me to NOT buy from Focus.
These things are ridiculously expensive, they better be of decent quality.

DR-HD100 JVC HD250 Timecode wrong
 

I am trying to determine why our DR-HD100's are not recording the correct timecode from our HD250's. I am not sure if the settings on the DR's are correct, but it is set to use HDV TC.

On the camera, we read the correct TC, on the DR display when recording the DR shows the correct TC, yet on the DR clips the TC is way off. A 1:00:00:00 tape clip will have a file clip TC of 22:00:00:00.

Can anyone just double check the settings that works with their unit?

Thanks

Dave Beaty

DR-HD100 resets sometimes to factory defaults
 

I have a random problem with my DR-HD100 that during startup it resets sometimes to factory defaults screwing my recording as it doesn't default to HDV.
How are the settings stored in the unit? Does it have a small battery which needs to be replaced for example?
This is very annoying as I need to make sure it performs 100% reliable as I don't use tapes anymore.

My unit will also "reset" to default settings. It happenes whenever I mistakenly touch the "power on" button after the system is already powered on. I had to put a small piece of tape over the Power On button to keep from hitting it by mistake.

This could be the case for me too as I in a quick run and shoot moment want to be sure that the unit is on.
It could happen that I then press the Power button again while it is already on.
Looks like a bug then? I try it out if I can repeat it.

Edit: When I press the power button again (while the unit is on), it does reboot the unit indeed.
That doesn't look right? The manual doesn't mention anything about this.
I suspect if I press the Power button while it is already booting that there could be a glitch erasing my non-volatile memory?
Is there anyone from Focus who could jump in please?

I can't begin to tell you the frustration and lost footage I've experienced over this little "feature". Hope you get some response from Focus, but, I doubt it.

DR-HD100 firmware uprgade problems
 

I've searched this forum about my upgrading problems but only find out-dated threads from 06, and can't find any ultimate solutions. So, sorry if you guys have been over this a thousand times already.

In my DR-HD100 settings menu (which I purchased new three months ago) it says I have version 1.0.0.04031006

I have downloaded off both this site, and the Focus Enhancements site, various DR-HD100 firmware updates which all give me a "dr-hd.bin" file and a "readme" file with instructions about how to install. I've followed the instructions exactly and tried each upgrade independently of the other. I can get none of them to work, however. I just keep getting the "Upgrade Error - WRONG PRODUCT ID" message.

I've read on this forum that others are using the "v2.2.1.04 update released April 25, 2007" while I'm still driving Fred Flintstone's car with boulders for wheels.

Can anyone help? Focus Enhancements is closed till Monday...

Thanks

Matt (from Focus Enhancement), can you help us with this one please?

DR-HD100 v2.2.1 released
 

Vers. 2 is a major update you have to pay for. You can order online, but the update comes on a disk. Only minor updates are downloadable for free.

V2.0 was released in October 2006. So your DR-HD100 (purchased in June?) should already have the update. Refer to this: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost....2&postcount=67 and let your dealer pay the update...

Thank you Andreas, that helps me a lot.

DR-HD 100 cable for anton bauer power
 

Will this cable work(Ptap-ZPRT+-XX) for power form my anton bauer 120 brick? has anyone
tried this.



http://www.thebroadcastshop.com/sale...owertap&page=3


thanks Guys
Shawn

Although having bought it only 3 months ago he should be entitled to a free upgrade surely?

Shawn, I'm pretty sure you need the 2.5mm right angle jack, centre pin positive.

I needed a 2.1mm to 2.5mm out of my battery and I can't remember which end was which, but I'm fairly certain the FS had the larger diameter centre pin.

Would pay to check first - I just bought the gear from my local electronics store.

Thanks a lot for your help guys. Focus Enhancements is taking care of everything - no charge. I just sent them my receipt which confirmed when I purchased it and they're sending me the upgrade files now.

Thanks again, Eric

Same 22hr. Time Code problem
 

I'm having the same problem. I'm using the DR-HD100 with a JVC HD250.
In our case, we've determined that when hitting the "STOP" button on the Firestore after recording a clip causes that clip to have time code that is 22 hrs. and something. However, if we record a clip and simply hit the REC button again on the JVC, which pauses the tape and also puts the Firestore in "Pause" mode (with the LCD screen flashing red), the time code is correct when ingested to our Mac Pro.

Check DR-HD100 copying file-by-file!
 

Had a scary experience with one of our DR-HD100 drives today...some of the files would not copy off the drive - ! This was the first time we had any scare from these wonderful, wonderful Focus Enhancement drives.

After the shoot I dragged the whole clip-containing folder on the DR-HD100 over to our storage drive as usual, but the copying just stopped at a certain point. It just would not copy the last 10 or 12 clips at the bottom of the folder list.

The "repair" function did not fix the problem. I had to drag the remaining files one-by-one, and watch them copy at approximately 1/60th normal speed. V-e-r-y, v-e-r-y, s-l-o-w-l-y. Got all the clips off the drive in the end but that was pretty scary. The copy was so slow that for a long time, I did not even see it happening. I thought the files were totally stuck on the DR-HD100. But actually the would copy: Just incredibly slowly.

What caused this to occur? The DR-HD100s are FAT-32s and we are 100% Mac shop here so I am not familiar with the behavior of this type of drive. We had no Disk Warrior type program to deal with this problem. Of course we always re-format the DR-HD100 prior to every use...have no idea what caused this.

It happened the day of the shoot, when we copied off the drive on returning to the office...and it happened again two weeks later when I tried to copy off the DR-HD100 again to make a second back-up (that's when I actually discovered the problem!) -- so it surely was not about the DR-HD100's battery (it was plugged in) or some sort of momentary overheating. Those files just refused to copy in the normal way both times, and I don't know why.

The big lesson here is to ALWAYS CHECK the copied file list against the list on the DR-HD100 to make sure that all the files have copied-over.

If I had not done a file-by-file comparison of the two drives after the copying, I might have re-formatted the DR-HD100 for the next shoot and lost the material.

My experience with the FS4HD unit(which is for all intents and purposes, the same as the dr-hd100)is that the firewire connector is extremely delicate. if you bump the connector while recording you may or may not suffer a dropout. even if you don't suffer a dropout, you get a corrupted file....hence the very long and shaky download. for some reason, it seems to be recoverable...sometimes, depending on the nature of the corruption. I've had to quit doing DTE recording and always use a backup tape because of the unreliability. very discouraging.

Thanks, Bill. Hm.. maybe these drives are not as identical as we think: Our FW400 cables snap securely into place in our DR-HD100s -- a very satisfying click connection is made when the cable is inserted.

During this copying problem I anywayI tried several different FW400 cables and repeatedly booted the DR-HD100, ran the copying through different computers, etc. -- it was always the same files that had this "reluctance to copy."

I think it was some sort of formatting or directory problem on the DR-HD100...but of course I don't know for sure. I'm going to call Focus Enhancements tomorrow and see what they think about this....

sounds like they improved the connector....the first real good reason to get the DR-HD100 over the fs4hd

Scott,

Maybe a sector of your drive is bad? What is the length of the Focus Warranty?
Is there a function to reformat the DTE? Once you have your clips off, see if that helps?

Dan Weber

Thanks Dan. There is indeed a "format" function: And it is used to wipe the drive after every use to prepare it for its next use. So any user of this device is 'formatting' every day...

But here is a surprise: It turns out that the OTHER drive on the OTHER camera that was shooting that same day had the SAME problem!

That is, both drives suffered this same balkiness in downloading the last 8-or-10 clips in the folder. This is an additional discovery that confronted us only today. Thankfully we still had not yet wiped the DR-HD100s so we were able to drag -- individually and very slowly -- the balky clips of the second DR-HD100 as well. Happy ending.

And it's a double happy ending because now I believe I know what caused this to occur:

DR-HD100 #1, on camera 1, was running 100% on its internal battery connected to an Anton Bauer battery which was also powering the JVC GY-HD100.

DR-HD100 #2, on camera 2, was also running on its internal battery connected to an Anton Bauer battery -- but that camera was also plugged into the mains (the battery was mounted on the Anton Bauer charger, which was plugged into studio power).

Late in the shoot, the power emanating from the Anton Bauer battery on camera #1 had nearly run out, so I switched the Anton Bauer batteries between the two cameras -- so that the more powerful (indeed, fresh) Anton Bauer battery from #2 would take over the job of powering camera #1, while the weak Anton Bauer battery that had been powering camera #1 moved onto the charger. We have only two batteries and one charger, so that's what we do when a shoot runs really long and the isolated battery gets low.

My guess is that I failed to shut down the DR-HD100s before messing around with their power supply in this way -- and that caused a minor corruption on both DR-HD100s -- so that later, when I tried to download their content, the usual drag-and-drop method would not work.

I can't think of any other "thing" that could cause this same anomaly to occur on two completely disassocated DR-HD100s -- except a chronic sector failure problem such as you suggested, Dan, affecting any number of DR-HD100s, and of course we have absolutely no reason to think that such a widespread problem exists.

I'm convinced that this must have been caused by my changing the power-supply of both drives at the same time, without properly shutting down the drives first.

I should have known better than to do that, I guess, but my view at the time was that the drives have their own internal batteries that would maintain power to the unit through any power fluctuation -- such as plugging-or-unplugging from the Anton Bauer battery, or plugging/unplugging from the mains. I now believe that this is an incorrect view, and the way to handle these Focus Enhancement drives is to never change anything about their power supply without shutting down the drive first.

That will surely be my practice in future.

DR HD-100 power/battery issues?
 

Hi There Folks. (applogies for posting in wrong section!!)

Just thought id question it here before pursuing customer support, but I have had my Firestore DR HD100 for some months now (around 5/6) and during this time I have experienced quite a few power problems when in the field shooting. Basically even when fully charged the unit powers down because of ‘low battery’. Originally this was not consistent, sometimes I could turn it on and it would last for a number of hours which led me to think perhaps it could have had something to do with the firmware update performed on it (don’t remember this problem happening in the few weeks prior to this when I first purchased it). However now the unit is in a state of turning itself off within seconds (even with it attached to mains power). The only way I can scan thru the menu options is with the DR HD100 plugged into mains and the battery removed. As you can probably imagine this has been a painful experience (luckily I have always used a tape back up). Going back to factory settings etc has no effect on the power state at all.

So was wondering if anyone else has had this problem or could suggest what the error might be (other than perhaps obviously a faulty battery?)

Thanks for your time all!!! (and appologies if this has already been covered :)

DR HD 100 power/battery issue?
 

Hi There Folks. (Firstly sorry I have reposted this, once in the wrong section :S)

Just thought id question it here before pursuing customer support, but I have had my DR HD100 for some months now (around 5/6) and during this time I have experienced quite a few power problems when in the field shooting. Basically even when fully charged the unit powers down because of ‘low battery’. Originally this was not consistent, sometimes I could turn it on and it would last for a number of hours which led me to think perhaps it could have had something to do with the firmware update performed on it (don’t remember this problem happening in the few weeks prior to this when I first purchased it). However now the unit is in a state of turning itself off within seconds (even with it attached to mains power). The only way I can scan thru the menu options is with the DR HD100 plugged into mains and the battery removed. As you can probably imagine this has been a painful experience (luckily I have always used a tape back up). Going back to factory settings etc has no effect on the power state at all.

So was wondering if anyone else has had this problem or could suggest what the error might be (other than perhaps obviously a faulty battery?)

Thanks for your time all!!! (and appologies if this has already been covered :)

Hello James

do you have another battery for your Dr 100

I also have the Dr 100 thank God so far no problems

what i can't understand ,
if it works with a main power supply without the Batt.
to bad you don't have another battery to test it with.

it sounds like the battery has some kind of short in it.

just a thought

Joe

Moving this to the Firestore forum where you might get more attention.

I made a power cable which connects the DR-HD100 to my IDX battery 190W.
This way I can shoot a whole day with one battery for the HD100, Videolight and DR-HD100 from one single battery.

I have a similar problem. We use Anton Bauer DIONIC 90's which are 14.4V at max charge. The DRHD100 uses 15V. So when the battery onboard gets down to low voltage, powering the unit with a power tap results in the "LOW BATTERY" in the very CENTER of the view finder! The DRHD100 works fine plugged into the power tap, with the on board battery removed, but the warning remains, ruining the displays usefulness.

If Im using the DRHD100 and plug the unit in with the on board battery connected, it begins charging. But if it's already in a low power state, it will eventually drain out and result in the warning as well. So we have no choice but to charge the onboard battery each and every time we shoot, even though we have 4 DIONICS on hand.

In my case I just want to get rid of the annoying warning when using the power tap. Again it only shows up when the onboard is removed or is in a low power state.


Dave B