Good question. Seems like an NAB thing to me, so next April probably.

So since this uses the P2 Port does this mean that it will only record active frames so it can store more footage as compared to the firestore?

Excellent question. Certainly seems like it should!

Recording 720p to the P2 card would definately save space as opposed to 1080, so you would think this approach would work similarly.

I remember speaking to Jan at the August NYC ResFest (when the camera was still saving files via USB2 and video out via firewire). She said then that 720p recording via firewire to a laptop NLE would save to the hard drive at the same data rate as 1080, so no conservation of hard drive space that way.

Regards,

Joe Womble

Well, yeah, but assumedly that presumes that the capturing program is performing as a dumb device, just writing what it's been given. They've said that the firewire stream would conform to the same rounded-out-to-60p type of stream that the VariCam records, so I would expect that. But if the flags are present in the stream, as they assuredly must be (or else the Apple Frame Rate Converter utility couldn't work, right?) then it would seem a relatively easy task for the capture application to check for flags and only write flagged frames to disk.

Theoretically yes! but that would depend on the USB host controller. There are many cheap versions out there, and would probably not hold up as well as FW. But hey! Unattended copying at more or less 400 to 480Mbps is good enough, and is well above DV tape transfer speeds by a factor of at least 10, depending on the hard disk used in this little beauty.

This product sounds interesting, but it would only serve useful on P2 cameras correct? I couldn't use it on any of the other cameras I currently use because of the P2 mount. Will the new firestore work on other cameras as well as the HVX? It'd be nice if it also worked on the DVX or VX2000. I probably won't use those cameras a ton once the HVX comes in, but it'd be nice to buy a DTE device that I can use on the lot of cameras.

firestore has made these kinda devices for normal DV cameras for years, you should go check out the website and see what they have.. your gonna see some cool stuff.

Uncompressed?
 

Chris, maybe no one has thought of this yet, so here goes.
if you get canon's new hd camers with the option of shooting 25 frames in pal, wouldn't the uncompressed data rate drop to around 1.25?
if so, would it be possable for Spec Comm to develope there system to work with this setup. if you think this makes sense, please pose the question next time you talk to them.
thanks,
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES
p.s. do you know if they will be at the DV Expo?

for this to be able to take the HD-SDI in from the canon, you would need about 12 laptop drives in a raid array to be able to handle the bandwidth, so no i dont think it will happen.