I did see a post the other day that was for a LANC controller that seemed like it may be promising. I can't remember which thread it was under but there were two different units the person mentioned. One seemed like it would be more for digital SLR's but the other specifically had a LANC controller function. If I run across it again I'll post the link.

Garrett

..Thanks man :-) I so need to shoot timelapses all around the city of Montreal at Night, during the day, a sunrise sequence over the city, in order to finish a Tv episode I've been shooting this past Summer. I heard there is an nNovia deck which can shoot timelapse in HDV. I also heard there was an nNovia CF recorder, but I have not, as of yet, come across any information on the nNovia website which offers such a model. (???)
.

It is highly unlikely that these devices will provide the HDV timelapse function you are looking for. The reason is as follows.

Remember that these devices are designed first and foremost to take the FireWire streaming audio+video datastream and record it to flash or a hard drive. Consequently they do not have any sort of audio+video compression engine built into them. Zip, zero, nada. That is all being done by the camcorder.

Now in DV, each frame is its own little distinct entity. So all the recorder has to do is every so often pull out a frame and record it. Job done. Still no need to understand what is within that audio+video data block, just where it starts and ends in the ongoing stream.

In HDV, on the other hand, to do the same thing you are going to have to
1. Every so often pull out a GOP and decompress it into its individual frames.
2. Pick out the individual frame you want/need.
3. Over time accumulate those frames until you have enough to make up a GOP.
4. Compress that GOP and record it.
5. Repeat.

At this point you should start to see the difficulty. How does the above happen in a device that has no audio+video compression engine of its own?
And the equally obvious answer is: It doesn't.

The user manual for the MRC1K states that it does interval recording only on DV/DVCAM.

...Hi Bill. I already proposed an engine of my own concept on another thread. I think there is an easy and viable way to do just what I wrote -Timelapse into an HDV file. I don't want to go into a great deal of specific detail until I have spoken to an electrical engineer and a lawyer buddy of mine to make sure I'm not stepping on someone else's patent, or someone reading my concept having more resources than I will simply rip it off and do it themselves ! (I've probably wrote too many specifics of my own design already). My unit would be quite small and retail for a price point around $950.00 US. If I was able to produce a prototype unit myself, then I would post a picture for you to see and some video of the results. For now, I think this work would be a hobby project, since I'm in production and I must make money. I do believe it would be a worthy pursuit to try and create such a recording solution at an affordable price.

And given my prior explanation, now you know why.

Which also brings up the question: How good is that HDV timelapse going to look, even assuming it worked like you hoped for?

Answer: Not very

And the reason is as follows:

Even if the recorder did all that you hoped for, as you can see from my prior explanation, your frames will have undergone two levels of HDV compression before making it to the recorder medium, flash or hard drive. The first time was of course in the camera, the second time in the recorder.

HDV (MPEG2) compression works as well as it does because of the very basic assumption that the next frame is hugely redundant with this frame, ie. changes from frame to frame are relatively small.

In timelapse that assumption takes a big hit. In a timelapse sunrise, for instance, the lighting, which affects everything, is undergoing rapid changes from frame to frame. So you should expect the second level of HDV compression, ie. in the recorder, to take some large hits retaining detail.

I think a better way to do timelapse is to:
1. Record it normally with the camcorder. You could go to tape or use an external recorder such as the HVR-MRC1K or even to a laptop. But then you do the timelapse effect in the video editor. This has the beauty of eliminating that second level of HDV compression before the footage has even made it to your video editor. And it is easy, even if you don't like the volume of footage. It's what I would do.
2. Get a still camera shooting multimegapixel frames at the required interval and import that still image sequence into the video editor. The fact that you are now starting with images at a far higher level of detail than 1080 should mean that even with color correction, other effects, etc you should retain a fantastic level of detail. It will have the drawback of having a very different look than footage from your video camera of course. If shot in RAW, I would batch convert the images to DNG and then use Adobe's Photoshop tools to see if I could exposure+color correct it to something that worked well with your video footage. Once you are happy with that, if your video editor doesn't understand DNG, then again use Adobe to batch export the DNG's to JPEG and import the JPEG's. This of course is harder than #1, but the quality level should be very, very high.

I am only a hobbyist videographer. I may have missed something.
But I have a long career as a Computer Engineer. I know hardware and software, bits and bytes, from low level to high, pretty darn well.

Wil the Sony HVR-MRC1 work with JVC HD100 720p
 

I have yet to hear anyone answer or confirm if the Sony HVR-MRC1 will work with the JVC HD100 shooting 720p. I've called sony, I've called B&H, I've called JVC reps.

Can anyone just test this unit on a JVC HD100/110?!? Please?!!!

...Hey Bill :-) You raise some very important questions and I think You are off on a few assumptions, but your points are excellent. Allow me to explain a little further.

1. Interval Recording to an HDV File: What would the quality be and what steps could be taken to circumvent loss of overall quality ?

Answer: What if Camera and SSDR were fed signal via the HD-SDI output into the hardware recorder instead of clocked from FireWire Stream Input ? HD-SDI is ........

A) Uncompressed.

B) 10 Bit color space.

So a camera like a Sony HVR Z1U or a Canon XL H1 could bypass the first step of HDV encoding performed by the camera. This solves one problem.

2. HDV Long GOP compression of very different timelapse frames: Some testing would have to be done to see what level of overall image quality degredation occurs from this method of signal acquisition and compression.

* I think one essential point to ponder is what hardware encoding engine would one want to use to accomplish the HDV encoding ? There are many hardware encoding chips available for this task. Perhaps a decision would have to be taken to determine if delivery of the final file format should even be HDV per se ? There are a few 'open source' codecs, such as Xvid, amoung others, which could be employed, and the resulting video could be delivered as some form of AVI file. AVI can be imported into any NLE solution with good results. I like HDV as an HD format. I know many do not, and it has received a great deal of malignment over the past couple of years, but the Canon series of pro camcorders, along with those manufactured by SONY, produce HDV video of stunning quality. I know the movie 'The Signal" was shot using much HDV to in camera tape and it looks really quite good !

The ever increasing resolution game being played by those who want to sell HD products have really muddied our understanding of what is good and what is not. I would personally like to see improvements in cameras and hardware in camera encoders which are way more efficient at bringing you true thick raster HD (1440 x 1080) and thin raster HD (1920 x 1080). I would also like to see flat screen TV's which actually give you the *Full* HD raster - But I digress.

3. Recording straight to NLE: Via FireWire or HD-SDI ?

If one uses Avid Media Composer installed on a laptop, then one could capture a FW streamed HDV m2t file in native format without any form of re-compression and remove the redundant files in post. This would work well, but one might require a great deal of storage depending on the length of timelapse shot. Avid now has an external box for use with MC that alows direct capture via HD-SDI allowing uncompressed 10 bit video quality. Using a digital still camera would possibly produce the highest obtainable quality.

Interesting points to ponder.

JVC HD110 Compatibility
 

Anyone...please, just looking for a short yes or no answer here. I disparately need a HD recorder for my JVCHD110, and want an alternative to the problem plagued Firestore devices.

Does anyone know if the Sony HVR recorder will work with the JVC HD100 recording 720/24p?

Just keep in mind that when you start talking either HD-SDI or HDMI, you are going to rapidly end up with a product that looks a heck of a lot like a ConvergentDesigns NanoFlash.

It also eliminates a fair number of pro cameras. Like Canon's own XH-A1. To go this route you would have to go with the XH-G1, which roughly doubles the price of the camcorder. Is that reasonable? I don't know...you tell me.

Of course I can hook up the Nanoflash to my little Sony HDR-HC9 consumer camcorder. But that's a $3500 encoder+recorder solution hanging off a $900 camcorder. Something seems a bit off about that...I'd prefer to spend the money on another camera, tripod+head, or laptop. The biggest thing I like about the Nanoflash is that I believe FireWire on camcorders is slowly going away. Great example: AVCHD, hard drive, and flash camcorders overwhelmingly do not have FireWire ports! So if you accept that FireWire is going away, it follows that a recorder hanging off an HDMI port, something which is rapidly becoming standard, will have a far longer useful lifespan.

I'm not going to waste my and your time talking about Avid solutions.
I'm a hobbyist and have no personal familiarity with Avid except to know budget wise they are way out of my league.

What I like about simply recording the video and doing the timelapse effect in the video editor is:

Right now, today, I can record up to 7 hours of either DV or HDV video using either Pinnacle Systems Studio 11 or Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 on my 2004 vintage Pentium 4 3.0 GHz laptop with a 120GB 5400 rpm internal hard drive . And that is going directly to the laptop's hard drive. My point here isn't how low end I am. It is for how low a cost I can get the job done.

On top of that, a 500 GB USB hard drive can be purchased for under $100 USD.
That represents something like 40 hours of footage. So really long video shoots can be done for very low cost.

Correct...which also means sometimes you will be happy with the results, and sometimes you won't. It will vary with what you are shooting. I don't think any of us like that kind of uncertainty.

I think you very much want to stick with standard, common encoding formats, or you will quickly find people moaning and groaning how your product doesn't work with their editor. Are you sure, for instance, that those AVI's will play with Final Cut Pro?

One theme I think people consistently underestimate when looking at the cost of products like Flash XDR and NanoFlash is what are the expected sales volume?

As a common example, if you look at motocycles vs cars, the motorcycles will cost a quarter up to what a mid-range car does. But compared to a car, there is so much less to a bike. What gives? Volume is what gives. Overwhelmingly, if a car manufacturer sells less than 100,000/year of a model, it gets eliminated. If a bike manufacturer sells 10,000/year of a model, they are dancing in the streets.

One unspoken theme of this exchange is what you think the cost of the product will be. But your market is a function of:
1. What camera do people have? Will your recorder plug-n-play with my camera? Is it FireWire, HD-SDI, HDMI? proprietary?
2. Once I've done my shoot, will the footage produced plug-n-play smoothly with their editor, whatever it may be?

As you grind through that list, I think you will discover why the nanoFlash looks like it does.
The development costs are high, the market is small. So it hooks to that HDMI port, which is almost everywhere. And it uses MPEG2 encoding, which nearly everyone understands. And with the bitrate cranked up, your ability to distinguish it from uncompressed disappears.

And storage is cheap and getting cheaper, so just do the timelapse in the video editor...
And if you do it that way, you can really fine tune the length and amount of speedup in that segment, something you can't so easily do when you've preselected the frame capture interval.

Have you tried searching the forums? I know someone tried this and my memory is it cannot do 720 footage. It will do either DV 480 of HDV 1080... but not 720... Google the forums for this and you may find it.

.....Uh, no I disagree. One simply doesn't have to replicate someone elses's design in this process.

...No I disagree. In fact, it is the direct opposite of your assertion. If you have HD-SDI, HDMI, and Firewire, then you gurantee the largest *possible* market for your SSDR device.

...Yeah, tell me about it ! This is precisely the reason why I think there needs to be a "more affordable" solution presented here for the non-high end broadcast shooters.

....It's a crap shoot really. There are so many camcorders out there which are old and new which possess the standard 1394a FW interface that it just doesn't make sense not to include it. Why remove your device from such a large potential market ?

......I'm not a hobbiest. I am an independent-digi-underground shooter. I Produce and direct a web Tv series called Please Stand By, as well as run a post house where I am editing other producer's products. We do have Avid Media Composer NLE, since this is the editing paradigm network TV and the studios in our market use. I think recording to laptop hard drive directly is a big, big non starter for technological reasons. One should never record video on the same system drive as the editing software is residing. The reason for this is the the restator arm in the hard drive will have to move way too much and too fast to keep up with the writing and reading process and will usually cause performance issues with playout and playback. Your suggestion to record to external USB hard drive is better, but totally impractical for any form of location shooting. I think this setup will work well for in studio production where you don't have to move your setup around every 5 minutes to a different position. Low cost is always good, but there are practical limits to how far you can go and still meet practical minimum requirements.

...Yes. AVI is importable into any NLE. The caveat is which wrapper is being used for the AVI file ? Quicktime is a sort of AVI file along with Divx, Xvid, and many others. I like the Microsoft AVC-1 codec (Calssic Microsoft type AVI file). Works in Avid and supposed to work in FCP as well. Part of the Blu-Ray HD DVD book spec. Many Blu-ray HD players can playback DVD's authored in this codec. I think the hardware encoding engine must be a chip which can do QT, MXF, Xvid, MJEPEG AVI, AVC-1 (AVCHD). Obviously, the most expensive part of designing and building something like this would be the hardware encoder chip. Which encoder chip is best ? Only extensive research with the proper engineer will reveal the answer to this question.

I think once you exceed the monetary threshold of $1,500.00 to $2,000.00, then you are directly looking at acquisition and use by mid level production companies, Network TV, Digital Film, and rental houses. These type of end users tend to purchase such items in large quantity.These clients have access to producer's money and can justify much higher initial acquisition costs. The ROI on an XDR is difficult to estimate outside of the aforementioned production markets. If we agree to conclude that one of the main aspects of its inception was to get much higher quality out of existing prosumer and lower end camcorders under $10,000.00 US, then it's a toss up to say it is cost effective, because it depends on which camera model you are talking about and what production job it is being used on.

i.e. I have a Canon XL H1 (A $12,000.00 Camera in my market if you go through retail and pay local taxes). If I use this camera to shoot my Web Tv series, then the answer is definitely not economical to purchase an XDR. If I use my XL H1 to shoot a commissioned industrial video or teaching series DVD, or infomercial, then the answer is yes it is certanly justifiable to purchase an XDR.

.....I don't have any problem with the Nanoflash design. I think the Convergent Designs SSDR's are amazing creations ! I do suggest only to add FW capability to the Nanoflash, but even if they don't it is still a great product. I think I will wait and see how the timelapse function develops with the XDR before I make any final decision to purchase an XDR. I think I will investigate building my own design, or possibly acquiring an nNovia firewire device. nNovia has a model which does timelapse to HDV Bill. Did you know that ? However, the nNovia is another hard drive based device. Hard drives can fail.

EDIT: Perhaps what I need to make first is a device which creates an image sequence from am HDV stream ! Forget a video file ! How about a JEPEG, or TIFF, or TARGA sequence ???

You are right, you don't have to replicate someone else's design. But I strongly suspect if it was easy, it would have already been done. If you find a way, everyone will be happy to hear of the solution.

I know you are not a hobbyist - that was already said. I put in that I am a hobbyist so you would know where I am coming from.

As for the recording to the laptop hard drive, ideally what you say is true. As a practical matter, it isn't. In fact DV and HDV data rates, at ~3.25 MBytes/second are very, very slow for a modern hard drive. Even my old tank can manage 15 - 25 MBytes/second throughput. For a properly written video app the OS is in a position to buffer up the video data and write it to disk at a time convenient to it. My laptop does have 2 GB of memory. I'm sure that helps. So does the fact that I have separate partitions for the OS+apps, swap space, and the video data.

In practice I regularly record 45 minute - 90 minute programs. Assuming my video apps are telling me the truth, I haven't had a dropped frame yet. I certainly haven't seen it in any of my DVD's. So something is working for me. I will say I have everything that doesn't need to be running (Antivirus, Firewalls, Network ports) on the laptop turned off, the video capture app minimized, and the laptop lid/screen closed while recording.

From the nNovia QCR Deck Operation Manual:

Do elapsed time recording
In this option a recording can be set up to capture one of six time lapse
settings. They are 1 frame per second, per 2 seconds, per 5 seconds, every
4th frame, every other frame or 1 frame per trigger. The trigger connection is
found in the breakout cable.
Note: This mode is not saved when power is interrupted.
Note: A new clip is created only at the beginning of a time lapse recording.
Note: This option is not currently valid with HDV. Later firmware upgrades
may turn this function on.

....OH Bill ! This creation of the extra partition only exacerbates the hard drive's restator arms flipping around @ 4 X the speed it should have to. I warn you my friend, you could be wearing out your hard drive faster than you think. (??) I leave it to your own good descretion of course, but I strongly recommend you record to an external hard drive only :-)


...I spoke with another film maker on this forum who owns an nNovia, and he confirms he's able to set timelapse in the HDV mode. To my knowledge, this is the only current external firewire based device capable of interval recording in an HD mode. I received a quote on the Sony firewire based CF recorder, and I can pick one up on special order in Montreal for $1,210.00 Canadian. This is a reasonable price for this level of technology. Even if it only does interval recording in SD resolution, I could shoot in DV or DVCPRO (That's a 50 Mbit 4:2:2 quality format) @ 16 X 9 aspect ratio and intercut this into an HDV timeline in Media Composer. I believe you can mix resolutions (As well as aspect ratios in some cases) with Sony Vegas 9, FCP 6.4 or higher and Premiere CS3 or higher, on the same timeline. I may have found the best compromise with the Sony CF recorder solution. (??). I will continue to investigate.

I would sure like to know the name of the device which did interval recording via the LANC control bus ? There's a full LANC control on my Canon XL H1 camera.

Actually, it greatly slows down head movement. Reason? The laptop isn't interweaving blocks of video data around the pre-existing file structure + data of the OS and program application files. Instead it is overwhelmingly laying down sequential blocks of video data in a clean partition whose sole purpose is soaking up that content like a sponge.

Indeed, I feel compelled to ask why on earth you would think this would speed up the rate at which the disk heads have to move around?

LANC Controller for Time Laps
 

Mark,

I found the link to the LANC Controller I read about. The original thread is here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/canon-xh-...-via-lanc.html

and the link to the web page for the controller is here:

Specifications for The Time Machine

As long as the thing will actually communicate with the XL H1 it should theoretically work to give you some sort of time laps.

Let me know if you decide to try one out.

Garrett

,,,,Wow ! Excellent ! Thanks Garrett for the info. :-)

Success! after loading the new FCP 2 and the Sony Plugin for the unit it works GREAT!

I set the 1394 trigger in the camera menu to series and hit the record buttons and away I went. Now, the trigger function with the JVC did not work but that's ok, it wasn't designed to anyway.

DV works but of course HDV from the JVC did NOT! I'm definitely thinking of buying one for myself!

I tried it and it did not work. does great with standard DV streams though.

I would say no. I tried it and it didn't work. DV srteam is good though.

...You have not slowed down arm and head movement inside your system drive. You have multiplied the area whereby the geometry of your system hard drive must be mapped and serviced by writes and re-writes. Adding an additional partition on the same hard drive as your system OS and programs reside is like having two or more operating systems running at once. Where did you get the idea your second partition writes were sequential ? Video and audio data writes can only be sequential if they are written to a seperate hard drive, and even then, the writes will only be written sequentially if the video capture program is setup to force video and audio data to the outermost circumferance of the hard drive data plates and then write progressively inward. Several NLE capture programs are written to do just so.

Any Remarks on the MRC1K yet
 

I have an FX1000 and was looking into using the MRC1K but would like to know your experiances.

I am thrilled by the use of the MRC1K. The Qmemory 150X and Ridata 233X discount CF cards worked great in my tests.

The recorder comes with a pamphlet that lists dozens of cameras and their ability to work with the unit and the features that are possible with each unit. I have not seen this pamphlet online which is a shame beacuse so many people want to know will it work with mine?

I recorded independently of the camera record button because I decided to shoot tapeless. The Sync and Follow features with the cam link aren't useful to me beacuse I shoot segments that are longer than 60 minutes, so I just press record on the MRC1K unit and watch the elapsed time on the screen which is a little small and not nearly as nice as watching the LCD.

Changing a card takes about 20 seconds and that information is lost unless I have a DV tape going as well.

The cache feature is great. It gives you a 14 second pre-record buffer. Press record and the previous 14 seconds is also written to memory. Very handy.

My only problem is my camera HDV port is now occupied by the recorder so I was trying to figure out if I can also stream the live feed to ustream. There really isn't a firewire splitter and even if there was one, would I be willing to have a corrupt recording? No!

I understhand that the Record sync may not be usefull to you but I am interested if they work with the FX1000. Have you atleast tried them?

If not I probably wont purchase the recorder.

Is the FX1000 listed in the pamphlet and what functions does it show for this camera.

Also what about the video quality? Is it as good as the tape?

Michael:

If you haven't bought a camera yet and you're really interested in using the MCR1K I'd suggest you think about buying a Z5U. THe integration and control of the MCR1K really make it worth the extra money. IMHO.

cheers

I agree but unfortunatly I already own a FX1000.

I though the MRC1K used the iLink to record. Are you saying it uses the HDMI port for recording. If that is the case it should record true 1920x1080 instead of the 1440x1080

Are you not better of buying a HD small camera with a build-in harddrive and let it run for several hours for timelaps recordings? Most small HD camera's produce a very good image in good light conditions.

...You can also simply run several HDV tapes at a location then injest them into an NLE and either increase speed of clips on timeline, or remove footage and keep one frame every 5 minutes, etc. Either way is going to produce good results, but at the price of wasting tapes and ingest time.

Yes, but that would be quite a waist of time when you capture and you need to replace tapes every hour, harddrive or tapebased cameras can run much longer without interuption and you can capture much quicker. I am considering such a small tape or harddrive hd cam mainly for there type of recordings, I film quite a lot of events and a client asked if they could have a timelaps recording of them building up everything, but for creative timelaps shots for weddings it's also a good tool.

...Hey Noa. The lack of a device at an affordable price, which records true timelapse in HD resolution as either an image sequence, or as a video file, is one of the main reasons behind my decision to design and build my own SSDR. Check out my thread, "Our Project to Create a Cost Effective Solid State HD Video Recording Device Begins," for more details.

That discussion goes a little beyond my knowledge of English but it sounds interesting :)
I have put the topic in my favorites, just to follow what's happening the next months and I hope you manage to create what you have in mind. The solution I had with the use of a plain hardisk or tape cam should suffice for me right now as I also can use the camera as a second camera for normal recordings.

Here is a listing of compatible cameras and other devices. I think this came from the pamphlet itself, but not sure.

https://www.globalmediapro.com/dp/A0...t/#Compatibles

-Ken