Originally Posted by Craig Seeman (Post 989954)

They are snug and the Sandisk 32GB Ultra II cards are a tight fit but I like that. I can insert MxR into camera and they feel like they make solid contact. Inserting and removing the Sandisk cards have just enough pop so they release I can then easily pull them out.

Originally Posted by John Hewat (Post 990235)

Received mine super fast - thanks Ross!

I only own Toshiba 4GB SDHC cards, which all behave this way:

I can record on them just fine. After pressing STOP, it tells me that:

Media Error
Media (A) Needs to be restored

So I click from CAMERA over to MEDIA and it prompts me thus:

Media Needs to be Restored
Restore Media (A) Now?
Execute
Cancel

And I click Execute, and it counts up the percentage to 100% and then allows me to click PLAY on the clips.

When I do so however, it plays the clip just fine until about 2 seconds before the end of the clip. When I plugged the camera into the PC and viewed the footage there, I confirmed that the last (approximately) 2 seconds of footage was not recorded.

Is this a product of the Toshiba card? Or the adapter?

Also, my Sony SxS card reader does not appear to recognise the adapter. The little light does not go on when I place the adapter in there, which it does using the SxS card. When clicking on the SxS drive in Windows Explorer, it says "Please insert a disk into Drive G.

Removing the SDHC card from the adapter, I was able to transfer the footage directly from it via an SD card reader. But should the SxS card reader be able to handle the adapter?

So my questions are basically, is the Toshiba card or the adapter itself the trouble with:

a) final 2 seconds of footage not being recorded
b) not recognising the card in the Sony SxS card reader

I am going to order some Sandisk cards today but am worried that they may not behave any differently to the Toshiba ones.

NOTE: I have the new firmware, and I have two MxR adapters and multiple 4GB Toshiba SDHC cards, and they all behaved the same way in both adapters.

Originally Posted by Bob Grant (Post 990259)

Anyone with a XDCAM EX EX30 VCR tried any of these card e.g. MXR in that?

I have one but it'll be a couple of days before I can get to it, curious to see if anyone else has tried this.

Originally Posted by Ross Herewini (Post 990326)

We haven't used the SBAC-US10, but we found a product that can do the same job at substantial savings, cheap enough to allow you to download more than one card at a time. If you can wait until next week, we will be releasing the product on our website.

Originally Posted by Ross Herewini (Post 990329)

I went down to Videocraft in Artarmon yesterday, and Rob Fluoro was very helpful in letting me try out the MxR in their EX30, and EX3. It was recognised immediately and we were able to see it on their Mac setup, no problem.

It was recognised in just the same way as the Sony SxS 8Gb I took with me to test.

Originally Posted by Ross Herewini (Post 990329)

Hi Bob,

I went down to Videocraft in Artarmon yesterday, and Rob Fluoro was very helpful in letting me try out the MxR in their EX30, and EX3. It was recognised immediately and we were able to see it on their Mac setup, no problem.

It was recognised in just the same way as the Sony SxS 8Gb I took with me to test.

That looks like a sweet deck, I'd love to have a longer play with one, but I didn't want to wear out the welcome.

Originally Posted by Paul Kellett (Post 990332)

Hi Ross.
I have a question for you about the device you're planning, for offloading multiple cards at once, if that's ok.

I can plug multiple sdhc cards into my pc at once, using multiple usb slots and the cheap little sdhc>usb readers, the ones which came with my transcend cards, however, i can only open one instance of clip browser at a time, so can only offload one card at a time.
I suppose i could offload multiple cards at once using just windows but i'd prefer to use clip browser.

So my question to you is how will we go about offloading multiple cards at the same time ?


Thanks.
Paul.

Originally Posted by Andrew Clark (Post 990357)

So Ross...does your adapter fit properly in the EX3 just like the EX1? I read a few posts earlier that somebody mentioned that it was a challenge to pull it out of the EX3 slots (A or B slot...don't remember). Would you enlighten us as to your findings about this?

And again, many thanks for a delightfully inexpensive SxS alternative solution!!

Originally Posted by Ross Herewini (Post 980926)

Hi Guys,

Here's an update on where we are up to.

I just got back from the factory with the first shipment of cards for immediate release.

Quality Control:

I took my EX1 with me, along with a small pile of Ultra II 16GB cards. Each of the first 500 cards were tested individually, by me. They even get a little sticker on the back to say so. I was going to sign each one just for fun, until it turned into being, well, not so much fun.

Results:

In the first 500 there were 2 cards that came up with "media error", the rest were not only recognised but also had 5secs recorded over them.

500 cards, 2 failures.

That took about 7 hours of non-stop testing to achieve. I really wanted to test the another 500 but it would have meant being there until midnight, and the prospect of not so happy manufacturing people.

We also conducted another random sample of 50 cards from the next 500, and none failed. If you get a failed card, please contact me and we will ship another at our expense, expedited, to you. Just show us proof that the card is back on it’s way to us. We will pass it back to manufacturing to find out why it failed.

When I get some time tomorrow, (well maybe the day after), I’m going to start a little mini-study on Poisson distribution. It never occurred to me to ask the question of how they could get the same level of confidence as my labour intensive, individual testing using sampling techniques. But it can be done.

So are we shipping tomorrow?

For International orders, (ie not Australian), YES, WE ARE SHIPPING 19 DECEMBER 2008 as promised.

All Australian orders will be dispatched Tuesday 23 December for arrival Wednesday 24 December. (We had to concentrate on the overseas orders first because it takes so long to get there). Sorry for dispatching one day late, we just ran out of hands.

If you live in Sydney metro, and are nervous that Australia post might let you down, (although I’d have to say they rarely do, and I send out things all the time to nervous brides), one of the little elves said he would take a personal run with the sleigh to warm it up on Wednesday, and hand deliver to you. All you have to do is send me an email, tell me your name and address, and put in the subject, “To Santa’s little helper”, and we’ll pull yours from the mail processing.

I’m going to print out picking slips and labels tonight before I turn in, and match them all up tomorrow. So I’m sitting here in my hotel room, typing this up on my laptop surrounded by packing boxes, cartons and cartons of MxR cards, a laser printer I begged off the factory, and labels I bought with me, and no prospect of a beer until they are all sent.

So I will be emailing the invoices to you all as soon as the dispatch process has been completed, over the next few days. If you need the invoice sooner than that, email me, I can’t promise anything, but email me anyway.

Thanks again for all your terrific support, and as a small aside, I pushed the button on the next batch of four thousand to be delivered between now and New Year, that’s this new year, so there won’t be any shortage. I hope you all enjoy many happy years of shooting with your MxR's. I’d be really keen to hear feedback, good or bad, mind you bad wasn’t what I was planning for, but it does happen. Let us know how you go.

Ross Herewini
E-Films Video Production.


Ps If I could get the darn blog and faq software to work in Wordpress 2.6, I’d tell you there are some really exciting things happening on the memory front. As usual can’t say too much, but then when the MxR thing started, I couldn’t say too much about this either.

PS if you know anything about Wordpress v2.6 blogging, or FAQ in version 2.6, I would be very grateful if you could help me figure it out. My Web developer has gone on walkabout, I think i might have offended his delicate sensibilities when he stuffed up the Us airmail thing.

Originally Posted by James Dierx (Post 985829)

I received 2 MxRs from ya Ross. Overall they have worked great for me. The only problem I have with them is...

On the EX3 it's a hard to get MxR out of the slot closest to the audio controls. I have to get pliers to pull it out. Maybe they are a tad too big? I don't really have a problem with it.. You're saving me thousands of dollars that I do not have. I just do not want to crush the card w/ the pliers on accident!

Is it just me? does anyone else have this issue?

Originally Posted by Craig Seeman (Post 990579)

16GB Sony SxS - $750
MxR card - $35, Transcend Class 6 SDHC 16GB card -$30 - Total $65

32GB Sony SxS - $1425
MxR card - $35, Sandisk Ultra II 32GB -$150 - Total $185

Additionally one can
avoid the cost of laptop needed to bring to a shoot to offload on location
can sell the media to client who wants to walk with the camera masters instead of the additional cost of portable hard drive or optical disc and backup time on location.

Originally Posted by Ross Herewini (Post 991576)

As a result of your feedback, we have given the factory a new set of parameters to produce the card so that this will not happen in the future. We also know what to look for now in our own sampling.

.

Originally Posted by Brian Rhodes (Post 991883)

I picked up my HF11 and four Sandisk Ultra II 32GB SDHC cards from Scott at TapeWorks Texas the cards were $145.00

Originally Posted by Ross Herewini (Post 991576)

Hi James,


Thanks for your patience. I finally got to test an EX3 with a range of our cards this week.

I took a selection of cards with me, from ones I had measured as being at spec., to ones I knew from measuring were on the very outside of specification.

What I found was, and I have to keep referring to statistics to help me understand and explain this,... during manufacture there is a normal distribution of widths of cards. For any given size there will be cards that are under, some that are over specification, distributed around the mean size, which is our specification. The distribution is always in a bell curve, which means most will be fine, but a small number will fall outside of what is acceptable.

Slot B on an EX1 is marginally smaller than Slot A, and the same from my testing applies to the EX3, with one small gotcha, if you try and insert a slightly wider card into the narrower slot B, because of the audio controls, can make it very difficult to remove.

As a result of your feedback, we have given the factory a new set of parameters to produce the card so that this will not happen in the future. We also know what to look for now in our own sampling.

What about you, I hear you ask, no problem, we will unconditionally replace any cards that are hard to insert/eject, and I will make sure that the card you receive in it's place is tested by hand to ensure that it fits and works. This offer is open to any EX3 user.

Just send us proof that you have sent the card back that doesn't fit and we will send out a replacement right away, so you can get back to shooting as quickly as possible.

Thanks for giving us the heads-up on the problem, we wouldn't have known about it otherwise, and I'll bet there are others suffering in silence, that's why we're always pleased to get feedback, good or bad, it's all helpful.

Originally Posted by Paul Kellett (Post 992058)

Does this mean that all new MXR's bought/shipped from now on will be of the new dimensions ?

I'm just about to buy some so would i be better of waiting for a while until the new ones start getting through.

Thanks.
Paul

Originally Posted by Phil Hanna (Post 992478)

Okay, maybe I am just old. I got an email back for Ross' company and I was under the impression, this reader/writer could be installed from the camera right into the MacBook Pros slot on the side of the computer. Just like I do with the Sony SxS cards. I found out now that you have to use an external card reader connected to the USB port. I did that with a SanDisk external card reader I use on my Olympus still camera and it worked. I sure wish it worked the way I was trying it from a convenience standpoint, but for the savings benefits over the expensive SxS cards, I can be put out a little bit!

Phil Hanna

Originally Posted by Phil Hanna (Post 992478)

Okay, maybe I am just old. I got an email back for Ross' company and I was under the impression, this reader/writer could be installed from the camera right into the MacBook Pros slot on the side of the computer. Just like I do with the Sony SxS cards. I found out now that you have to use an external card reader connected to the USB port. I did that with a SanDisk external card reader I use on my Olympus still camera and it worked. I sure wish it worked the way I was trying it from a convenience standpoint, but for the savings benefits over the expensive SxS cards, I can be put out a little bit!

Phil Hanna

Originally Posted by Jeroen Wolf (Post 992482)

Don't quite understand what you're saying. I plug the M&R right into the express card slot on the Macbook Pro, fire up Clip Browser, see, play back and copy all files and all's well...

Originally Posted by Phil Hanna (Post 992577)

That is the way I think it is supposed to work. I don't even see the card on the desktop. I just ran Disk Utility as Ross suggested, and I still have the same problem. My friend, Mike, has the MxR system as well and I will see if his card works in my machine and my card work/fails in his. It is possibly the MxR device.

Phil

Originally Posted by John Palaganas (Post 992563)

Im wondering if Ross can make a cheaper P2 card?