MxR Expresscard Reader moves from final QC to Shipping
 

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.

Well done Ross, I am sure you will sell tons of them.

Packaging and everything! Well done. Have you picked your retirement place yet?

Ross,
can I ask that you find a different packaging solution to using a clamshell:
Sony joins the bandwagon, declares death to annoying clamshell packaging - Engadget
At a guess the final cost burden including increased freight charge means it's probably costing as much as the direct cost of manufacturing the card.
Apart from the obvious negatives of the clamshell it makes the contents less secure when using satchels for shipping, the sharp edges can cut through the bag. To avoid that you then need to wrap the retail pack inside bubble or foam wrap.
A simple plastic bag with a cardboard hanger stappled to it would be more than adequate for retail display and even that's overkill for us ordering online.

Hi Bob,

You know, to get the Blister and inserts ready in a Just-in-time production environment, was a super duper feat by our supplier. I don't have the heart to tell them that they pulled out every pin to get the Blister ready, for nothing. So I may have to ease into any changes. I think they might start looking at me funny, (well funnier than they already do).

Here's the deal, we thought that the Blister would protect the card from getting bashed around in transit, giving it some torsional rigidity, as well as cosmetic protection.

None of us ever thought these would end up on shopping shelves, so the security from being stolen in a store didn't really come into it.

The biggest thing for us was, and it wasn't unanimous, that when we ordered all those cards from overseas through ebay etc, some came in blister twice the size of a Wilbur Smith Novel, while others were posted in a smaller blister, way down to one came in a bit of bubble wrap with rubber band around it.

I kept hearing all these DOA stories from other products, and if we were going to get any credibility amongst you all out there, it was to get it right first time, every time. What ever it took.

I must say, I never thought of the environmental impact, but now see it clearly.

Bob, I'll bet if it worries you, it worries someone else as well. I wonder if there is such a thing as ethical packaging.

My brother used to work for a company that made paper check out bags. As plastic ones started flooding into the market, the company started to lose money and eventually were forced to stop that line of their business.

They had these beautiful Triumph bag making machines, ( yes the guys that made Triumph 500's and all those wonderful motorobikes) with a huge Triumph logo made out of chrome on them, they were like works of art. I can still see them, things stamping, wheels flying.

When the company closed the line down, because they refused to go into the boutique line, but stayed trying to compete against the standard sizes used in supermarkets, and lost out big time.

Instead of selling the machines to someone else, they dismantled the machines, then smashed all the major components and scattered them around Wellington harbour, late one evening. The maintenance guys who had worked on these machines for years were really upset about doing this, but they were told to by management. My brother wanted to buy all the machines and set the business up on his own, as he knew, as their top salesman for years, how much his customers, the shopkeepers hated plastic and loved the texture of what he sold. My dad who was a public servant, and not really known for an entrepreneurial spirit, even said he would re -mortgage the family home to help my brother.

When they smashed the machines like that, it broke my brothers heart. He left the company a short time later as he could never look the GM in the face again, even though they were golfing buddies.

Anyway, just thought you'd like to know, I can never see one of those brown paper bags with the beautiful printing and the handles you see at those really top knotch stores without thinking of my brother and those machines.

So if you don't want us to use Blister, we're all ears, give us some safe alternatives, and we promise to look at them carefully.

See, now you've gone and got me all upset thinking about my brother now...

PS- re the blogging angle. If you are on a Mac get:

MarsEdit 2 - Powerful Blog Publishing For Your Mac

-Noah

Everything ordered by 10am Sydney time was shipped today. The only exception was one order from Slovakia, which required four invoices on the outside of the parcel. I will fix that first thing the couriers open.

Now time to have to have a beer,..... finally.

I take my hat off to you Ross. I hope you make the profit you deserve from you efforts.

Ross, congrats. Chapeau! As our neighbours say. What an achievement. P.

Thanks for the update Ross and enjoy your beer. Will be waiting by the mail.

OMG! I don't give a sh*t how you've packaged things. IMHO, the blister clamshell is totally adequate. Seems like SOMEONE will always complain, and it seems to always be the same select people. I'm just greatful someone took the initiative to do this. Many, many thanx.

Ross, congrats on getting your new product out the door! Enjoy that well earned beer. I look forward to receiving my MxR adapters (given the time of year, perhaps they'll be delivered by St. Nick?).

I blog with Wordpress 2.6x, and know just enough about the software to be dangerous. If you need some help, drop me a line. In the (likely) event I don't know the answers, I can recommend a good reliable Web developer who works well via email.

Hi,I've ordered and paid for 4cards on the 18th of December, tomorow morning ( 8h from now, i have communicate with courier ) i will receive my order from Ε.Λ.Τ.Α ( greek courier).im waiting to test the cards, because If It All Goes Righ , i will save 2000 euros =
sony sxs 32gb (2x 1000 ) = 2000 euros.Tomorow night i will tell you the resultst!!!

I.'ll add my congratulations to Ross as well for his efforts and courage in taking on this achievement !!!!!!!!!



thaks again Ross !!!

HI CS, I just might have to take you up on that matter. I went to a computer market here in Hong Kong on Sunday, and bought a book Wordpress for dummies.

You should see this computer mart. Nearly a whole block, three or four stories high, I couldn't figure out which floor I was on or even which direction, hundreds and hundreds of shops selling everything to do with computers at absolutely knock down prices. All full warranties. I had to remember, I'm here to sort out MxR not buy everything I could carry.

I did buy some SDHC cards.

Sandisk Ultra II 16GB
Kingston 16GB
Transcend 16GB
Adata 16GB
Toshiba 8GB ( they were out of 16GB ).

I also bought Apacer, which supposedly is 117x (whatever) as compared to Ultra II 150x.
The last one I bought was a Taiwan brand I have never heard of which was Dual-channel.

I went back and bought them all again yesterday just in case one sample was not enough.

I'll put it altogether for you all tonight while I'm on the plane back to sunny Sydney.

There seems to be some correspondence between the time it takes to write the TOC when it's buttoned off, as to overcranking. I've got nine hours on my hands with no email or internet to give it a workout.
May have to pay the upgrade to guarantee in seat power on Qantas for laptop, they are so behind the times, they are only introducing in-flight internet early next year.

I bought an ipod touch from there and it seems that they're really on top of things. I got really proper corteous service at 33% price off what I would pay in Europe. And the computer mart totally looks like future, the whole city looks like Blade Runner :D

Remarkable service!
 

Another virtual beer to you & team.

My 4x MxR cards have just arrived at my front door here in the UK, a week after getting the email confirmation of shipment. Considering it's the christmas break, that's astonishingly quick service. I wish US shipping companies would take note of sensible customs documentation, good packing and sensible insurance at a reasonable price.

Will test over weekend (though I've got your 'Ross' stickers on the back, so for 'test' read 'play') and they'll go to work next week.

Cheers!

Thanks Ross
 

Just received 2 MxR cards and tested them for a few minutes in HQ 1080/60i. Both cards with SDHC Ultra II 16 GB worked very well. No problem with cards insertion either. Great achievement Ross.

Just received three of mine and they check out fine too. Now how are we going to label these suckers? I'm using Sharpie marker pens right now...

This was my suggestion:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/950754-post19.html

Hi Chris,

When we ended our testing phase on the MxR Expresscard we realised we had nothing to put the card into to protect it, or just as importantly make it look good in front of our corporate clients.

So we're producing a case based on the existing Sony SxS case, but instead of being dull dark grey it's bright ORANGE, so you can find them in a hurry, especially in the dark.

It has it's own label you can write on, so the idea which is a carry through for us from our DVCAM days, is to number each MxR and the case and then write only on the case.

They should be available in about 2-3weeks time.


We did look at cases for holding multiple cards at a time, but we couldn't get a consensus amongst ourselves on whether a multi-card holder would be soft or hard case, or even how many it should hold.

If anyone has a preference, ie
Soft vs Hard
No of cards
Other stuff we haven't even looked at..

let us know and we'll see what we can do.

Ross,
I just received my cards today!

Thank you!

Steve T.

i) This is a difficult one, because if I were doing outdoor stuff in difficult conditions, a sort of Pelicase solution would be preferable because these are my rushes. It needs to float, it needs to be dust proof, it needs to be able to withstand being driven over by a car. But I am a domesticated shooter, cramming stuff into strange places, so I prefer a soft case with a zipper that looks like a mini Filofax ('no officer, that's my electronic diary. The tapes are here...')

ii) Eight MxRs. If I need more, I'll buy more.

iii) I'd really favour making it look as discrete as possible. Not looking like the crown jewels, but smart enough to pass as a diary without being desirable enough to covet (think Customs). Zip up. Room for paperwork or notepad, pencil/biro. A hang-point for lanyard or something. Don't go overboard with protection as these things are pretty tough.

iv) needs some sort of pocket inside that's closeable to hold stray SDHC cards that we HAVEN'T got MxR adaptors for.

v) if the backing for the 4 pockets on each side were white and made of some such material one could scribble on with pencil or whatever, we could make little notes as to what was on each card, how much space was on it, the name of the Producer's kids, how the data wrangler likes her coffee and so on.

vi) Generous pocket on OUTSIDE for business cards. Gotta lurve ThinkTank for that kind of thing. Great branding.

Better stop there...

Good idea for case SPEC
 

I concur with Matt. If there would be case like this one I would feel very comfortable to carry it to the shooting fields and to use it in very organized manner. The only thing I would add is that thickness of the case should be as thin as possible. I would need it to be placed in my Sony camera metal box.

Aloha Ross
Received my MxR reader QCed by you.
shot my first clip on my new EX-1 with your reader.
i will see if the SxS works later.
thanks
tito

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?

No problem with insertion and extraction of MxR with my EX1. Working just fine.

might just be an EX3 thing then.. any EX3 users have this problem?

MxR Card FULL REPLACEMENT ON WEDDING SHOOT
 

Thanks to Ross and SD cards I completed my first 2 day wedding shoot over last weekend without taking along my laptop OR downloading cards at midnight.....! THANKS FOR SAVING ME.
Its been exactly 12 months since the purchase of my EX-1 all the while shooting wedding documentary on only 3 SONY SxS 8Gb cards. I choose to spend my money on other equipment like a new car! instead of forking out $5K for enough memory from SONY to get me through a 2 day consecutive shoot.
I used 2 MxR's with a variety of SD memory sourced from a few Photographer mates , SanDisk Ultra2, Kingston SD HC 4, and Transcend class 6. All 16 Gb, the SanDisk worked flawlessly and the Transcend worked well too but had media restore after a few shots with the Kingston.
During the 2 days I decided to leave the MxR reader in my EX-1 and use my finger nail to eject the SD cards from the MxR and inserting a SD chip from a small wallet I kept in my pocket. In all I had 7 SD cards that got me through the weekend, I did not use any of my SONY SxS cards. Does anybody want to buy them! all offers considered.
I finished downloading all memory via Clip browser 2.0 on monday and loaded them up in Final Cut Pro on one time line to check for sync and quality. Its all just like the last 12 months of footage taken...
Looks like SONY will be happy as they now will surely make more sales on EX-1 EX-3 as one of my colleges purchased 2 Z7 instead of one EX-1 as he couldn't bring himself to purchasing enough memory to get through a day shoot and so opted to buy 2 Z7 for the equivalent of one EX-1 and the SONY Memory.
THANKS AGAIN ROSS AND MxR.

The B slot on the EX3 is rather snug, compared both to Sony SxS and Kensington 7-in-1 express cards. Best to catch the lip of the card pull it out.

Ross, received my cards today in California, they seem to work fine. I use Transcend 16GB and Sandisk Ultra II 16GB SDHC cards. I think I'm going to standardize on the Transcend 16GB for now, $30 each is a pretty good deal.

I'm really glad I ordered your adapters, just wanted to give you some feedback to perhaps improve the product.

I ordered an AFT SDHC-Expresscard adapter back in the beginning when we were all testing this possibility of using these adapters. It was the only one that had would allow the EX the EX1 with the SDHC card inserted, and has a similar push in, click, push in, remove the card action as yours. There may be other brands, I'm not sure, that have this feature. As we all know, those adapters didn't work well with the EXs though, media errors, etc.

With your cards:

On one of the 2 adapters I got, more so than the other, the SDHC's are a bit snug going in, making the insertion stage kind of iffy, because of the tightness, the 'click' engaging on putting the cards in isn't always there, giving you a positive feedback that it is actually engaged. Then pushing the card in to remove them, the card doesn't spring out much, you kind of have to use your fingernail to pull the card out. Not a big deal, really, just thought you should know.

As I've pushed them in and out on the problem adapter, it seems like it might be loosening up a bit, I'll keep you posted. Maybe they will wear in a bit over time.

I guess there are variations and you don't want it to be too loose, that would also not be acceptable. But it's something you might want to look into, and I think I've seen somebody else mentioned the tightness.

I've done some testing, at 720 24P overcranked to 40 FPS with the Transcend cards pushing the card and adapter's bandwidth, and I'm getting performance similar or better than the Kensingtons. I put both Transcends in, with your adapters, in slot A and slot B doing one long spanning take. It got through card A fine, and got a media error on card B, but that was not unexpected. With the Kensingtons and the Transcends I only got 100% reliability at 38 FPS anyway so your performance is at least as good, and I wouldn't overcrank with the SDHC's anyway, that's what the expensive SxS's are for.

Thanks so much for producing these, I hope this is the beginning of a successful venture for you. I also appreciate that you didn't 'stick' it to the EX1 community by charging an arm and a leg. I was pleased that your prices were very competitive with the other adapters out there. I hope there is still good profit at that price point for you. You've certainly helped out the EX1 community and came through producing a simple but effective product that's going to give us a lot more freedom and leeway with what we capture on our EX1s.

Hi Ross,
my two MxRs arrived yesterday. Fit into my EX1 fine, Sandisk Ultra II 16GB cards fit and work perfectly based on my quick tests. Your clamshell packing is OK. The plastic is much thinner than on some of the other packaging I've almost needed tin snips to open. A big thank you for all your hard work on this project.

I'll add a thank you to Sony as well, they probably could have found a way to stop all this from happening but they've delivered on their original promise and then some. I agree with one comment above, this should help them sell more EX cameras.

One thing I didn't have was a card reader that'd handle SDHC cards. Best and cheapest I've found is the small Qpix All-In-1 Card Reader. AUD 18 from Officeworks. I found I had an unused Pelican 1040 case lying around. It holds the reader and all my SxS and MxR cards. I'll cut some foam to hold all the bits better so they don't bounce around.

Hi James,

Thanks for the valuable feedback.

I don't have access to an EX3 until our local distributor comes back from holiday on Monday. But I will go in and either test there or hire one so we can see what you are reporting.

It's hard to comment without having a look into it, but we will have a really good look into it.

So if you could hold tight until I get one in my hands on one early next week. Would that be ok?

Hi Keith,

Thanks for taking the time to post your findings.

One of the variations we have to work with is the actual SDHC cards themselves.

I've got Sandisk Ultra II, Transcend, Kingston, Lenxs, Toshiba, Photofast, and a couple of no-name brands that we have been testing.

Each one behaves a little differently.

I have found that the Transcend cards are a tiny bit wider than the Sandisk. Just to test whether I was correct, I ran a micrometer across both cards, and the Sandisk, ( which we designed for ), is about 0.1mm narrower than the Transcend.

The Transcend and the Lenxs (which BTW is not a viable card for us), were 0.1mm bigger than all the others.

I have noticed that my Transcends get easier to use the more I insert them, and they start to behave more like the Sandisk, but it does take time to do so.

Please keep us up to date with how you go.

That would be great! Thanks for looking into it.

Well done Ross on a great product!

Received mine today and after I updated my EX1 manually ran it for a test and it works great. Thanks for your hard work and effort to come up with a great solution for the high prices of SxS media.

Keep up the good work and thanks again.

Also got my two adapters today! Works great with Transcend class 6 - 16GB SDHC cards.

Also as a bonus it's really handy to use with my Dell Precision M4400 laptop since I can put one card into the Express card slot and the other card to the SD slot. I can view / convert to MFX both cards simultaneously.

Thanks!

Sami

Received the reader yesterday - a great product!
Thank you so much!
happy new year!

Ross,

Would EX-1 work better with the new SanDisk Extreme 3 memory cards?
I just received my MxR readers Thank you.

Mike

Mike, the new Extreme III 30MB/s cards work the same as the Ultra II 15MB/s cards with the EX. This was tested early on.