That's a bit of an issue, since what you and I have (desktop HD capture systems) cannot really be used effectively in the field.

And that's what Cineform recorder promised.

In other words, we kinda need nanoFlash that records in Cineform ProspectHD codec natively.

In fairness, we were talking mini-ITX systems. These are usually using lower-power mobile CPUs, usually only having one PCIe slot, and usually cost a fortune in parts. My suggestion solves all of these issues, is dirt cheap and even has a manufacturer's warranty. And yes, it's mini-ITX - standard parts - so you can liberate them all for your custom enclosure.

There is always the Wafian HF for mobile in-the-field Cineform recording if you don't want to DIY a solution.

George/

Wafian HR you mean?

It is no smaller than our DIY solutions based on desktop PCs, and is 10x more expensive.

This of course is completely different from the Cineform concept of on-camera, small, lightweight HD recorder.

1.8GHz may work IF Cineform is SSE4 optimized..
Check these benchmarks for SSE4 optimized Penryn vs Merom
AnandTech: Intel Mobile Penryn Benchmarked: Battery Life Improves Again (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3195&p=4)

Is there any news on the Cineform recorders?
It's been over a year since first mentioned.

I'd like to know too!

I'm sure this is a tough project to pull off. Look at FlashXDR/nanoFlash folks: they don't seem to be having it easy, either.

...And in the case of the Convergent Designs XDR/Nanoflash product, by their own admission they get the MPEG2 encoder chip from Sony.

I can easily see where doing the design work to get the Cineform codec converted to a hardware encoder chip would be difficult. And expensive. But I repeat myself....

Hi David,
Now.. if you could only get a Canon firmware mod to output HDMI at full res from the EOS5D MkII (I've got one :-)) ... during video record to 1920x1080 30P .... then you'd have a path being beaten to your door. The 4GB limit on file size with CF cards in the EOS5D MkII and the daft firmware that STOPS instead of writing a new file like most NLEs do in capture ... is SO frustrating. And then there's the 'hot' sensor problem I know ..

Anyway - well done for getting this underway .. as you know from our chats in the past, this was my dream project .. but I got sidetracked.

NOW ... why does my NEO HD crash when trying to turn the H.264 .MOV files off the Canon EOS5D MkII into Cineform .AVI for editing?????

I've got so used to working wiht the NEO HD codec and its wunnerful quality that I'm desperate to use the output of the Canon with it.

Wrong thread for this in general. Can you turn off the overlay in HDMI mode? That is what is needed for HDMI cpature solution to work with that camera.

We do support the Canon 5D indirectly, some systems need more help than others for simple conversions to CineForm AVI (most work fine with Core AVC and registering the MP4splitter.ax) If the instruction in other threads don't help, file a trouble ticket at cineform.com/support

David, i am new to the board and just found this thread and your concept looks incredible. I have been giving consideration to purchasing SONY's CF recorder some time this year but could put it off until next year if this thing might be in production in the next year or two...Where does it stand? Do you think there is any chance it might be going to production at some point in the next 2 yrs? Thanks!

Bryan, isn't Sony HVR-MRC1 unit HDV only?

This would negate the advantages of such external recorder on full HD cameras, such as EX1 - while Cineform recorder would be perfect...

David, i am new to the board and just found this thread and your concept looks incredible. I have been giving consideration to purchasing SONY's CF recorder some time this year but could put it off until next year if this thing might be in production in the next year or two...Where does it stand? Do you think there is any chance it might be going to production at some point in the next 2 yrs? Thanks!

The project clearly got delayed, but it is still of strong interest to us. Can say how soon as there are external market forces at play, so it will not make this year NAB.

Bryan, isn't Sony HVR-MRC1 unit HDV only?

This would negate the advantages of such external recorder on full HD cameras, such as EX1 - while Cineform recorder would be perfect...

That is very true but since I am using an HD1000U and looking at a Z7U, Z5U, or FX1000 to purchase this year I would not get less from the SONY unit then i am getting from tape but would have an edit ready digital file on CF with tape back-up.

But this project from CINEFORM...this is a different beast altogether. Real HD from the HDMI with passthrough to an external HDD for dual back-up...I think I am in love. And while this item would put the SONY unit out of my kit, I would rather wait one more year and save the cash to apply to this purchase if it might be coming to a cart near you in the next 2 years. If not then i would rather go ahead and get the SONY unit now for time and security reasons and wait patiently for CineForm to get this beauty perfected.

PS. David- Feel free to add me to your beta tester/demo/review list if it means getting to see an advance proto in action!

We apologize for our delay in getting updates to you about the HDMI recorder. Let me give you an update.

The recorder remains very high on our new products priority list. However, there has been a change in the status of a very key supplier we were counting on. This change has rippled into our intended development schedule. We're working on a strategy around this, but it means there is not a short-term release schedule. As much as I wish it were otherwise, I wouldn't be surprised if the recorder does not make it to market in 2009.

I get regular emails from people offering feature suggestions for the recorder. Don't hesitate to continue sending those to us as hopefully we'll be able to get this back on a scheduled development track.

Well, here's one suggestion: forget external hard drives and stick to the flash memory.

I was a proponent of the external HDDs for storage, since they used to be so much cheaper than the memory.

And they still are; but I grew to love EX1's internal recording to the tiny SDHC cards (with this adapter (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/sony-xdcam-ex-cinealta/138485-summary-sdhc-substitute-sxs-cards.html)), without a hitch.

So yes, flash your memory, baby!

Also: which memory? Do you see any advantages of using, say, CF vs SDHC cards?

And... what I'd really want to see... are the cameras that give you an option to record into Cineform (RAW?) internally. EX1, Scarlet S35, new generations of Canon/Nikon DSLRs with HD video options... yoohoo - why not record internally into the most popular (AFAIK) editing codec in the first place?

Yes we are thinking the same way. Flash everything and that is getting easier, but that was not the issue. Our first choice DSP vendor went away, they don't survive the market change, so we still pursuing a certain computer power per watt to make this happen (without the huge engineering costs of an ASIC -- hardwired CineForm on a chip.) I was on another conference call early today to find the suitable part.

David, I thought about you when I read first reports on the Nvidia ION platform. A pre-cedia hands-on report included a picture of the tiny motherboard being held in the palm of a hand. I think that report said 10 watts power usage. But the AnandTech report below says 20 watts in a test sample that was running photoshop. I don't think you would need all the connectivity options that were on their test sample. Here is a link to the AnandTech report: AnandTech: NVIDIA's Ion Platform: Performance Preview (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3509) Here is a link to the PC Perspective report: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=663

Thanks for your recorder status update. I feel encouraged that the dream is stlll a possibility.

Thank you for the updates David & David.
It's good to know where things are at. I look forward to the device coming to market in the future.

David, I thought about you when I read first reports on the Nvidia ION platform. A pre-cedia hands-on report included a picture of the tiny motherboard being held in the palm of a hand. I think that report said 10 watts power usage. But the AnandTech report below says 20 watts in a test sample that was running photoshop. I don't think you would need all the connectivity options that were on their test sample. Here is a link to the AnandTech report: AnandTech: NVIDIA's Ion Platform: Performance Preview (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3509) Here is a link to the PC Perspective report: PC Perspective - NVIDIA ION Platform Review: Death (and Life) of the Netbook (http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=663)

Not really sure how this applies. I doubt even a dual core Atom would have anywhere near enough CPU power to compress into CineForm in realtime - I think even 720p at 30fps would be a miracle! What CineForm want is to do away with x86 architecture for good and have a single 'CineForm on a chip' solution in a bespoke device rather than create their own portable PC.

I saw the reference to the Ion and checked it out.
Nice platform, but nowhere near the horsepower to be doing realtime video encoding unless possibly the GPU can be used to do it.

One obvious modification the Ion platform would need is an HDMI input port.

Richard is correct, however ION still might be an interesting short-term step better where we are and where we are going. Richard, the Intel Atom is more powerful than you would think, I've encoded hard 1080p material in Filmscan 1 at 12+ fps on a single 2W Atom core -- true not fast enough damn surprising to have that performance level.

Here's a twist that still stays true with the intent of the product: How about making essentially a laptop Intensity card? This leaves the screen, processor, OS all up to the user to supply, as most people already have laptops.

I wouldn't worry too much about the added size and weight. The current concept is very nice and compact, but I'd gladly swing a laptop over my shoulder to record HD 4:2:2. But hauling a mini desktop "capture computer" is not really practical.

I'm really not sure that the Expresscard slot has enough power to run an HD capture card, let alone one with a CineForm encoder chip on it.

I ran an Intensity from the WiFi slot on a Mac Mini with a bespoke converter harness and it still required 5v mains from elsewhere. This slot is essentially identical in spec to the Expresscard slot.

Actually there may be a way.Came across this on the forum the other day.If the encoding is left to the CPU as it is at the moment - a real option....

http://www.imperx.com/files/products/docs/grabbers/HD-SDI_Express_Datasheet.pdf?download

Seems to be made for machine vision and frame grabbing but see no reason why it may not work as it can record to AVI in the specs.Stand to be corrected of course but this seems exciting and a real option to a FlashXDR or indeed the Cineform recorder.Two grand could get a really nice portable setup with a laptop LCD for monitoring.

For those in the know - is it only 8 Bit? 24 bit RGB?

Looks like 16bit in jpeg form, 20bit with a YCrCB of a 4.2.2. or in a 24bit in a RGB format. Anyone of those are quite capable of recording off of most our HDV cameras. Now all we need is to get Cineform to adapt to this piece of hardware and we are all set! Although one would need either a laptop with two sets of stripped raid array running on it, or two ExpressCard slots on their laptop. One for this card and the other for external stripped raid arrays. I don't know any laptops that have two express card slots

Don't see a need for raid unless shooting uncompressedd. I record to my laptop hdd to Cineform as it is.That's the whole point I suppose.To get the bandwidth from 120 MB/s to about 20 MB/s or less.I use an intensity by the way.

I keep searching for a mini-itx solution to use with Cineform and the Intensity Pro that is low powered and can do RAID in case I wanted to do some editing with CS4. I just found a board made by J&E which uses an AMD processor:
J&W Technology Limited (http://www.jwele.com/motherboard_detail.php?419#_view)

I also found a review of it online:
bit-tech.net | Review - J&W MINIX 780G mini-ITX HTPC mobo (http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2008/09/17/j-w-minix-780g-mini-itx-htpc-motherboard/1)

I found this when searching for new products announced at Computex, although the above item was released last year. This chipset uses the ATI HD 3200.

I see that there are some new motherboards coming in the next couple months with the AMD 785G chipset which uses the ATI HD 4200 GPU and supports Direct X 10.1.

The only other board I have found so far is the ZOTAC GeForce 9300-ITX but it only has 2 internal SATA ports.

Has anyone used any of the Cineform products on these?

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Has anyone used any of the Cineform products on these?

Correct me if I´´m wrong David, but as far as I know AMD and Cineform are not the best of friends.

Correct me if I´´m wrong David, but as far as I know AMD and Cineform are not the best of friends.

Why? We where in the keynote at NAB (few years afo) with the CEO of AMD, they put us on the map with finishing Dust to Glory. However we will use whoever CPUs are fastest, today that is Intel.

I came to that conclusion because in the "requirements" section of your website I newer saw andy AMD CPUs listed.

But I´m glad to hear, that AMDs work as well David.

Wich one would you recomend for Prospect 4k?

Thanks, Frank

I came to that conclusion because in the "requirements" section of your website I newer saw andy AMD CPUs listed.

But I´m glad to hear, that AMDs work as well David.

Wich one would you recomend for Prospect 4k?

Thanks, Frank

Frank,

All of them work fine. If you are still selecting, choose more cores and memory speed over clock speed (which is good too.)

For everybody that occassionally checks this thread hoping for an update on the CineForm mobile recorder, I want to let you know that a customer of ours - DBOX - is launching a new product called CineDeck: http://www.cinedeck.com/content/#/?type=serial.

CineDeck supports a number of input formats including HDMI, single-link or dual-link HD-SDI, all recorded to 10-bit or 12-bit CineForm files. Form factor is small at 5"x8"x3" and weighs 3 lbs before battery.

But rather than making this post too long, I recommend you check out CineDeck at the link above

While the CineDeckHD from (dbox) and the nanoflash (from Convergent Design) look great, they are still priced too high for me. I keep looking for low powered mini-itx motherboards and this board looks promising if it really draws only 60 watts.
Intel Previews Clarkdale Processor Performance Numbers - Intel Clarkdale Benchmark Performance Revealed - Legit Reviews (http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1091/1/)
While no article I have found states it, I believe this is an Intel motherboard. I have a hunch companies like Zotac will also have their own version.

I would think that one could create a small portable unit for very little and spend the extra money that was saved on a good monitor like the Marshall V-LCD651ST-HDMI which lists for $2000. Or if you are budget minded, the ikan v5600 at $700 or the Manhattan LCD HD089B for $600-650.

I think the above combo(s) with the right battery packs would allow you to shoot longer than tethering to a laptop but who knows what options might be available when the Arrandale based laptops start shipping.

So... what exactly can be used to provide mobile power to such device? seems like PC+monitor will consume *at least* 80Watts?

So... what exactly can be used to provide mobile power to such device? seems like PC+monitor will consume *at least* 80Watts?

I am thinking 12 volt batteries are probably the lease expensive and come in a wide range of sizes. You need a DC to DC power converter and that is where the limitations come into play. You will see here: DC-DC ATX Power Supplies (http://www.mini-box.com/DC-DC) that 250 watts is the max.

For more info on the Intel (I assume) board check out the excellent article by the people at Anandtech: AnandTech: The Real Conroe Successor: Clarkdale & All You Need to Know about Westmere (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3648) You'll see on page 4 that the unit draws about 70 watts at full power and 28 at idle. The other article I referenced above shows the LCD monitor drawing about 40 watts.

The monitor can be critical if you need it to also pull focus so that limits you in your options.

I can't speak on behalf of CineDeck as they are a separate company, but justa as a heads up I think there might be some good news in the near future regarding price points - that is, lower than posted currently on their website.

I was looking at the Archos 9 which is about $800 and hoping to find a setup solution to connect it to my Sony Z1

Looks like there's a new Intel Atom capable of integrated "uncompressed 1080p capture":

Intel announces Atom CE4100 for insanely powerful cable boxes and Blu-ray players (http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/09/24/intel-announces-atom-ce4100-for-insanely-powerful-cable-boxes-an/)

Not sure what that's about... surely uncompressed capture is all about having the physical bandwidth to stream x amount of megabytes to the hard disk. I'm sure even the most basic Atom could do that already...

It will not help, that is a slower Atom core with a bunch of media cores attached -- only 1.2GHz. We need a faster dual core Atom. 2Ghz dual core Atom with a slightly faster FSB will do about do the trick.

It will not help, that is a slower Atom core with a bunch of media cores attached -- only 1.2GHz. We need a faster dual core Atom. 2Ghz dual core Atom with a slightly faster FSB will do about do the trick.

That wont be that long then surely? I'd buy a Cineform Recorder for sure - Hardware can be so cheap now.

Can't work out why the other device is $5000 though!

Can't work out why the other device is $5000 though!


High development costs vs. expectations of how many you will sell to recoup those costs and actually make some money.

Hardware may be cheap but the expertise to create something new can be expensive.
Sort of like cameras (cheap) vs. the person behind them (expensive).

At that price ($5K) though I would expect people to go to the Nanoflash.
As expensive as it is, it's very high quality combined with 40% less costly.

At that price ($5K) though I would expect people to go to the Nanoflash.
As expensive as it is, it's very high quality combined with 40% less costly.

Reread "I can't speak on behalf of CineDeck as they are a separate company, but justa as a heads up I think there might be some good news in the near future regarding price points - that is, lower than posted currently on their website.
September 25th, 2009 07:11 AM"

The developers CineDeck is aware that some only may only want the base functionality like that of Nanoflash, and they are planning so address those users. However the $5K for the extra features is offers is very competitive.

That wont be that long then surely? I'd buy a Cineform Recorder for sure - Hardware can be so cheap now.

Can't work out why the other device is $5000 though!

I'd say a dual core 2.0GHz Atom is quite some way off - there's simply no need. Core 2 Duo ultra-low voltage CPUs might fill in the blank though.

$5,000 is excellent value for the other device. You've got to stop thinking of basic build cost and factor in research and development, the relatively microscopic market for the device, plus the fact that the guys who've made it would probably like to earn a living selling them.

I'd say a dual core 2.0GHz Atom is quite some way off - there's simply no need...

With all the new portable media devices, slimmer faster cellphones, portable gaming, etc, I could see quite a bit of interest in dual core atom chips...

Well, as pointed out, the "new" Atom above actually has a lower clock speed, still a single core, but has custom "bolt-ons" into the architecture for stuff that would normally require a faster CPU.

Just saw this quick preview of an ASUS laptop with a retail price of $1500. It has an ExpressCard 54 slot, esata port plus a 15.6 inch monitor with 1920x1080 resolution.

It has an i7 processor at 1.6Ghz (turbo to 2.8), 4GB of 1066Mhz DDR3 memory and a Nvidia GTX 260M graphics chip. There are 2 320GB hard drives spinning at 7200 rpm.

For more details:
Asus G51J Core i7 Mobile Gaming Notebook Review - HotHardware (http://hothardware.com/Articles/Asus-G51j-Gaming-Notebook-Review/)

All looks good Bill but can I use it with my Sony Z1 to record and view live footage onto the laptop?