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?

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.

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

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....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.

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......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.

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.

....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 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.

......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.

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?

...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.

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?

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.

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.

.....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 ???

.....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.


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'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.


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.


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.


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.

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.

....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 :-)


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.

...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.

....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 :-)


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?

Mark,

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

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/canon-xh-series-hdv-camcorders/101450-timelapse-photography-a1-via-lanc.html

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

Specifications for The Time Machine (http://www.bmumford.com/photo/spec.html)

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

Mark,

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

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/canon-xh-series-hdv-camcorders/101450-timelapse-photography-a1-via-lanc.html

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

Specifications for The Time Machine (http://www.bmumford.com/photo/spec.html)

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. :-)

Any reason this wouldn't work on a non-Sony camera (JVC 110) via firewire.

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!

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.

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

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?

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

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?...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.

I purchased MRC1K last week from B&H. I will be doing some tests in the next week to see how it matches up with the Sony FX1000. I bought some $70 32GB Qmemory cards to go with it. I balked at paying $225 for the Extreme III cards and they were impossible to find on the internet last week anyway. B&H just sent me a note saying they are in stock, FYI.

I will be traveling to India to film and I needed the ability to shoot HDV continuously for 2-3 hours between tape changes. I determined from the MRC1K manual that I can record indepedent from the tape with the Stop-Record buttons on the unit. What I am still curious about is what happens when you switch CF cards. Does the data store to the cache while the cover is open and then write to the card after it is installed?

If all looks good, I might stop shooting the tapes for backup and just go with the Flash recorder.

I'll publish my results. Thank you everyone for your contributions.

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?

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

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

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.

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.

...You can also simply run several HDV tapes at a location

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.

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.

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.

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?


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/A03VF5/Sony-HVR-MRC1K-Compact-Flash-Memory-Recording-Unit/#Compatibles

-Ken