Hi Mark,

At the risk of being tagged a pariah because of my use of Premiere Pro CS4 on a PC, do you have any plans to seek compatibility with Adobe PPRO CS4?

Many thanks,
Alan

Oh I'm sure there's quite a bit of interest :)....That's good to know. I'm now in the middle of moving to a place which is not quite finished being built yet, so we're crazy busy now. We are still determined to produce a reasonably priced SD card SSDR device. We will get there folks. I promise.

Mark,

Are there any plans for your unit to be compatible with Sony Vegas Pro 8 or 9 ?...Yes. We like Sony Vegas. We are concentrating on Avid Media Composer right now, but we wll slowly branch out from this point. I'll be happy just to get a functioning box we can plug into our Canon XL H1 for testing. Man ! This project is a long and winding road. - Expensive too !

Hi Mark,

At the risk of being tagged a pariah because of my use of Premiere Pro CS4 on a PC, do you have any plans to seek compatibility with Adobe PPRO CS4?

Many thanks,
Alan...Only via AVI files.

Couple of thoughts based on the last few posts.

Someone wrote about hoping his hands won't freeze off. Whilst doing that ensure it operates where ambient is 35 deg Cent. (95 Fahrenheit) in the shade. And it doesn't need ice-packs to operate.
So all that plastic and rubber is going to insulate too well.

About encoding, even HDCamSR is 440 Mbps or 880 Mbps. That's considered good enough, so that bit rate (as MPEG4 which is what HDCamSR is) should be acceptable and totally uncompressed should be a feature when cards get fast enough. ver. 2.0 perhaps.

An interesting device is the Pipeline from Telestream. That takes in HD-SDI and encodes it with hardware to Apple ProRes, DVCProHD, IMX and MPEG-2 (even DNxHD and VC-3 I think) and passes it through Ethernet. What I'm pointing to is their hardware which is an Ambric FPGA.

FPGA Journal (http://www.fpgajournal.com/news_2008/09/20080910_02.htm)

About encoding, even HDCamSR is 440 Mbps or 880 Mbps. That's considered good enough, so that bit rate (as MPEG4 which is what HDCamSR is) should be acceptable and totally uncompressed should be a feature when cards get fast enough. ver. 2.0 perhaps.

Well to be fair, HDCamSR is 880 for 10 bit 4:4:4 RGB with 12 audio streams at 24bit/48khz. I don't see anything like that here.

Uncompressed recording is useless. No one wants it anymore. Put 10bit log to preserve the color space, use wavelet which is more efficient than Mpeg4 and call it a day. This is nothing different than you're seeing out of RED. Use the available technology to your advantage.

Jpeg2000 and Dirac are sitting there for the taking. 440 - 880 Mbits of wavelet compression should satisfy anyone outside of George Lucas. Especially at HD resolutions.

....Hi Alan. No. Not per se. We wanted to focus on the big three NLE's first. You could argue that Adobe Premiere is in this group as well, since many folks are using CS3 and CS4.

No offense but you are the first person I ever heard refer to Sony Vegas as one of the big three NLE's. Sure it is nice but it only has a niche market share compared to Premiere. Just take a look at what Aja and Blackmagic support as their main PC NLE and that will tell you that Premiere is much more one of the big three then Vegas is. There is also the fact that Premiere can be used on a Mac just like Avid and FCP.

Uncompressed recording is useless. No one wants it anymore.

Errr.... I want it.

I do as much uncompressed as possible and love the texture (I call it digital grain - not to be confused with noise) and grading head room it gives, it´s CPU friendly and all you need is a bunch of large fast disks.

1 TB HDs are dirt cheap now, so why compress?

On the other hand you are right, the next best thing to uncompressed is jpg2000/wavelett (like Cineform) but it´s a CPU hog. Till you dont have any solid state chip that does the encoding you need a macho cpu. Not good for a "on camera" device with batterys.
Not to mention cooling/fan.noise problems.

Frank

Errr.... I want it.

I do as much uncompressed as possible and love the texture (I call it digital grain - not to be confused with noise) and grading head room it gives, it´s CPU friendly and all you need is a bunch of large fast disks.

1 TB HDs are dirt cheap now, so why compress?

On the other hand you are right, the next best thing to uncompressed is jpg2000/wavelett (like Cineform) but it´s a CPU hog. Till you dont have any solid state chip that does the encoding you need a macho cpu. Not good for a "on camera" device with batterys.
Not to mention cooling/fan.noise problems.

Frank

I think we are looking at this from two different ends.

We are talking about acquisition. Are YOU going to drag around a RAID array to your shoots so you can record uncompressed? I'm sure not. I'd like to be able to record near uncompressed wavelet footage onto CF, SDXC, or something similar. Now what we do with it back at the edit bay is a different story. Yes, uncompressed has some advantages there, but honestly, if you're assembling multi-camera work, you are going to need one heck of a RAID system (15k SAS or SSD) to make it work well. Or, you can go to a reasonable intermediate, or if you have a high horsepower machine, you can edit native in what you acquired in.

So I don't get your argument about fan noise and cooling. I'd rather try to keep a small set of chips cool (like my Firestore) than to have to try to drag around a bunch of RAID.

I see your point Perrone.

But the Firestore usualy just records what comes out of the Firewire cable (thou I had the Firewire fan nuise on some recordings) no much processor power is needed here.

But converting a component or SDI signal from the camera on the fly to Jpeg2000 takes a hell of a processor (see Cineform) = heat = fan = noise and not battery friendly.

You are right with the raid, but I don´t do run and gun stuff so I could live with that.
I also could live with a good wavelet based codec in a small Firesore-like device (actualy you can buy one, but they are about $6000).

I wish cineform would finaly come out with the recorder they talked about since about a year.

Frank

The firestores also handled HDV (mine does) as well as DCVProHD. Neither is as hard as Jpeg2000 on the fly, but surely without having to power a hard drive in the unit, that additional power could be redirected to cooling the chips.

I'm pretty much done with Cineform. Too much money, too little flexibility. I haven't heard anything about their recorder in a long time. The Convergent is real, and very compelling. I'd voiced my concern earlier during development about a better codec, but they choose Mpeg2 for some solid reasons. I just don't care for it. I wish my Sony used something more robust.

Five years from now, I think we'll see massive shifts in codecs.

Hi Thomas, Frank & Perrone:

My machine will do compressed and full uncompressed on SDXC cards. Heck, You can do 4:2:2 10 bit uncompressed on a striped pair of class 6 SD HC cards ! The new SDXC cards will be 1 TB plus and have write speeds fast enough for uncompressed 4:4:4 10 bit anf 12 bit color space. My design spec calls for 10 bit 4:2:2 & 4:4:4 compressed and uncompressed recording. We are seriously looking at using an MPEG 4 compression engine. We are not sure what data rate the MPEG 4 will be encoded at. It will depend a how good the image looks coming out of the Canon XL H1's 10 bit 4:2:2 HD-SDI socket. (Yes, I know the H1 is an 8 bit camera). Whatever looks great out of this camera wins ! If you are shooting live action for multi-layer digital visual effects compositing, then you're nuts to shoot anything less than uncompressed. Shooting with any form of compression *does* show up on the end composited scene - especially if you're going out to film ! How many folks are working this way ? Not that many, but I plan to go this route in my digital film making, so I will build this capability into the unit.

Guys, can you tell me what forms nof TC functionality you want to see built into a unit ? Do tell :-)

Hi Mark!

i'm interested about your project...when will be out? I need for motorsport applications..

While I am not in the market for at least a year (more if this economy doesn't pick up), if I were looking for a unit like this, I'd want a few things:

1. HD/SDI input and outputs (One for monitor, one passthrough. I'd like to monitor AFTER the recorder.

2. HDMI input

3. SDXC or CF recording. I've never seen SDXC so I don't know the performance.

4. Codec: Uncompressed AVI/MOV for those that need it, but that is a SMALL percentage. Something like Jpeg2000 or other wavelet codec would be most welcome. More so than and Mpeg4. At least to me. I can't think of any advantages of Mpeg4 over wavelet.

5. A low power display screen that gives status and info on the signal being input.


As for the idea that people would be crazy to not record uncompressed for VFX... well, I don't know. Mathematically lossless should be plenty good enough and have numerous advantages. And for bit depth, 10-bit or 10--bit log should be plenty.

Hi Mark!

i'm interested about your project...when will be out? I need for motorsport applications.....Bonjorno Roberto ! Who knows ? We can't give a specific-solid date anymore. We are working on it as fast as my pocket book (Read cash financing) allows.

While I am not in the market for at least a year (more if this economy doesn't pick up), if I were looking for a unit like this, I'd want a few things:

1. HD/SDI input and outputs (One for monitor, one passthrough. I'd like to monitor AFTER the recorder.......Done. Both, with a switch between REALTIME and POST RECORD.

2. HDMI input....Yes. 4:2:2 & 4:4:4 .

3. SDXC or CF recording. I've never seen SDXC so I don't know the performance....SD, SDHC, and SDXC *only* CF cards are expensive and evil ! Did I mention not readily available in many markets also ? SD cards can be had at our local corner store.

4. Codec: Uncompressed AVI/MOV for those that need it, but that is a SMALL percentage. Something like Jpeg2000 or other wavelet codec would be most welcome. More so than and Mpeg4. At least to me. I can't think of any advantages of Mpeg4 over wavelet.....It will record RAW data, MPEG 4, Uncompressed AVI and QT. And we want to create our own special format. (I have no idea what that will even be called, or if it works yet.)

5. A low power display screen that gives status and info on the signal being input....Yes, we had intended to have a 16 x 9 aspect ratio LCD screen showing what's being recorded with a data overlay switchable to on or off.


As for the idea that people would be crazy to not record uncompressed for VFX... well, I don't know. Mathematically lossless should be plenty good enough and have numerous advantages. And for bit depth, 10-bit or 10--bit log should be plenty....Mathmatically lossless is good enough if you are going straight out to film or TV from that, but as soon as you composite it, then it slowly reveals itself through multiple layers. More noticeable on film than on television.

Hi friends. I thought I'd drop you folks a quick line on our progress. We are having a gentle internal debate as to what final codecs we will use in our device. One of my engineers is strongly pushing AVCintra to be included, while I want to see how far we can go with a high quality MPEG 4 based codec. My concern is having to approach the patent owners of the AVCintra codec for licensing rights. Would they license to a bunch of guys fooling around in our garage ? (Because this is all we're doing at this stage) Do we have enough money to obtain those rights if we were to head in that direction and the owners said yes ?

We're also trying to decide on final box dimensions. I claim that this is the least of our problems now - just give me something that records and plays back for a public demonstration ! The other bummer is it's taking too freakin long to get to successful protype stage ! Oh well - Edison tried 99 times on the lightbulb filament - not 98 !

It's still fun to work on this project, although, it's become somewhat of a personal vendetta now. :-)

go for whatever keeps costs down. there are already high end options out there and that market already is tapped.. the budget demographic is the one that hasn't been targeted yet and are the people keeping an eye out for yous guys.

The other bummer is it's taking too freakin long to get to successful protype stage !

That won't change as long as you allow the engineers to run you instead of you running the engineers. I don't mean to sound cynical but one of the most frequent problems that start up companies have is that someone comes up with a good idea for a product and decides to "go out and hire a couple of engineers" only to find they have a giant mess on their hands. It's important to set the rules from the beginning. If left to their own devices, most engineers think they have all the answers as well as know more that all future customers combined. Lastly, the thing that many engineers enjoy more than anything else is arguing. I call it - "Recreational Equivocation."

That won't change as long as you allow the engineers to run you instead of you running the engineers. I don't mean to sound cynical but one of the most frequent problems that start up companies have is that someone comes up with a good idea for a product and decides to "go out and hire a couple of engineers" only to find they have a giant mess on their hands. It's important to set the rules from the beginning. If left to their own devices, most engineers think they have all the answers as well as know more that all future customers combined. Lastly, the thing that many engineers enjoy more than anything else is arguing. I call it - "Recreational Equivocation."....Man, you are so right on about this subject ! I came damn close to firing one of them last week ! I'm the one with the *vision* for this project. This is my party. I'm paying for it. To be fair I am in awe of what engineers can do. To know what chip does what and how to design circuits and programs to run on EPROMS. Frankly, some of this stuff comes darn close to alchemy as far as I'm concerned. I think some (Not all engineers) can become a little arrogant at times. I guess that's why larger companies hire a "Project Manager" who is an expert at rangling in folks as they float up to the mountains on their own hot air. Our arguments have been intense, but good and fair ones. I don't want to limit anyone's creativity, or ever prevent someone from being able to say, "Well, what if we tried this ?" I remain somewhat philosophical by accepting this as part of the growing pains of designing something. At the end of the day, I have executive decision and/or I just run out of money.

go for whatever keeps costs down. there are already high end options out there and that market already is tapped.. the budget demographic is the one that hasn't been targeted yet and are the people keeping an eye out for yous guys....Hi Ron. True. True. I agree about the high end market being tapped out. I'm really interested in independent - no budget shooters like us ! I can't find anything that does what I need to be done at a relevant price, so we just have to make it ourselves :-) But it is expensive to make "one of" something. Still, if I only ever make "one of" something which is fully functional and immanently practical, then I will be happy to show that around at trade shows and see who wants to buy it, or approach us for a manufacturing deal. I think that to have your very own SSDR on SD cards is the coolest thing ever !

And Im one of those eagerly awaiting the product.
Firestores and the nanoflash are out of my price range.

Ben

.....Hi Ben. Yeah, me too ! I think Convergent Designs has done a good job with the Nanoflash. I might even dare to purchase one of those boxes myself one of these days. I can't get the Flash media very easily in my market, and it's really pricey. The SD cards are cheap and are available everywhere. I think the CF cards are a media which has always been associated with strictly professional imaging - thus their added expense and special order status in most Montreal stores. If you want the really fast and largest capacity CF cards which meet CD specifications, then you special order and wait and fork out big dollars. This is justifiable if you have the big client on the other end of the equasion. If you're a digi-underground shooter, then you need to go a different route. I'm sure the Convergent Designs folks must have spent a *ton* of money developping the Flash XDR and the Nanoflash ! CD's approach to their SSDR could not have been an inexpensive one.

.....Regarding the Firestore, it's a $500.00 technology retailing for a whole lot more ! Let us not forget the Firestore has no actual encoding engine built into it. The encoding is performed by the camera attached to the device. The Firestore is essentially a portable hard drive with some programmable software flashed into a few chips. I like the Firestore because it's firewire friendly, but not quite at the price point it needs to be at. I've used them and they get the job done if you're shooting in HDV, but they lack multiple digital alternative inputs, like HD-SDI.

Hi Mark-
While I cannot purchase our recommended CF cards (Sandisk 32GB Extreme III) at the local discount stores (Best Buy, Staples, etc), the cards are readily available from major on-line retailers (B&H, Adorama, etc) for next day delivery. These cards are not a special order items and while more expensive than most CF cards, we have found that the Sandisk cards are the most reliable. If you want high-quality video you need the faster cards to accomadate the bit-rate. I doubt the high-speed SDHC cards (like the upcoming 32GB Extreme III SDHC) will be any less expensive than comparable performing CF cards. Both CF and SDHC utilize the same NAND Flash memory, the only difference is the controller. In fact the SDHC cards may be more expensive since the manufacturing is more difficult due to the smaller form factor.

Yes, we have spent a considerable amount of money (and time) developing the Flash XDR and the nanoFlash. This is a very complex product with many technologies to develop, including HD/SD-SDI I/O, HDMI I/O, QT/MXF/MPG/M2V file formats, 1080i60/50, 1080psf30/25/24, 720p60/50 video formats, audio/video synchronization, video pre-buffer, power supply design, cabinet design, cooling and heat considerations, etc, etc. We were fortunate to have access to some outstanding CODEC technology from Sony, which greatly reduced our development time and costs.

I wish you continued success in your development efforts, competiton spurs everyone to make better products!

Cheers-

...Hi Mike :-) Thank you for the cheer on. You will have to wait about a year or so to start having that so called *competition* from us ! At the rate we're going at this in my garage, I'm concerned that everyone and their brother will have some kind of an SSDR out on the market at all kinds of price ranges. In the mean time, even I had to order a Flash XDR for a high end project a client has asked us to shoot here in Montreal. If the high end budget is there, then why not go for the XDR for that kind of production ? Uhh, those folks can't wait a year plus for me to perfect our SD card recorder.

.....One look at the nanoFlash or the XDR, and one can only arrive at the conclusion it is a complex and highly engineered product. I particularly commend you on the finishing quality of your SSDR boxes. Right now, we are making cardboard model after model of different boxes trying to visualize in 3D space what our SSDR should look like, and how it should fit on a camera. Should we have one motherboard ? Do we need two, or shall we have three ? This is a really big question. It's so expensive to make this stuff ! (For the first time, and only one)

Addendum: Concerning the availability and easy enough access to the correct CF cards to use in the Flash XDR, the sources you quoted are US sources. Obviously, we want to use what you folks at Convergent Designs recommend. There's no point in throwing CF cards at the XDR for which it wasn't designed for. I'm sure you well understand our tendancy to try and source a local supplier (In Canada) for the proper CF card media, for which we can pay in Canadian currency if we can. I'm not saying one does not exist, I only state here what I've been told by some of the high end digital photography boutiques and computer parts suppliers in the city - that they consider it a special order for CF card performance versions. I naturally want to invest in the Sandisk 32 GB EXtreme III, or something comparable, if I can obtain them. If we have to source these CF cards on line from the US, then we will go this route. Four of these super fast 32 GB cards in an XDR would prove to be a killer combination for shooting time at higher data rates.

Ever thought of something like that:

Quad-CF PCI Controller from Addonics (http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ad4cfprj.asp)

Frank

Ever thought of something like that:

Quad-CF PCI Controller from Addonics (http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ad4cfprj.asp)

Frank...Hi Frank. This is not really a practical way for us to go. For one thing, we do not want to base our SSDR on CF card media because it is more expensive than other types of solid state media. Secondly, CF card media availability is not so universally accessible in all markets in yet. The larger physical foot print of the CF card socket and media forces a larger system layout and over box size, which we want to avoid.

Hi!!


any update with your new recorder?? i'm still interested about it..when you'll be ready, please let me know: info@onboardcamera.it

bye!

Right now folks are waiting for me to inject a little more cash, which I will do shortly, but our project is *far* from the prototype stage at this point I'm sad to say. I am seriously considering making the recorder a full uncompressed RAW recorder only, with perhaps, the capability to record HDV via FW interface.

....The reason why I'm leaning more toward a full uncompressed only recorder, is to.....

a) Get around paying expensive royalties to the MPEG folks.

b) The new SDXC spec will definitely be fast enough and large enough in capacity (1 TB +) to make uncompressed capture practical.

Hi there,

I know I may be jumping the gun but I was just wondering if you have had any updates, I have been following this project in the shadows and it seems amazingly promising!

Have you decided to make it an uncompressed RAW recorder only?

I wish you luck!

Hi friends:
As of today we have made the decision to make our new SD Card SSDR record totally in the uncompressed 10 Bit 4:2:2 color space. We will also build in 4:4:4 video recording capability. At this time, we will not be dealing with any compressed recording codec. We may develop our own proprietary codec for compressed recording at a later date.

Hi Friends:
My apologies for my lack of updates in this thread. The project has slowed to a crawl, but has not stopped. I got a fully functioning prototype board which recorded HD-SDI Full Raster 1920 x 1080 in 4:2:2 uncompressed in 10 bit once, then promptly failed and never recorded (or played back) another signal since ! I think I blew the circuit because our power supply is flawed. I think our power supply is unstable, and you need really good stability or you blow all your (Expensive chips).
I have decided to offer 2 modes: Compressed & uncompressed. The compression is our own proprietary codec (Because we're too cheap to pay anyone else any freaking royalties). I should start a contest to see what we should call our new codec ;-) (How about the new Markvision codec ?) I will suggest whoever winds up purchasing one of our boxes to playout our compressed stuff into their FCP or Avid NLE via the HD-SDI, so they have the option to capture in whatever codec they want Which we don't have to pay royalties for !). Uncompressed recording is well.......uncompressed. Play it out in realtime.

What about Avids DNxHD? I always thought its a free and open source codec? BTW: Thanks for your approach towards an affordable recording device. Hope to hear from it soon... :)

Hi Friends:
My apologies for my lack of updates in this thread. The project has slowed to a crawl, but has not stopped. I got a fully functioning prototype board which recorded HD-SDI Full Raster 1920 x 1080 in 4:2:2 uncompressed in 10 bit once,...
I have decided to offer 2 modes: Compressed & uncompressed. The compression is our own proprietary codec (Because we're too cheap to pay anyone else any freaking royalties). I should start a contest to see what we should call our new codec ;-) (How about the new Markvision codec ?) I will suggest whoever winds up purchasing one of our boxes to playout our compressed stuff into their FCP or Avid NLE via the HD-SDI, so they have the option to capture in whatever codec they want Which we don't have to pay royalties for !). Uncompressed recording is well.......uncompressed. Play it out in realtime.

OK, I've been reading this thread on and off over the last year+...and I've been uncharacteristically mute.

It's OK to envision making a data recorder that records 10 bit uncompressed HD 4:4:4 to a device the size of a matchbook...but eventually you have to take a few things into account.

Not paying royalties is a great goal, but the bottom line is the industry has several reasonably established codec families that have spawned equally reasonable workflows for acquistion-to-post.

Uncompressed HD video (or 2K or 4K for that matter) end-to-end workflow is a concept that always sounds great when discussing how we all want to be uncompromising image makers, but when the practicality is explored, compressed acquisition just keeps winning. Uncompressed footage simply makes no sense in the context of a location crew...HDcamSR is clumsy enough, and that's MPEG4. Uncompressed footage would take incredible amounts of data storage to store redundantly in the field, not to mention that the data dumps would be less than even real time without some sort of a custom card reader and a serious workstation in the field (you'll likely not keep up with a laptop and USB drives for transferring this sort of stuff)

Now...edit. Uncompressed doesn't take a lot in the CPU torque department...it's about throughput. However, to get multiple streams of uncompressed requires serious harddrive speed with extremely well developed infrastructure, not to mention cavernous capacity.

At some point, a discussion about what the real advantages are between uncompressed and say, CineForm 10 bit, 4:2:2 needs to happen. For a customer, there are precious few (if any). Yes, CineForm is a proprietary codec, but if a customer can buy CineForm and streamline the whole facility and make post production easier, it's a small price to pay.

Whether or not -you- want to pay royalties has little to do with what makes sense for your customer. I use a wide variety of established codecs. My post process is predictable, my post and acquisition infrastructure is manageable and requires an investment that makes sense.

You're bent on making a device that will affect workflow downstream in a way that will make editing the footage completely impractical for those who are shopping in the price range you propose...and the part of the market that would actually find the specifications you propose compelling, is likely not large enough for you to really see a return on your investment through any serious quantity of sales, not to mention that the pricepoint you propose will make it hard for that group to take the device seriously. Not to mention proposing a data recorder that has to be transferred into a post workstation REAL TIME? Are you serious? Even HDcamSR can go in at 2X for crying out loud. You are now rationalizing the need for your device waaaay past a point where practicality exists anymore.

There are any number of innovative ways to deliver a product with really usable features to a market large enough to make your efforts worthwhile...with a file size small enough to be practical.

...at this point, I'd consider what is possible to actually sell and support before you continue to simply explore what you can conceivably -develop-.

(...in the nicest way possible.)

OK, I've been reading this thread on and off over the last year+...and I've been uncharacteristically mute.

It's OK to envision making a data recorder that records 10 bit uncompressed HD 4:4:4 to a device the size of a matchbook...but eventually you have to take a few things into account....OK. Stop there. I am envisioning a device which records 10 bit 4:2:2 not 10 bit 4:4:4. The Device will *Also do 4:4:4 color space recording but in 12 bit color precision code. The actual size of our recorder will be larger than a match box. I'm not sure where you got the idea it would be the size of a matchbox ?
Not paying royalties is a great goal, but the bottom line is the industry has several reasonably established codec families that have spawned equally reasonable workflows for acquistion-to-post....I think you may not have realized the simplicity of our approach ? If you record uncompressed, then play that signal straight out in realtime, you then can *Compress* the data when transferring to your Avid or Vegas, or FCP application using the codecs **in those NLE's.* It is not necessary to perform the compression when capturing the data to SD cards.
Uncompressed HD video (or 2K or 4K for that matter) end-to-end workflow is a concept that always sounds great when discussing how we all want to be uncompromising image makers, but when the practicality is explored, compressed acquisition just keeps winning....It really depends on your application. I am envisioning a box which is primarily intended for high end work (Digital Cinema Origination) with an optional *Compressed mode (I already mentioned it would have compression as an option-We're just not sure what yet)
Uncompressed footage simply makes no sense in the context of a location crew...HDcamSR is clumsy enough, and that's MPEG4. Uncompressed footage would take incredible amounts of data storage to store redundantly in the field, not to mention that the data dumps would be less than even real time without some sort of a custom card reader and a serious workstation in the field (you'll likely not keep up with a laptop and USB drives for transferring this sort of stuff)....With the new SDXC format already launched by Sandisk (See their new 64 GB SD card) uncompressed recording not only makes sense, but is practical with 4 x 64 GB raid 0 striping.
Now...edit. Uncompressed doesn't take a lot in the CPU torque department...it's about throughput. However, to get multiple streams of uncompressed requires serious harddrive speed with extremely well developed infrastructure, not to mention cavernous capacity.....So ? The Harris Altitude HD NLE offers two streams of full 10 bit uncompressed realtime HD (Although it has just been EOL'd), so does Avid Media Composer, so does FCS 7.x if you use specified raids. Yes, I agree these are expensive. But you don't have to capture Uncompressed as uncompressed do you ? Let your NLE compress it in realtime during your video/audio capture. To edit practically, you only require enough uncompressed storage space for one hour. Not so big a deal as it used to be. HDD costs have come way down actually.
At some point, a discussion about what the real advantages are between uncompressed and say, CineForm 10 bit, 4:2:2 needs to happen. For a customer, there are precious few (if any). Yes, CineForm is a proprietary codec, but if a customer can buy CineForm and streamline the whole facility and make post production easier, it's a small price to pay. ...Agreed. Buy your Cineform app and capture your uncompressed stream to that in realtime.
Whether or not -you- want to pay royalties has little to do with what makes sense for your customer. I use a wide variety of established codecs. My post process is predictable, my post and acquisition infrastructure is manageable and requires an investment that makes sense. ...Yes, and it will continue to be predictable as long as you can capture in realtime to whatever NLE & codec you need to use.
You're bent on making a device that will affect workflow downstream in a way that will make editing the footage completely impractical for those who are shopping in the price range you propose......I don't think so.
and the part of the market that would actually find the specifications you propose compelling, is likely not large enough for you to really see a return on your investment through any serious quantity of sales, not to mention that the pricepoint you propose will make it hard for that group to take the device seriously.....Really ? A small, portable recorder capable of both uncompressed and compressed recording in both 4:2:2 10 bit & 4:4:4 12 bit via HD-SDI, Dual Link HD-SDI, and 3G HD-SDI with FW and HDMI thrown in. The cameras will do the compression (HDV) not the recorder ;-) (Think about it), HDMI cameras will do their compression (Not the recorder again) (Think about that) - What's the mystery ?
Not to mention proposing a data recorder that has to be transferred into a post workstation REAL TIME? Are you serious? Even HDcamSR can go in at 2X for crying out loud. You are now rationalizing the need for your device waaaay past a point where practicality exists anymore....Perhaps ? We think we're developing a device by thinking out side of the box (If you'll pardon the pun), and we'll get it right sooner or later. Right now it's half baked and not ready for prime time, and I won't show up at NAB with one in my pocket until it does !! BTW, realtime is not fast enough a capture rate for you ? Clip based import is often slower, except for Avid's fast import of certain codecs like HDV (Finally !)
There are any number of innovative ways to deliver a product with really usable features to a market large enough to make your efforts worthwhile...with a file size small enough to be practical.

...at this point, I'd consider what is possible to actually sell and support before you continue to simply explore what you can conceivably -develop-.

(...in the nicest way possible.).....We're not Convergent Technologies ! We're not really in a position to compete with major companies like that, and frankly, we don't care to. We are a small team in a garage and this is all we are at this point . I don't care if I ever sell one. I *DO care if I make a successful prototype for my own use . I think creating your own SSDR is the coolest thing ever ! I'm trying to please myself :-) If what we perfect pleases others, then, and only then may we proceed as you suggested, but for now this is a hobby project created by a film maker in Montreal, Canada who drinks way too much coffee ! ;-)

I assumed you were making something to sell...you are obviously investing a lot of time and effort in this...

You've mentioned a price point a couple times in the thread...

If this device is only for high-end origination, the higher you go in the market place, the fewer buyers there are to capture...I think the range you've mentioned is far too inexpensive for that market.

As far as real-time capture...you must be referring to FCP I assume. i don't use FCP...I'm RT native to anything including DSLR and RED...so yes, real-time capture on the last project I did which was 15 minutes in edited length and had over ten hours of interview source material would have been quite a handicap.

...and obviously an hour of storage would not have been enough. I've done some television commercials where there has been an hour or less of source, but i think when you mention one hour of storage, you must be thinking that editors only do commercials...and they never have two in the house at the same time.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say the cameras will do the compression...HDSDI and HDMI are not general purpose data-pipes like FW. They send 'digital baseband'...uncompressed down the line. You can't use an HDV camcorder to record and run a recording device downstream via HDMI and get HDV... The downstream recorder gets uncompressed. HDSDI as well.

Good luck with it...I guess I'm thinking in terms of market, not product. It seems like a market that S Two and Codex pretty much have already...it's small and exclusive and requires post production resources that, while less expensive than ever before, are still at the top of the scale.

I assumed you were making something to sell...you are obviously investing a lot of time and effort in this.......Yes, I have invested a great deal of my own private cash into this project. You see, I can't think about the market or the marketing right now. My vision is narrow down a tunnel which only leads to the prototype stage at this point. The way we're looking at this device is more from a personal artistic and technical sensibility. I have asked myself what I want in a dream SSDR, and that something is pretty close to what I've been writing about in this thread over the past year. It is true I have asked the opinions of end users in this thread, and many folks have been kind enough to give extensive feedback (Like you as well :-) ). I think folks like you are much better *marketers* than I.

mentioned a price point a couple times in the thread.....Yes. We think this technology should be available to a broader range of independent videographers. Not just high end shooters, but I respect both, and have hoped for a more democratic device which could be easily adopted by the proletariat at large. I want to make this device retail for just under $1,000.00 US Dollars IF we ever get to the retail stage in this project. For now, I must build *The First* device which I want to see and use. Only when we have one in hand to take to NAB will we be happy and see what we can see at that point.
If this device is only for high-end origination, the higher you go in the market place, the fewer buyers there are to capture...I think the range you've mentioned is far too inexpensive for that market....You are probably correct. The box is too inexpensive for what it can do. However high and low and digi-underground gorilla shooters will be able to embrace this device (If I ever actually get it to work !)
As far as real-time capture...you must be referring to FCP I assume. i don't use FCP...I'm RT native to anything including DSLR and RED...so yes, real-time capture on the last project I did which was 15 minutes in edited length and had over ten hours of interview source material would have been quite a handicap....I operated for nearly 11 years in post with an old DPS Perception RT system with about an hour of storage. I used to work long edits in two ways....

A) Batch capture in really low quality just good enough to see what I was doing, then batch recapture at whatever online quality was required. In this way you could edit long or short form projects with little storage space. It seems as though many editors either don't know, or have forgotten the good old batch capture and re-capture feature. This is why most NLE applications still have this feature. It works through both the FW and RS-422 interface. Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro, Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere all possess this basic post capability.

B) Capture and work in halves for long form projects. Edit one hour at a time of a 3 hour or 2 hour program.

and obviously an hour of storage would not have been enough. I've done some television commercials where there has been an hour or less of source, but i think when you mention one hour of storage, you must be thinking that editors only do commercials...and they never have two in the house at the same time....See above. I was thinking BC and Re-BC, or one hour at a time and dump, then the next hour, etc.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say the cameras will do the compression.......This is a pretty straightforward, uncomplicated procedure. The HDV camcorder has an internal MPEG -2 encoder which dumps data into a recorder that results in an m2t transport stream file. In this case the recorder does nothing more than store the data - it *does not encode it.*
HDSDI and HDMI are not general purpose data-pipes like FW. They send 'digital baseband'...uncompressed down the line. You can't use an HDV camcorder to record and run a recording device downstream via HDMI and get HDV... ...I never intended to. This would be a distortion of how my recorder functions.
Good luck with it...I guess I'm thinking in terms of market, not product. It seems like a market that S Two and Codex pretty much have already...it's small and exclusive and requires post production resources that, while less expensive than ever before, are still at the top of the scale.....I can't think about that right now. My goal now is to make it work. If I can't make it work, then it's all academic anyway.