So if I shoot my video to Firestore and then connect to my computer, then the footage does not need to go to my computer's harddrive? so you can edit video with a smaller harddrive or less harddrive space. Is this correct.

You can edit right from the Firestore, yes.

what is a "realistic price" for a 40GB one of these? Ive seen anywhere from about $500 to over $1100 for these. Im sure some of these can't be legit. Thanks.

Different prices for different versions. The basic FS-4 retails for $750 while the pro version FS-4 retails for $1200. Differences between the two are listed at http://www.focusinfo.com/products/datasheets/FS-4DS.pdf -- a $500 price is probably for the older FS-1, it is a bridge only, no drive included.

Ok, now that I am starting to understand this......wouldn't this mean that if you have only a "decent" laptop, that this would give that laptop the advantage of "freedom" to do its job better (since it's own harddrive is not being used to store the footage) as long as that laptop has a decent processor. In other words....Not only is the Firestore convienent, but it also gives you more power (so to speak) at the editing computer. Wouldn't this be correct? I mean you are now keeping all of that computer harddrive free....so won't the computer work faster and better in most cases? I may be totally misunderstanding all of what goes on in a computer when editing though because I'm not sure if the "working progress" footage goes to the computer harddrive as you create what will be the finished product. Thanks so much for your help. Please help me understand this.

When editing video on a computer, it's always a good idea to have the computer's operating system plus the editing software on one drive, and the video itself on another. So in your case with a laptop, yes using the FireStore as an editing deck will ease the strain on the laptop's hard drive.

FireStore FS-4 is a fantastic product. You can edit directly from it, or copy the files to your hard drive. When copying, the data moves at the speed of data - unlike capturing video which takes an hour to capture an hour.

There are currently 4 flavors of FireStore available

FS4 w/ 40GB drive $749.95
FS4 Pro w/ 40GB $1195
FS4 Pro w/ 80 GB drive $1595

Pro versions add support for Avid & Pinnacle file systems. We are running several promotions with field kits. The Field kit gives you an extra battery and a mounting bracket.

For more info on FireStore check out http://www.videoguys.com/FireStore.html

Don't forget your DVinfoNet 5% discount!!

Gary

You can edit directly from the firestore, but I see a significant hit in performance when doing so. A lot of time is spent I/O bound, and not as much time is compute bound. Thus meaning longer render/wait times. Take a look at your Performance monitor in the Windows Task Monitor (if you are using a PC) here you can monitor the CPU(s) usage. If the CPU usage is not at 100% then you are being slowed down by I/O (writing to the hard drive).

You won't increase "editing power" when using the firestore, it will actually be slower, but you won't take up your computer’s hard drive space.

Thanks todd,
I'm wondering, does the computers proccessor have to do with outbound/inbound speeds. This may be a silly question. Anyway if you have a really fast (say maybe 3.0mhz or higher) proccessor would this help or does it not help o/i stuff.

would love to use a firestore for recording hdv material. Sad that it is not yet quicktime compatible. at ibc they said they were working on it...
Just did a production with 25 tapes......1hr each......so at least two days of capturing time with fcp........

Ok, here is my goal. I spend a lot of time in hotels with my job, and I want to work with DV as a fairly serious hobbiest with my spare time. I want to get a pretty good laptop with decent sized harddrive and put some good editing software on there and also add some music creation sofware...maybe even some other software, (so in other words...I'm using up the harddrive space already!) Then get the "firestore" to actually edit the video footage from. So, with all this extra software that I want to have, is this plan on its way to disaster? Is all this too much to expect from a laptop. It doesn't have to be the fastest machine, just a capable one. Turnkey is not an option because I also want to use the wireless web and other traditional laptop uses. Maybe I'm wanting too much here? Thanks.

Your processor speed doesn't really matter when it comes to writing to disk.

The thread (editing program) will call the processor when it has a compute bound job. The thread will use the processor for its quantum ( its allotted amount of time) If in-between this time, the thread needs to write to disk, the process will become blocked (state 5 in a windows machine) during this blocked time the processor is not working but waiting for the disk to complete its job. If you are slowed down at this point it doesn't matter if you have the best processor available because it is not doing anything but waiting for the disk to finish.

I am doing quite a bit of editing on a laptop, which happens to be 10 months old. It's a P4 3.0ghz, with 512 ram. I have upgraded the hard drive to a 7200 rpm drive (from a 4200rpm drive), and have noticed better overall system performance. I have noticed less time is spent waiting on the hard drive, and better render times.

How much footage are you editing? I shoot home tours and am only working with about 10 minutes of footage max, I really wouldn't want to edit a couple of hours worth of footage on my laptop, it would be doable but I am spoiled with a fast desktop, it’s hard to go from fast to slow.

Todd, you are helpin' me out here more than you'll ever know. Thankyou. So if I want to improve the I/O times....I should get the fastest hard drive "rpms" as I can. Is that correct?
How much footage am I going to work with? Well I not sure but I could probably fit about three hours of video on to a Firestore. and then shoot for a "final product" of about one hour or so. For as little experience as I have in this stuff, I am pretty ambitious about special effects like compositing and forced perspectives (i have only read about this stuff so far). I just think all this DV stuff is so cool, I feel like a kid again and I can't wait to dig in...but I don't have time at home to fool with it because I need to spend that time with my family and my share of the chores. This is why I want to make sure I can do everything I'm wanting to do with DV on a laptop. I will make DVDs of my family that will completely knock their socks off!!! I want to make a Feature-Film like production starring my family members complete with a storyline and some most excellent special effects.

Yes that's correct. It's a Hitachi Travelstar Drive, I picked up a 60 gig, which serves me fine, sounds like you would benefit better from the 100gig version. I think Seagate makes 7200 rpm laptop drives as well. They aren't the easiest thing to get, supply always seems to be low.

I think you would be fine if you got a nice high end laptop, probably wouldn't have to be the best of the best either. Anything you buy today should be able to handle it (non-celeron) render times will be longer with a slower processor. If you had to choose (money wise) between a faster processor or a faster hard drive, definatly go with the faster hard drive. Lots of memory helps too.

Just one comment here.

"Render time" keep being mentioned here. But strictly speaking, editing - that is to say rough cutting (that which takes the most creative time, in my opinion), does not require much, if any rendering with most modern EDL systems. A laptop with a FS4 would be ideal for rough cutting, or sorting material in the field. The post production and polishing should be done on a more powerful machine for the most gratification.

So I think that the I/O issue maybe not such an issue if you are planning this set-up for anything other than end production.

Thanks for the comments Daniel,
so are you saying after the rough cutting, as I get into the more detailed editing stages, it may not be as gratifying as using a desktop? But it is still possible, in your opinion, to do all I'm wanting to do exclusively on a laptop?

Theoretically, it is possible. But practically, is either plug and pray or do a lot of research, and testing. It is really a question of speed. I think laptops can do just about anything a desktop can, these days, it just might take them longer.

The creative process involves experimentation, and speed becomes a factor that can determine wether something is practically doable or not. If you have to wait three minutes or even ten seconds to see what you have just tried out looks like, then you will be reluctant to make small changes to it, in order to see what looks best. With a laptop and or any slow system, you may still make the changes, but in the end you wont want to because of the render lag. This can make the creative process very frustrating.

Since you described yourself as a serious hobbiest I thought that you might be quite happy with less than top-of-the line through put for what you want to do. I just saw that the discussion in this thread was going in the direction of I/O delay and rendering times (which is important) but only if you plan to do rendering.

You have to answer your own question. If you just want to edit, and fool around a bit, then you will have absolutely no problems with a laptop. If you want to do a lot of compositing, color correction, and graphics animation, then you might be unhappy, without doing a lot of leg work to get the right combination of laptop and HDD.

I hope that that helps

I still see a hit in preformance when only rough cutting. Especially when audio is involved. I get a lag that is not too bad, but still a pain. I think you will be fine though with a fairly powerful laptop. Although you may spend a little more time during your movie making at least you will have the luxury of working on the road in a hotel.

The firestore 4 pro (80 gig) is a fine product. However, there are some weaknesses you should know before going that route. It only does FAT32, not NTFS. This will significantly impact your file sizes. Until recently it only had 1.5 hour batteries. That just recently changed, but they now cost twice as much. In addition, the larger battery does not fit the accessory kit cradle for mounting to your camera. Seems like these should all be easy fixes, but they keep stumbling. My biggest complaint is with their website. Ever tried to really find some updated information there? Or search for updates for your system...or info about accessories? It is about the most frustrating and useless website on the entire Internet. All of that being said, the product is solid and works well.
Dave M.

the fat32 file system on the fs-4 has zero impact on what i do, because i shoot a lot of short clips... long clips do get broken up automatically, but i don't think that will take up more hard drive space than one long continuous clip... in the long run you are better off with shorter clips anyway, for reasons of file copying and file corruption, but there is something to be said for the way that ntfs manages a hard drive.

if you really want to save space on the fs-4 hard drive, use raw dv mode, you can save a percent or two(?).

at this point it looks like i will not be depending on the factory battery system... i like the design and the way it fits, but i experienced some huge delays in how long it takes to cold-boot the system... i'm still researching it, but there are indications that the delay could be mitigated by using an external power supply.

For the serious hobbiest. I would not buy a firestore device. Instead just put the money into your computer. Sure it would be great to have but if you can afford to spend a little time capturing the files off your camera than you could have a fast computer to edit the files and would not have to worry too much about the i/o. You can get two SATA hardrives nowdays for 2-300 bucks and then raid them together.

Daniel,
thanks for the insight. I keep hearing about "raid" when talking about computers. what exactly is raid. Is there more than one product or device called raid? Thanks.

Not really (unless you count the pest control products)... Raid has several different flairs... there is hardware (best kind) and software and then there are different Raid variations on top of that... RAID 0,1,2,3,4,5 blah blah blah... probably better explained on a site that is devoted to that... just google it.

Steve,

I would follow Kevin's suggestion about googeling for accurate info.

I think that RAIDs involve the use of several HDDs at the same time to write information to. The data is divided between the number of drives involved thus increasing the speed of the data transfer by the individual bus speeds of each HDD. As far as I understand it, RAIDs have the pitfall that if data on anyone of the arrayed HDDs is damaged or lost, then it effects information stored on the other HDDs in the array. This is because the array of HDDs functions like one single volume.

I hope that this helps. But honestly, I only have a partial knowledge of this. Please, anyone correct whatever BS I have just spouted.

Steve,

I would follow Kevin's suggestion about googeling for accurate info.

I think that RAIDs involve the use of several HDDs at the same time to write information to. The data is divided between the number of drives involved thus increasing the speed of the data transfer by the individual bus speeds of each HDD. As far as I understand it, RAIDs have the pitfall that if data on anyone of the arrayed HDDs is damaged or lost, then it effects information stored on the other HDDs in the array. This is because the array of HDDs functions like one single volume.

I hope that this helps. But honestly, I only have a partial knowledge of this. Please, anyone correct whatever BS I have just spouted.


And that is why I suggest google'ing ;) in SOME of the raid formations the above is true... but Raid 5 for example is used to actually protect the data it writes a checksum at the same time... so if you have 3 100gig drives you only get 200gigs of storage because there is 100gigs of checksums... if one drive goes down you plug in another 100gig drive and it rebuilds the data... it's all very neat but again I'm leaving out plenty of details to them all.

Steve, it sounds like to me that you just need a common external IEEE1394 (firewire) drive to load your video into for storage and editing.

Try one of these guys:
http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=414

The firestore 4 pro (80 gig) is a fine product. However, there are some weaknesses you should know before going that route. It only does FAT32, not NTFS. This will significantly impact your file sizes. Until recently it only had 1.5 hour batteries. That just recently changed, but they now cost twice as much. In addition, the larger battery does not fit the accessory kit cradle for mounting to your camera.

Hi Dave,

IS that 1.5 hours continous run time? What about standby...

For people using a mac...FAT32 doesn't sound too good. Would there be any problems. I know mac can format drives in FAT32...but from my brief experience and from what I am hearing...that isn't a "great" option is it....?

It doesn't seem to be a problem with the firestore... if you run it continously it will just break the files up at 4gigs because fat32 can't do more than a 4gig file. But everytime you pause you create a new file anyway so normally this isn't even an issue.

The reason it is fat32 is for it to be compatiple with mac and windows... mac has no problems with fat32 and infact all the new iPods are fat32.

Thanks Kevin....

My concern with continuous was more in regards to the battery. Is 1.5 hours continous recording...? Standby mode....etc. Can the battery be replace or is it like an ipod where the battery is integrated on the unit....which is my assumption.

Thanks Kevin....

My concern with continuous was more in regards to the battery. Is 1.5 hours continous recording...? Standby mode....etc. Can the battery be replace or is it like an ipod where the battery is integrated on the unit....which is my assumption.

The battery can be changed pretty easily. I don't have one of these... I have just researched them.