Announcing the CinePorter CP-2 from Specialized Communications Corporation.

Read the press release and some of my notes... located at:

http://www.p2info.net/articles/misc/cineportercp2.php

What do you think? Not much info yet but there will be more details next week.

Very Interesting,
Size and Cost?
I suspected there will be ample devices to help along these lines.
Still I am surprized to see it so fast

J

Nifty.

Some immediate thoughts ergonomically speaking: that exposed P2 card area and flimsy door in the down position is a bit of a nightmare--opportunities for dirt to get into the card drives, as well as the door and/or cable from the card insert being vulnerable to damage. I could see there being a sheath that fits over the card insert which would seal the slots, but I'm not sure about an open door solution.

Otherwise, the package seems quite tidy fitting under the camera,although my personal opinion is that any and all non-shoulder mount cameras are a questionable idea for handheld shooting--not being able to brace against the body or rest on the shoulder is always a compromise to the photography, and ultimately more tiring. I'd love to see a shoulder mount assembly that places the P2 recorder and a single battery (IDX, Anton Bauer etc) over the other side of the shoulder--obviously this sort of thing will appear shortly after the camera does. I'm sure that many will be more delighted with the all-in-one design of this system than me though--it's definitely a matter of personal taste.

It's exciting to see these longer-recording time options popping up, certainly this was a major sticking point for many after the original announcement of the camera (and the cost vs shooting capacity ratio is clearly more palatable than the P2 cards)

As mentioned in the article (see link in first post), hard disk size and unit cost has not yet been announced.

Product photo added to Image Gallery: http://www.dvinfo.net/gallery/showimage.php?i=416

Edit: photo *removed* from Gallery, see posts below.

Competition is good. That improves products and keep prices reasonable. It is good to have different options

You know what would make this great product into a killer product? Have a FW800 or SATA port for faster download speeds to your NLE! That or a removable hard drive bay with swappable disks!

Either-way, this is a nice alternative, or rather a nice complement to an exciting line.

Do any of these solution allow you to put your own HD in them?

Frederic: It looks like there's a standard USB (USB2?) jack on the lower right side.

Aaron: Not yet that I'm aware of.

It would be cool to have also a firewire port (if not for recording, at least for data transfer and ingests).

I will not be surprised if this drive does not have FireWire. It doesn't need FireWire for recording, since it is a P2 device. With the P2 interface you get all of that great metadata info attached to each clip, which isn't supported by FireWire. Besides, if you prefer FireWire, there's the FireStore DS-100, so that option is available if you want it.

Ingest into NLE will be faster through USB2 rather than FireWire 400 anyway... right?

Is the image of the CinePorter CP-2 supposed to be included with that link? If so, it wasn't there. Where can I see an image of the CinePorter CP-2?

Where can I see an image of the CinePorter CP-2?I've asked Spec Comm for one that I can use on the site and am supposed to get one today (hopefully). As soon as it's up, I'll let ya know right here.

Okay, just got off the phone with Spec Comm regarding a new photo... for the time being there will not be one just yet. At best I'll have to wait until next week at Govt. Video Expo, even though I wasn't given an answer as to whether or not I could get a photo there.

If that seems mysterious, it's only because they have to treat all media fairly. I'm on the media list for Govt. Video Expo along with who knows how many other print and online sources, so just like everybody else I'll have to wait for the show in order to get my own images, so next Wednesday is the best I can do.

That press release went out only to the Govt. Video Expo press list and I don't know what other sites are on that mailing list that you guys go to, but whoever they are they're all being told the same thing, wait until the Expo. So between us and whoever else is going to be there next week, there should be some product images forthcoming at that time.

What I can tell you about what it looks like: it's a hard disk enclosure that appears to match the footprint of the HVX200, it's about as thick as a Panasonic camcorder battery, and apparantly is powered by a second camcorder battery mounted in such a way that this battery is situated directly below the one on the camera and positioned the same way, horizontally, as on the HVX itself. The prototype housing I saw had heat fins all the way around with a USB or USB2 jack on the rear right side. From the rear left side there's a short four-inch cable that goes to a P2 slot insert card. It plugs into the camera just like any P2 card would; from there the video is carried by the cable to the hard disk drive in the enclosure which is mounted to the base of the HVX. I understand it'll also attach to a standard V-mount behind the battery of a full-size P2 camera such as the AJ-SPX800.

Will have to wait until I visit their booth next week to find out weight, cost, drive capacity and other details.

Does this seem like something that's going to come out sooner or later? Next month or next June?

Good question. Seems like an NAB thing to me, so next April probably.

So since this uses the P2 Port does this mean that it will only record active frames so it can store more footage as compared to the firestore?

Excellent question. Certainly seems like it should!

Recording 720p to the P2 card would definately save space as opposed to 1080, so you would think this approach would work similarly.

I remember speaking to Jan at the August NYC ResFest (when the camera was still saving files via USB2 and video out via firewire). She said then that 720p recording via firewire to a laptop NLE would save to the hard drive at the same data rate as 1080, so no conservation of hard drive space that way.

Regards,

Joe Womble

Well, yeah, but assumedly that presumes that the capturing program is performing as a dumb device, just writing what it's been given. They've said that the firewire stream would conform to the same rounded-out-to-60p type of stream that the VariCam records, so I would expect that. But if the flags are present in the stream, as they assuredly must be (or else the Apple Frame Rate Converter utility couldn't work, right?) then it would seem a relatively easy task for the capture application to check for flags and only write flagged frames to disk.

Ingest into NLE will be faster through USB2 rather than FireWire 400 anyway... right?Theoretically yes! but that would depend on the USB host controller. There are many cheap versions out there, and would probably not hold up as well as FW. But hey! Unattended copying at more or less 400 to 480Mbps is good enough, and is well above DV tape transfer speeds by a factor of at least 10, depending on the hard disk used in this little beauty.

This product sounds interesting, but it would only serve useful on P2 cameras correct? I couldn't use it on any of the other cameras I currently use because of the P2 mount. Will the new firestore work on other cameras as well as the HVX? It'd be nice if it also worked on the DVX or VX2000. I probably won't use those cameras a ton once the HVX comes in, but it'd be nice to buy a DTE device that I can use on the lot of cameras.

firestore has made these kinda devices for normal DV cameras for years, you should go check out the website and see what they have.. your gonna see some cool stuff.

Chris, maybe no one has thought of this yet, so here goes.
if you get canon's new hd camers with the option of shooting 25 frames in pal, wouldn't the uncompressed data rate drop to around 1.25?
if so, would it be possable for Spec Comm to develope there system to work with this setup. if you think this makes sense, please pose the question next time you talk to them.
thanks,
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES
p.s. do you know if they will be at the DV Expo?

for this to be able to take the HD-SDI in from the canon, you would need about 12 laptop drives in a raid array to be able to handle the bandwidth, so no i dont think it will happen.