Hi Sam

have you tried one out? a facilities company in central london, U.K swears by the firestore... i have held off cause i heard rumours too, would be good to have some solid reports from anyone who owns one!

by the way can't find release date on the Cineporter site - where does it say Summer 2007? and is it a confirmed date?

thanks

isabel

Hi Sam

have you tried one out? a facilities company in central london, U.K swears by the firestore... i have held off cause i heard rumours too, would be good to have some solid reports from anyone who owns one!
I was on a shoot last night with two HVXs... one used P2, one used a Firestore. The Firestore screwed up a few times, actually.

The FW cable got snagged once... CUT. The battery ran out w/o warning... CUT. And we had a couple of late record starts... ACTION... wait... okay, ACTION.

It's not a terrible device, just finicky. Yes, it does long-form, but I rarely do that... and when I do, it's typically SD. If I had to do an HD doc today, I'd borrow an HDV camera. This is why I don't own a Firestore.

wow! that does sound like a bit of a pain!!

well, i wouldn't choose to use the Z1 just cause of its limited lens (ie: full on depth of field whatver you do with it!)... do you know of any other alternatives to the Firestore/ P2 right now? and do you know whether Panasonic may have upgraded the Firestore since it first came out? (wishful thinking here!)

thanks for your advice

isabel

IMHO, tape has unpredictable dropouts.....any media has its aspects of unreliability. I use firestore fs4hd without tape backup. it's become that reliable. it does take some getting used to it, to understand where its weaknesses are. but, once you work thru them, i'll take it over tape, any day.

thanks for the tip, do you know if it's compatible for DVCPro HD use (Panasonic HVX 200)? looks like it's been designed for DV and HDV only...
isabel

quick moan... We are in the process of trying to swap our Firestore for P2 cards... just cant rely on it.. we have had a few shoots now where we have resorted to using the tape backup taken at the same time...

We believe its the cable, doesnt matter HOW relieble the box is, if the cable wobbles (which it WILL unless you are only studio based) then we lose that clip...

Havent even dared to try HD yet... so... anyone got a couple of P2's they wanna swap if the shop won't take ours back???

have you tried using a more flexible cable? friend mentioned it might be a good option - like the one off your ipod (if you have one!) - if you try it please let me know if it works! as i am considering getting a Firestore imminently!

thanks!

isabel

firewire cables are really the undoing of firewire devices. the best firewire cables I've been able to find are at www.unibrain.com
I should also mention that a lot of manufacturers are now warning to NOT hotswap 6-pin firewire devices because the 6-pin version carries external power. apparently if the power is on, several users have reported burning out their electronics by inadvertent shorts of the power pin to the signal pins. So, a word of caution...always turn the power off on your devices before plugging/unplugging a firewire cable.

Canon even recommends against swapping out the 4pin - unpowered firewire cables on thier camcorders.

There is a new 4-pin right angle FireWire cable that is available for FS-100/HVX200. It solves a lot of issues as it is more secure on the 4-pin side and also does not stick out from the camera as much which was causing many of the issues.

We also recommend that you check you are running the latest firmware (2.0.3).

Matt

My experience so far is that the FS can be reliable as long as you don't expect it to be -;)

Doublecheck everything all the time, and you're fine.

I'd love the version 3 firmware to have an alarm go off if the datastream is cut-off during recording when you haven't hit the rec button on your camera -;) Then I would maybe dare to use the bebox I got with it. -;)
For now I just don't dare NOT being able to see the screen at all times.

Gunleik

Matt, where can we find the right angle cable?

The right angle cable is a 4-pin right angle to 6-pin (4ft.) and will be available for order from the Focus webstore shortly. Order part number CBLA-0151-01.

Matt

Matt,
Doesn't Focus Enhancements already offer a firewire cable with an angle? If I recall correctly, one came with our DR-5000's (FS-3), but it was very short. We since have sold those off and upgraded to FS-4 HD's because of our cameras.

As to the reliability of the FS-4's, we used 3 of them ysterday for an All day cheer competition that we were doing. 2 cameras / firestores were on sticks and the other I was using as a hand held. Worked out perfectly. Ran all day without stopping or anything. No drop outs, no problems. I don't see what all the fuss is about. Recorded to .m2t files in HDV 30p. The only problems we are having is gaps between clips (a couple of frames) when put toether, although from my understanding this is a Vegas issue. We have 2 that have 100Gb hard drives in (Hitachi, same as OEM) and one with a Segate 120Gb, 8Mb Buffer drive in it.

The 100Gb = 670 minutes in .m2t mode

The 120GB = 804 Minutes im .m2t mode

Both work flawlessly - and it was an easy, 5 minute upgrade since we're computer guys.

For the hand held, we run a battery belt that powers the Firestore all day and night.

So, I am recanting some of my statement I made yesterday.... Although our firestores worked fine, there are gaps between files which is going to make it very time consuming to edit. Not happy. I have tried some other apps, such as Womble and Premiere Pro, same thing...glitches. I am beginning to think this is a Focus Enhancements Firestore problem, not a Vegas problem. Looking at their compatibility chart, the only thing it says is that the timecode does not work properly, but other than that, it is compatible.

Well, it's not. .m2t files have gaps, and until someone can point me in the right direction of what to do, I am recommending against the FS-4 units for HDV. At this point, I will be more than happy to change NLEs if it means that I don't have to go line all this stuff up. This is getting very old.

a few days ago, someone with gap problems using FCP posted a work around. I think it was Danny Fye, but, I can't be certain. His recommended workaround is to copy the files from the firestore disk to your local hard drive, assemble the timeline from the clips and merge to a contiguous clip with something like Womble before bringing it into the editor. He claims this fixed the problem. Danny has been compaining that the problem is with the FAT32 file system on the Firestore.

Good to know. When I have some time later this afternoon, I will put a couple clips together, export them and drop them into vegas. I will post my findings later.

I ran some different tests last night with the Firestore unit itself, selecting different options for recording. No difference. I did reinstall Vegas 6 and there is still some funky stuff happening (like the audio drop out at the end of each clip), and contrary to what everything everyone is saying about the video being continuous, it's not. It's almost like there is an extra frame in there, but it is much more manageable and acceptable in 6 than in 7. Vegas 7 drops multiple frames.

It's really hard to tell where the proble is coming from. Some say it's a Vegas issue, but I don't think so as it does it with multiple applications. I personally still think it's a firestore issue, and if Focus Enhancements is going to advertise that .m2t is compatible with these NLE's, it really needs to be. Not only is it false advertising, but I think if someone were pist off enough about it, like ruining someone's very important video, FE could possibly be held liable for false advertising and neglegance.

I think FE needs to come up with a workaround, or do some extensive testing and reconfiguring of their software. Otherwise, issue a recall so I can go purchase something that actually works as claimed.

Dunno where Matt McQuen(sp?) is from Firestore. He was monitoring these posts, but, haven't seen him chime in lately. Yes, I'm beginning to feel the problem is with Firestore, myself. Most of the funkiness seems to originate there.

You might be interested in playing with the software from Womble. Their editor is "frame accurate" in that it assembles and works with mpeg2 files and does cuts only at "I" frames.

I have been using the womble software with some success. The only problem is, I need to run an Unsharp mask over one of the cameras and I don't think womble handles those sort of tasks. I may have to bring each clip into vegas, run the effects, then re-render and then use Womble to cut it up. Not the workflow I had in mind, but I am thinking I will build a quad-core super fast computer later this week and hopefully that will save me a ton of time.