CineForm HDMI Recorder Concept Posted

[Jim Andrada]

Are two CF slots enough? Let's not forget that I/O errors occur on CF as well as tape. I use an SD 702 and have had glitches caused by errors on the CF mess up the audio. So now I always record to CF and disk simultaneously if it's anything important.

So maybe we would need two PAIRS of CF cards?

Also - how many minutes of recording would we get on a CF card. I use 16 GB cards for audio and if we were recording the hated m2t to CF it would give us a bit over an hour per card, but with Cineform, wouldn't it be more like 20 or 30 minutes per card (depending on Cineform level)

I guess what I'm getting at is that I think we really would need a small HDD with the unit - or maybe two small HDD's in parallel.

And if so, then we need a place to stick the HDD's which is why I was muttering about velcro-ing them to the unit. Unless there were a couple of bays where we could stick them.

Anyhow, would someone at Cineform like to make an estimate of what kind of recording times we'd get under a couple of reasonable scenarios?

[Alex Raskin]

What Jim said - except I'd not even mess with CF cards at the present time.

Here's rationale: to have reliable recording, we need Raid1 either with cards or HDDs.

Since cards are so much more expensive, and so much smaller in capacity than HDDs, the choice seems to be clear in favor of HDDs.

Why not simply have eSATA Raid1 connectors on Cineform box, so all one has to do is attach 2 HDDs and be done.

Since the whole thing can be belt-worn, two drives are feasible to carry around.

Granted, the Cineform box needs to take the battery power and transform it into what HDDs need to be powered up as well.

[Steven Thomas]

Originally Posted by Marcelo Arend

I found this link yesterday:
http://www.convergent-design.com/dow...0and%20FAQ.pdf

PRICE ==> US $4995

Yes, sounds good, but IMO they are about $2.5K to much.

[Steven Thomas]

I'm a bit confused about this concept.

"Most" cam operators that have HDMI don't have a clue what the benefit this portable solution offers. Most of these cameras cost less than the projected price of this recorder.

Now, looking at the JVC HD-250, Canon H1, and especially the upcoming Sony XDCAM EX1 ( This cam is going to sell like hotcakes), there is "real" market from users who are craving to use their SDI output.

There is no small battery operated portable solution that offers SDI.
If you have to "up" the price to $2500-$3000, do so.
Offer HDMI and SDI on one unit and this recorder will be the most popular "must have" for all!

Sign me up for two !

If the SDI happens by next year, I will cancel my plans for the XDR, which I believe is to much $$

[Bill Ravens]

I've had this conversation with C-D. Their arguement is that SDI licensing greatly affected their asking price. I agree with you, Steve...too expensive at $5K.

I like the idea of having a "front end" capture box that outputs to SATA II. That way, the user can choose his record media. All types of media are available in SATA II interface.... hard disk, Compact Flash, single disk or RAID X with a port multiplier...and in NTFS or FAT32 to satisfy MAC users.

[Stephen Armour]

Originally Posted by Steven Thomas

...If you have to "up" the price to $2500-$3000, do so.
Offer HDMI and SDI on one unit and this recorder will be the most popular "must have" for all!...

Doesn't seem like HDMI plus SDI will ever happen. It's either one or the other for a unit that has to compress the input video into HD Cf format...especially when you're uprezing via the HDMI to 1920, 10-bit. That signal has to be processed via silicon and unless the chips that can handle both are available, it has to be done via CPU power as in "embedded" PCs.

Great to think custom chips, but...I would imagine that is a long way off still. It'll come, but not for a good while. Better to do what works first, then make it happen in silicon later. As CF will very soon discover...

And I would say it wouldn't happen for less than what was quoted above. In fact, I'd bet on it. If it was that easy, it'd already be in your hands.

[Jim Andrada]

And don't forget those of us who DO understand the benefit but happen to have cameras (like JVC HD110U) that don't have HDMI or SDI. Still a need for component I'm afraid.

[Stephen Armour]

Originally Posted by Jim Andrada

And don't forget those of us who DO understand the benefit but happen to have cameras (like JVC HD110U) that don't have HDMI or SDI. Still a need for component I'm afraid.

I seriously doubt 90% of the people here could tell the dif between component ingest and HDMI or SDI after it's CFed. I probably couldn't either. The component "in" needs to be there too, at least on the HDMI model.

[David Taylor]

We're already thinking of the second unit. We would like the second unit to add single-and dual-link HD-SDI, with the appropriate up-market features including audio. I suspect we'd also want to have HDMI on this unit. If so then it would do everything this first HDMI unit does plus adds Pro audio and HD-SDI.

Fortunately the compression electronics and controller inside are being designed from the beginning to handle the increased processing needs for the second unit. We'd like the second unit to be mostly software upgrades plus additional physical interfaces. At least that's the thought right now....

[Stephen Armour]

May it happen!

[Michael Young]

Originally Posted by Alex Raskin

Sound creates *more* impact on the movie viewer than visuals.

(As much as we don't want to believe it... it's true.)

That's why noisy way of feeding the sound through the camera into HDMI is not good - both the noise and distortion levels are too bad.

Camera manufacturers do it on purpose, so people could not use a $4K camera instead of professional $25K (SD) / $90K (HD) one.

So for serious sound, we use double system with external preamp and recorder - but it is not sync'd with video at the time of recording, and requires huge post-production time to sync it.

That same audio fed into Cineform box over the analog audio in, multiplexed by Cineform to the HDMI-fed video, would immediately solve the problem.

Since we are at the spec stage, I have to positively insist that the Cineform box *has* to have analog audio In with all versions.

As to which connectors - sure XLRs are great, but realistically I just don't know if even mini-XLRs can be fitted in the box's size, and how will that impact the economics. I'd still settle for the RCA's at least.

I think, it is more important for the Cineform box to have a very low noise, low distortion A/D converter, and ability to multiplex that analog signal to HDMI video on-the-fly in sync.

If XLRs *can* be fitted and afforded, then of course that'd be the best. But *at least* have RCA's and *analog audio in* on all versions! (Alex is making a poster and plans on demonstrating outside of the Cineform headquarters :)

This is one of the best posts. Cameras XLR ports tend to be not as good as they should be. Currently, we bypass the camera XLRs when it comes to sound and go straight to our capture device. This way the sound first goes through a mixer were we first make sure we are capturing a good signal.

Real XLRs are much more important than many of the suggestions here. Personally, looking at a HDMI capture device, XLRs are really the only other thing we would really need. All this talk about HDSDI, screens, RCA jacks, component, media player features are really talking about a different type of product. Personally, a HDMI capture device is what makes this product unique, not CineForm. Anything that deviates from HDMI captures raises costs. The only other features I want are things that improve that workflow like XLR jacks.

Also: HDDs over CF any day!!!
M

[Michael Young]

Originally Posted by David Taylor

We're already thinking of the second unit. We would like the second unit to add single-and dual-link HD-SDI, with the appropriate up-market features including audio. I suspect we'd also want to have HDMI on this unit. If so then it would do everything this first HDMI unit does plus adds Pro audio and HD-SDI.

Fortunately the compression electronics and controller inside are being designed from the beginning to handle the increased processing needs for the second unit. We'd like the second unit to be mostly software upgrades plus additional physical interfaces. At least that's the thought right now....

Then the second device is what I want, mostly because of the pro audio interface. If you are capturing dual link right now, I doubt you are waiting for a device like this. (Even HD-SDI is just extra costs, but understandable if you go that route.)

Personally, if we can only have one device, the second concept seems the direction I would hope you would go.
M

[Joseph H. Moore]

I'd be all for an "all digital" box that had no DAC's at all if it kept the box simple and/or inexpensive and/or small. We could do our audio mixing with a Beachtek-like device, feed it into the camera and send it along the HDMI path ...

... BUT, if there is going to be analog audio conversion, then by all means the connectors should be XLR.

[Jim Andrada]

Interesting point about telling the difference between component ingest and SDI/HDMI

I wonder if there really is any difference - or for that matter if anyone could tell the difference between the above and ingest from Firewire via the unversally loathed m2t.

Maybe I'm the kind of guy who isn't really sure that the refrigerator light goes out after closing the door, but I can't escape the uneasy feeling that if I had been a camera engineer in the early days of DV/HDV I would have understood that the camera had two functions. 1) to record m2t video to tape and 2) to playback m2t video from tape

Starting from that premise, I would have compressed everything into m2t as soon as possible and stuffed it into a buffer. Then the tape I/O would have had only two functions a) transfer the buffer to tape and b) transfer tape to the buffer. And my playback function would have just taken the m2t from the buffer and dumped it out its outputs, decompressing or converting D to A or up-rezzing or whatever as appropriate. In other words, there wouldn't have been any path through the camera that didn't involve m2t.

I know everybody believes that some Santa Claus of an engineer devised an m2t-free path through the camera just for us quality conscious guys, but - well, I wonder. Does the refrigerator light REALLY go out?

Regardless, and not to get off on a different topic that's already been flailed to death, the more input types the better - including the hated Firewire.

Anyhow, as long as it has some way for me to hook my camera up to it and doesn't cost much more than $2k, I'll buy one. The value of one and only one capture workflow is worth it.

[Jim Andrada]

By the way, since the number of people here on the forum must be a rather small subset of all Cineform users, might you consider making up a questionaire of some kind (hopefully including some of the ideas from this forum) and sending a link to it to everybody who has purchased Cineform?