Convergent Designs Flash XDR

[Tim Polster]

How about Grass Valley/Canopus Edius?

[Mike Schell]

Originally Posted by Piotr Wozniacki

This is all very nice, but:

- still no word on mounting option for Sony EX1
- still not even a shortest sample of 50 Mbps 4:2:2 which not only would help us assess quality (which I believe will be great), but also let us try out our current NLE's (using Vegas personally, I wouldn't like the idea of being forced to invest in Liquid, or a hardware card for HD-SDI capture, at all !!)

Mike?

Hi Piotr-
Sorry, but we have been a little busy with NAB. However, our engineers stayed home and worked on XDR while I relaxed at the show!

We do have images at 50 Mbps and 100 Mbps 4:2:2. You can see a definite improvement over 25 Mbps HDV, but it's hard to see the difference between 50 and 100 Mbps. I am sure that we'll see a difference in high-detail and/or high-motion footage. I will try to get images posted this week for download, but I'll need to offload to a file streaming site, as these could overload the bandwidth of our server.

I will also meet with our mechanical engineer to discuss mounting options to the various cameras. I'll post some concepts ASAP.

[Mike Schell]

Dear DV Info Members-
We want to thank everyone who stopped by our booth last week at NAB. We appreciate your comments and suggestions. We were, quite frankly, swamped. We had Flash XDR units at our booth as well as the Canon, Iconix and Polecam. All locations reported high levels of traffic. Thank you!

We are also excited to report that Flash XDR won two awards: Videography Magazine Viddy award and Broadcast Engineering Pick Hit. Again, we thank everyone's comments and recommendations throughout these last 9-12 months as these helped us define Flash XDR into an award winning product!

We will send an e-mail blast update later this week with photos and more details.

Sincerely-
Mike Schell and the Convergent Design Team

[Mike Schell]

Originally Posted by Tim Polster

How about Grass Valley/Canopus Edius?

Hi Tim-
Can you e-mail to me a good technical contact? I would like to send them test MXF files.

[Chris Hurd]

Here's a couple of NAB photos to start off with...

[Ethan Cooper]

That's a good bit larger than I had imagined. Is that the actual size or were those things just rough mockups?

[Tim Polster]

Hello Mike,

I don't know who would handle this type of request.

I might suggest the forum moderators at http://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/forum/index.php

Or a call to tech support at (801) 222-5204 might lead you in the right direction.

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Originally Posted by Ethan Cooper

That's a good bit larger than I had imagined. Is that the actual size or were those things just rough mockups?

Exactly my first thought, too. Actually, with the unit being this huge, it's not a question how you attach it to the EX1 camera - rather how you attach the camera to this monster :)

I don't know why, instead of reading the specs carefully, I imagined it being the size of the Sony DR60 drive!

[Ethan Cooper]

I've seen under camera cage mounts that hold firestores so I'm guessing that wouldn't be a bad option for this thing with smaller non-shoulder mounted cameras. Maybe you could also stick it on the back of one of those 3rd party shoulder mounts for the oversized handycam types too. If the image quality gains of this thing are as advertised, someone will figure out a good way to mount it to almost anything.

I can now understand why it wouldn't be a great match for say an HV20 or that sized camera.

[Chris Hurd]

Considering that it's a $5,000 SDI recorder, it was never a great match for a $900 non-SDI HV20.

[Dan Keaton]

Convergent-Design will be designing a custom bracket for the XL H1 and XL H1s to hold the Flash XDR.

The photo of the Canon XL H1s shows the Flash XDR resting on the standard bracket that comes with the XL H1s. This bracket is not custom designed for the Flash XDR. The custom bracket will probably hold the Flash XDR lower.

[Chris Hurd]

Yeah, on the spur of the moment I had asked Dan to hold the Flash XDR up to the XL H1 accessory bracket, and he said "what, like this?" and I snapped the photo. I didn't put a whole lot of thought into it.

[Mike Leisegang]

Hi,

Sorry to add to this negitive point, it looks big to me as well.

Would need to use off camera somehow, sound crazy but strapped to my arm or something.

Suggestions would be great.

Mike.

[Dan Keaton]

The Flash XDR is relatively big, but not as big as it looks in the first photo of Chris's.

I do not know what lens Chris was using, but we have a "Wide Angle Lens" effect in that photo, in that items closer to the lens look bigger, and items farther away look smaller.

Just take a look at my hand, it looks much bigger than the Canon lens.

Of course the Flash XDR is bigger than what was originally planned, but it is not as big as it looks in the first photo.

Convergent-Design announced the nanoFlash at NAB. This unit will be much smaller and will have different capabilities.

For example, the nanoFlash will have two Compact Flash card slots instead of four which will allow the unit to be smaller.

In addition, the nanoFlash will probably not have the four additional power supplies which are required to support world class analog audio inputs.

The nanoFlash will still support audio embedded in the HD-SDI bit stream, as does the larger Flash XDR, but not XLR mic inputs with phantom power.

Mike Schell will post the actual weight and size of the Flash XDR as soon as possible.

[Piotr Wozniacki]

NanoFlash - sounds so interesting, even though I already have paid the deposit for the XDR! For my needs, the 2x32GB CF cards and no additional XLR inputs would be just enough - if accompanied by a lower size and price tag...

Mike, please update us on the nanoFlash; when will it be available?