Our Project to Create a Cost Effective Solid State HD Video Recording Device Begins
 

Hi friends. Well, it's official. My project to create a cost effective solid state removeable media HD digital video recorder has begun. I have now secured an electrical engineer with over 10 years of design spec to mass manufacturing of digital video and multi-media device design experience. I found a good lawyer locally to draw up contractual agreements and secure patent protection.

It is our goal to create an affordable SSDR device. We don't know exactly how close we will come to an affordable price point, but I promiss you we will explore all available technological avenues open to us to arrive at our stated goal of producing an afforable device. Feel free to express ideas or ask questions. We are listening. I am *never* afraid of your questions. I can't always guarantee I can answer them all either. If I don't know, then I tell you I don't know and I won't give you any boloney.

What has promted me to finally arrive at this point of departure is simple: As a digital HD film maker I cannot find a SSDR solution on the market which meets our basic production requirements. Those requirements are.................

1. Device must be at an affordable price.
2. Device must be capable of single frame capture in High Definition video resolution.
3. Device must have standard consumer and professional connection I/O for video and audio.
4. Device must record to an affordable removeable media easily attainable at retail outlets.
5. Device must produce video files compatible with Avid, FCP and Sony Vegas NLE.
6. Device must be small enough to easily mount on any consumer or professional camcorder.
7. Device must be able to double as a digital VTR in the studio or post environment.

My agenda is to create a simple to use, fexible and affordable video recording/player tool. As soon as I have a functioning prototype, then I'll take a picture and post it on this forum. As soon as I have video files, then I'll post them as well. We should have a testable prototype built by late Spring. We're already at the component spec stage, and we're producing technical drawings of our box size. We should have a PCB design spec'd by March.

Hi Mark,

Did you intentionally omit Premiere Pro as one of the NLE's for compatibility?

Alan

....Hi Alan. No. Not per se. We wanted to focus on the big three NLE's first. You could argue that Adobe Premiere is in this group as well, since many folks are using CS3 and CS4.

Re: Point 7...it's going to use tape too?

. No tape Bill. We're keeping it solid state, but it will be able to bridge the gap between the old analogue world and the new clip based solid state world.

I really hope premiere will support whatever files it may use.

Could you give this device the ability to do time lapses?

...Yes. I already stated that in my initial post. Single frame Interval recording (Timelapse) is most certainly on the list of functional priorities. Especially in HD resolution.

No tape, so when you say "digital VTR," you don't mean digital VTR. What do you mean in that area? Just trying to get that one straight in my head, since a VTR is a VTR.

Thanks for the clarification, although in your original post I only saw the ability to record a single frame(no mention of interval) but you cleared up the misunderstanding, thanks!

Good luck Mark.

Do you know which codec(s) you will use for your box?

This seems to be the crux of the whole enterprise.

Jpeg2000 or AVC-Intra seem like great choices but I don't know the cost of using different codecs.

...Sorry for the confusion here. To clarify, I meant we wanted a digital solid state recorder/player which had all of the functions of a VTR, and could bridge the gap between digital and analogue I/O. Right now, it is a toss up as to what we will include or finally decide to leave off of our device. We're not trying to throw everything but the kitchen sink into our box, but we want to be comprehensive. Flexibility, compatibility, and ease of use are intrinsic in our design philosophy.

Also, the size of our R & D project is quite small. We are putting small Dollars until after we've reached a successful prototype stage. Once we have a prototype which passes all functional testing, then we will take a decision as to where we go from there. It is not our intention to prove anything to other manufacturors who also manufacture SSDR devices. Our main goal is to create a device capable of performing all of the functions we require in our productions, and at this point we don't consider such a device extent. We are concentrating on spec'ing the compenents out and costing them right now. Our focus is to get to a practical prototype box at our earliest possible point to slap on my Canon XL H1 to begin practical testing. We will most likely build an initial unit much larger than what I invision for our final miniturized version. Our design philosophy is from that of a shooter, who must use the device in everyday production environments to make money.

...We're committed to *not* using any form of MPEG 2 hardware encoding engine as our main signal encoder. I can be emphatic on this point. I have instructed our electrical engineer to look at other types of hardware encoding the HD video signal, including RAW 24F and 24P full uncompressed, which will be included. We don't want to just capture and deliver 4:2:2 colorspace. We also would like to examine capturing the wider 4:4:4 color space by possibly using a hardware 12 bit signal encoder. BTW, a special word on encoder/decoder chips. These IC's come in a great spectrum of quality capabilities and price points. We may use some form of secondary hardware conversion to get our captured HD video data into a variety of multiple formats. I am tossing around all kinds of formats with our electrical engineer. H. 264, QT, Xvid, MXF full spec compatibility and direct stream to Blu-ray. What if you could capture into a real time encoded disc authoring ready book standard Blu-ray elemental or transport stream ? HDV will also be there for sure. The timelapse HD capture can be accomplished via several approaches. You don't even have to *make* a video file to do it friends ! Our unit will also offer a feature that no other device offers - confidence video and audio monitoring in real time ! Yup, it can now be done and it's not as complicated as you would think it is.

Hi Mark-
Best of luck in this new endeavor. Hopefully there is a Starbucks nearby your office, cause this is quite an ambitious time line.

Best-

This may be the understatement of 2009.

Uncompressed 1080 is about what? 550GB/hr or 9GB per minute. That would give me 7 minutes on two 32GB SDHC cards *IF* they could sustain the data rate.. which they cannot. So you're going to need several spindles of RAID to get the transfer rate..

I don't care if it's compressed. Make it JPEG200. Something with low or no licensing costs and free readers. And easy support in NLEs.

...There is a Starbucks nearby, but we save money brewing our own at the office ;-) You are quite correct Mike. My timeline is too ambitious. I was informed this evening by our project's electrical engineer I am close to six months too optimistic. Think more like 11 months. Sorry about that. Hope springs eternal ;-)