Any news from NAB on the U1 firmware?

[Jeremy Doyle]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

That's why I wish we could create the volume name for the disc using the camera itself. I see no reason why not since we can now enable disc file naming by using the clip title. That would have helped alleviate your dilemma at the moment.

-gb-

I agree. If I could do this in camera, I probably wouldn't even need the write portion enabled.

I'm pretty diligent about setting up clip titles, so I can usually figure out what disc it is pretty quickly, but not as quickly as being able to name the disc.

All in all my complaints are pretty small for all the benefits that we have gained. It really is a versatile system. You can treat it 100% like tape formats of the past or 100% like the computer files they are.

So many options and really depends on a person's needs or wants. And the picture isn't far from our HDCAM 730's.

[Paul Gale]

No matter what the reasons for the update taking so long, the fact of the matter is that we were told the firmware update would be released shortly after the units shipped. In my case I had one of the first available in the UK and these were also available before they were in the US. It's not the technical guys I'm disapointed with, but more the marketing team.

I've been without half of the functionality 5-6 months now which is quite a proportion of the life of a product like this which we'd write off over 4 years accounting wise.

Greg - with utmost respect! - it makes no difference what the initial reason for releasing the drive is - it's sold as a read/write device.

Anyway - I'm not ranting at anyone here, just hoping that Sony may look at this thread and be spured on to get this update finished :)

Paul.

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Paul Gale

Greg - with utmost respect! - it makes no difference what the initial reason for releasing the drive is - it's sold as a read/write device.

The brochure I have from last year's NAB said write-back capability would be in the first quarter of this year. Granted, that only gives them 5 days to come in under the wire.

Believe me, I understand. I got the F350 before there was any FCP support for the XDCAM codecs or an XDCAM Transfer Tool. 2006 was a year of hurry up and wait, but it wasn't all Sony's fault.

-gb-

[Paul Gale]

Ah OK, I believe it must be a case of my dealer over-promissing then as they told me it was imminent :(

[Andy Mees]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

... the U1 is truly a 'dumb' device ... with Windows, the programmer can hook into the OS code ... OSX does not have the same generic hooks
-gb-

Greg
Thanks for that. Both interesting and disappointing in equal measure ... I'd admit I assumed the device to be no dumber than the D1, but it would make sense as a pure IT unit (no AV/C) that it lacks the same built-in capacity for writing.
Ah well, still a great read unit till the code is cooked
Cheers
Andy