MxR Expresscard Reader moves from final QC to Shipping

[Andrew Clark]

Originally Posted by Ross Herewini

I went down to Videocraft in Artarmon yesterday, and Rob Fluoro was very helpful in letting me try out the MxR in their EX30, and EX3. It was recognised immediately and we were able to see it on their Mac setup, no problem.

It was recognised in just the same way as the Sony SxS 8Gb I took with me to test.

So Ross...does your adapter fit properly in the EX3 just like the EX1? I read a few posts earlier that somebody mentioned that it was a challenge to pull it out of the EX3 slots (A or B slot...don't remember). Would you enlighten us as to your findings about this?

And again, many thanks for a delightfully inexpensive SxS alternative solution!!

[Bob Grant]

Originally Posted by Ross Herewini

Hi Bob,

I went down to Videocraft in Artarmon yesterday, and Rob Fluoro was very helpful in letting me try out the MxR in their EX30, and EX3. It was recognised immediately and we were able to see it on their Mac setup, no problem.

It was recognised in just the same way as the Sony SxS 8Gb I took with me to test.

That looks like a sweet deck, I'd love to have a longer play with one, but I didn't want to wear out the welcome.

You can have an extended play with ours anytime you like.

[Ross Herewini]

Originally Posted by Paul Kellett

Hi Ross.
I have a question for you about the device you're planning, for offloading multiple cards at once, if that's ok.

I can plug multiple sdhc cards into my pc at once, using multiple usb slots and the cheap little sdhc>usb readers, the ones which came with my transcend cards, however, i can only open one instance of clip browser at a time, so can only offload one card at a time.
I suppose i could offload multiple cards at once using just windows but i'd prefer to use clip browser.

So my question to you is how will we go about offloading multiple cards at the same time ?


Thanks.
Paul.

Hi Paul,

There you go wanting to spoil all the fun for everyone else.

Next week, I promise...

[Paul Kellett]

Ha ha.

I suppose what i'm getting at is, will we be limited by clip browser, ie one card at a time ?
And will we be able to transfer multiple cards at once safely ?

Thanks Ross.

Paul.

[Brian Rhodes]

Finally received MY (4) SCANDISK 32GB CARDS yesterday shot 118min with the MxR no problems with recording or play back. Its good to have 4 hours of recording on each cam.

[Jose Bucaro]

Originally Posted by Andrew Clark

So Ross...does your adapter fit properly in the EX3 just like the EX1? I read a few posts earlier that somebody mentioned that it was a challenge to pull it out of the EX3 slots (A or B slot...don't remember). Would you enlighten us as to your findings about this?

And again, many thanks for a delightfully inexpensive SxS alternative solution!!

The only thing I can say to you is that I purchased 4 adapters for my EX3 and they fit perfectly on the A or B slots.

[Steven Rupert]

Originally Posted by Ross Herewini

Hi Guys,

Here's an update on where we are up to.

I just got back from the factory with the first shipment of cards for immediate release.

Quality Control:

I took my EX1 with me, along with a small pile of Ultra II 16GB cards. Each of the first 500 cards were tested individually, by me. They even get a little sticker on the back to say so. I was going to sign each one just for fun, until it turned into being, well, not so much fun.

Results:

In the first 500 there were 2 cards that came up with "media error", the rest were not only recognised but also had 5secs recorded over them.

500 cards, 2 failures.

That took about 7 hours of non-stop testing to achieve. I really wanted to test the another 500 but it would have meant being there until midnight, and the prospect of not so happy manufacturing people.

We also conducted another random sample of 50 cards from the next 500, and none failed. If you get a failed card, please contact me and we will ship another at our expense, expedited, to you. Just show us proof that the card is back on it’s way to us. We will pass it back to manufacturing to find out why it failed.

When I get some time tomorrow, (well maybe the day after), I’m going to start a little mini-study on Poisson distribution. It never occurred to me to ask the question of how they could get the same level of confidence as my labour intensive, individual testing using sampling techniques. But it can be done.

So are we shipping tomorrow?

For International orders, (ie not Australian), YES, WE ARE SHIPPING 19 DECEMBER 2008 as promised.

All Australian orders will be dispatched Tuesday 23 December for arrival Wednesday 24 December. (We had to concentrate on the overseas orders first because it takes so long to get there). Sorry for dispatching one day late, we just ran out of hands.

If you live in Sydney metro, and are nervous that Australia post might let you down, (although I’d have to say they rarely do, and I send out things all the time to nervous brides), one of the little elves said he would take a personal run with the sleigh to warm it up on Wednesday, and hand deliver to you. All you have to do is send me an email, tell me your name and address, and put in the subject, “To Santa’s little helper”, and we’ll pull yours from the mail processing.

I’m going to print out picking slips and labels tonight before I turn in, and match them all up tomorrow. So I’m sitting here in my hotel room, typing this up on my laptop surrounded by packing boxes, cartons and cartons of MxR cards, a laser printer I begged off the factory, and labels I bought with me, and no prospect of a beer until they are all sent.

So I will be emailing the invoices to you all as soon as the dispatch process has been completed, over the next few days. If you need the invoice sooner than that, email me, I can’t promise anything, but email me anyway.

Thanks again for all your terrific support, and as a small aside, I pushed the button on the next batch of four thousand to be delivered between now and New Year, that’s this new year, so there won’t be any shortage. I hope you all enjoy many happy years of shooting with your MxR's. I’d be really keen to hear feedback, good or bad, mind you bad wasn’t what I was planning for, but it does happen. Let us know how you go.

Ross Herewini
E-Films Video Production.


Ps If I could get the darn blog and faq software to work in Wordpress 2.6, I’d tell you there are some really exciting things happening on the memory front. As usual can’t say too much, but then when the MxR thing started, I couldn’t say too much about this either.

PS if you know anything about Wordpress v2.6 blogging, or FAQ in version 2.6, I would be very grateful if you could help me figure it out. My Web developer has gone on walkabout, I think i might have offended his delicate sensibilities when he stuffed up the Us airmail thing.

Hello, I have a question. I've been looking at buying the Sony EX3 but couldn't get past the price of the memory cards. Could you please explain to me how your solution addresses the issue? I don't quite understand.

Thank you so much and I apologize for asking what seems to be an obvious question.

[Craig Seeman]

16GB Sony SxS - $750
MxR card - $35, Transcend Class 6 SDHC 16GB card -$30 - Total $65

32GB Sony SxS - $1425
MxR card - $35, Sandisk Ultra II 32GB -$150 - Total $185

Additionally one can
avoid the cost of laptop needed to bring to a shoot to offload on location
can sell the media to client who wants to walk with the camera masters instead of the additional cost of portable hard drive or optical disc and backup time on location.

[C.S. Michael]

After a slight shipping delay (no doubt due to the holiday rush), my MxR cards have arrived and work flawlessly with my EX1 (using SanDisk Ultra II). Congrats Ross on bringing this excellent product to the market!

[Keith Anderson]

My cards arrived and I am happy to report that all 5 work perfectly with my Sandisk 32gb cards. Thanks Ross!


Wishing you a prosperous 09!
Keith Anderson

[Ross Herewini]

Originally Posted by James Dierx

I received 2 MxRs from ya Ross. Overall they have worked great for me. The only problem I have with them is...

On the EX3 it's a hard to get MxR out of the slot closest to the audio controls. I have to get pliers to pull it out. Maybe they are a tad too big? I don't really have a problem with it.. You're saving me thousands of dollars that I do not have. I just do not want to crush the card w/ the pliers on accident!

Is it just me? does anyone else have this issue?

Hi James,


Thanks for your patience. I finally got to test an EX3 with a range of our cards this week.

I took a selection of cards with me, from ones I had measured as being at spec., to ones I knew from measuring were on the very outside of specification.

What I found was, and I have to keep referring to statistics to help me understand and explain this,... during manufacture there is a normal distribution of widths of cards. For any given size there will be cards that are under, some that are over specification, distributed around the mean size, which is our specification. The distribution is always in a bell curve, which means most will be fine, but a small number will fall outside of what is acceptable.

Slot B on an EX1 is marginally smaller than Slot A, and the same from my testing applies to the EX3, with one small gotcha, if you try and insert a slightly wider card into the narrower slot B, because of the audio controls, can make it very difficult to remove.

As a result of your feedback, we have given the factory a new set of parameters to produce the card so that this will not happen in the future. We also know what to look for now in our own sampling.

What about you, I hear you ask, no problem, we will unconditionally replace any cards that are hard to insert/eject, and I will make sure that the card you receive in it's place is tested by hand to ensure that it fits and works. This offer is open to any EX3 user.

Just send us proof that you have sent the card back that doesn't fit and we will send out a replacement right away, so you can get back to shooting as quickly as possible.

Thanks for giving us the heads-up on the problem, we wouldn't have known about it otherwise, and I'll bet there are others suffering in silence, that's why we're always pleased to get feedback, good or bad, it's all helpful.

[Ernesto Figge]

Ross, your adapter works fine in my EX1 with Sandisk 16GB.

Many thanks from Argentina!

Ernesto

[Mick Wilcomes]

Hey All,
I just have to say that the prompt service and customer support from Ross and Efilm team was great, I can't wait to put them through their paces.Ross, thanks for the gift too!
Mick

[Brian Rhodes]

Originally Posted by Craig Seeman

16GB Sony SxS - $750
MxR card - $35, Transcend Class 6 SDHC 16GB card -$30 - Total $65

32GB Sony SxS - $1425
MxR card - $35, Sandisk Ultra II 32GB -$150 - Total $185

Additionally one can
avoid the cost of laptop needed to bring to a shoot to offload on location
can sell the media to client who wants to walk with the camera masters instead of the additional cost of portable hard drive or optical disc and backup time on location.

I picked up my HF11 and four Sandisk Ultra II 32GB SDHC cards from Scott at TapeWorks Texas the cards were $145.00

[Chris Leong]

Received three MxRs early this year and have used all three out in the field on a dramatic film. All three have functioned perfectly.
Thanks again, Ross!
Cheers
Chris