MxM express recorder for Sony PMWEX1R

[John Poipie]

In the beginning there was no "light", but now we have enough "light", so why bother with external harddrives?
Iam pointing to the fact that a class-10 32gb SD-card is available and relative cheap now. For about 75US$ available at Amazon????
I bought the Sony harddrive 2 years ago for about us$ 1000,- totally waist of money. Used it twice and that was it. It gives so many restore errors that it makes one wonder. I even opened it to see if I could replace the harddrive with a SSD. It is possible, but by the time I found a suitable drive on the internet, it was not on stock and I cancelled the whole order and the whole replacement project.

[Marcus Durham]

Originally Posted by John Peterson

But the power is available over the USB connection, so it seems like madness to plug into an external source. An extra cable, not to mention you are tied to a wall wart.

You might be right about that Marcus, however I can't remember ever shooting for 5 plus hours without AC power off a cord reel. For portable shooting I use the cards and batteries.

John

If an EX1 totally loses power at any stage, chances are you are going to have a problem with a corrupted clip.

Personally if I am running on the mains, I leave a battery in the camera. The camera will fallback onto the battery if it loses mains power. No great shakes.

But if the recording device is powered externally, there is no belt and braces. Powering directly from the camera you avoid this as the camera will just switch to its backup.

[John Peterson]

But if the recording device is powered externally, there is no belt and braces. Powering directly from the camera you avoid this as the camera will just switch to its backup.
===========================================
That's a good point Marcus.
Thanks.

John

EDIT: I will be using two of these setups at once sometimes (one in each slot), so I probably would have to go external in those rare instances where I need more than 5 hours at a time.

[John Peterson]

Here is an example of how cheap it is to set one of these Deal Extreme rigs with a laptop drive if you look around and sign up for e-mail promos.

For today, Newegg has a promo code (EMCZZYR25) for 10% off.

You can get a Western Digital Laptop Drive:

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For $34.99 - 10% = $31.49 with Free Shipping and no tax. The User Reviews indicate that the drive is very reliable as well. It ships out of PA for me (I live in NY). I'll have the drive tomorrow.

John

[Ross Herewini]

"Transfer speeds initially seem around the same as an SxS card."

Hi Marcus,

In your testing can you confirm that the enclosure is a SATA II interface, or the older and slower SATA I. You can easily tell by the chipset used as there are relatively few on the market. If it is Initio or Satalink then it will be SATA I.

[Marcus Durham]

Originally Posted by Ross Herewini

"Transfer speeds initially seem around the same as an SxS card."

Hi Marcus,

In your testing can you confirm that the enclosure is a SATA II interface, or the older and slower SATA I. You can easily tell by the chipset used as there are relatively few on the market. If it is Initio or Satalink then it will be SATA I.

I can't at the moment I'm afraid as its back at the office and I'm not back until next week.

Also remembering that the card I put into the Mac today was a cheap and cheerful model. Although the ability to insert and eject disks with the machine on wasn't something I was expecting. Suddenly I wish I'd got a better model with more ports as I have a load of archive disks in enclosures that have ESATA. I'd never considered using it because everytime I've seen it demonstrated it required the PC to be turned off before a drive could be connected.

[Marcus Durham]

I've done a little write up at: this URL

It doesn't go into a lot of technical detail but hopefully people will be able to judge for themselves if the device is of use to them Certainly from a personal perspective the choice of SSD is a no brainer if you require a long continuous recording times on location.

[Ross Herewini]

Hi Marcus,

I couldn't see in your write-up which chipset is used in the enclosure, can you please confirm what it is?

Will this unit allow the door to be closed on the EX3?

[Marcus Durham]

Originally Posted by Ross Herewini

Hi Marcus,

I couldn't see in your write-up which chipset is used in the enclosure, can you please confirm what it is?

Will this unit allow the door to be closed on the EX3?

As I mentioned before, the unit is at my office so I'm not in a position to comment until I am next in and can take the device apart (I took the photos and resized them last week).

I don't have an EX3 so can only comment on the EX1's doors.

[Piotr Wozniacki]

I've just got my own kit from Marek at MxM, and so far all I can say is:

- wonderfully designed and engineered piece of equipment: a must for those long-time recordings!

- the eSATA connection to my PC allows for off-loading the SSD drive at a speed at least 3x higher than using the USB connection (sustained transfer at 90-100 MB/sec).

Will be reporting after some more testing.

Piotr

[Marcus Durham]

Originally Posted by Ross Herewini

"Transfer speeds initially seem around the same as an SxS card."

Hi Marcus,

In your testing can you confirm that the enclosure is a SATA II interface, or the older and slower SATA I. You can easily tell by the chipset used as there are relatively few on the market. If it is Initio or Satalink then it will be SATA I.

The chip is marked Initio and according to some documents I've found deals with the transfer between USB and SATA. The specs say it can transfer the USB data at 60 MB/S which should give plenty of headroom for the camera.

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Originally Posted by Marcus Durham

The specs say it can transfer the USB data at 60 MB/S which should give plenty of headroom for the camera.

I don't know about the chip, but the hard fact is my MxM SSD drive happily records overcranked 25p/60 fps, as do my MxM SDHC adapters with ATP Pro 32GB cards - after I finally upgraded my EX1 firmware from the 1.11 version (I went straight to the 1.25).

[Marcus Durham]

Originally Posted by Piotr Wozniacki

I don't know about the chip, but the hard fact is my MxM SSD drive happily records overcranked 25p/60 fps, as do my MxM SDHC adapters with ATP Pro 32GB cards - after I finally upgraded my EX1 firmware (I went straight to the 1.25).

60 meg is plenty for over cranking and it works flawlessly. Although the only situation I could imagine using the SSD for overcranking is perhaps for fixed situations for industrial videos where you need to record slow-mo for an extended period.

[John Peterson]

Originally Posted by Piotr Wozniacki

I don't know about the chip, but the hard fact is my MxM SSD drive happily records overcranked 25p/60 fps, as do my MxM SDHC adapters with ATP Pro 32GB cards - after I finally upgraded my EX1 firmware from the 1.11 version (I went straight to the 1.25).

Any chance the new firmware allows an EX1 to see more than 84GB per slot?

John

[Ross Herewini]

Originally Posted by Marcus Durham

60 meg is plenty for over cranking and it works flawlessly. Although the only situation I could imagine using the SSD for overcranking is perhaps for fixed situations for industrial videos where you need to record slow-mo for an extended period.

Hi Marcus,

I was actually asking about the SATA transfer to computer not the USB connection to the camera. If it is Initio then it is the old SATA I, so I am surprised to hear that is SATA I was faster than your RAID.

But thanks for the info.