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Hard Disk Recording Options
We’re looking to record from some HPX-500 camera to hard disks. I am aware of the FireStore and CitiDisk HD options, but why are they so darn expensive?!
Has anyone been able to just attach a $200 SATA hard drive in a $50 FireWire enclosure and have it work? Why isn’t this possible? Is it some proprietary prevention so we HAVE to buy these ridiculously priced $1,000 drives?
I carry with me a Hitachi 7K200 7200RPM 200GB 2.5″ SATA hard drive that I put in an inexpensive case. It would be nice if something like this would work. It’s the fastest 2.5″ drive available, so I doubt those expensive drives NEED to be that expensive.
Aside from those, what options are there to record multiple HD-SDI streams to a single PC? I know that gets pricey with disk space, but I’m just going through my options.
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13 Replies
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[muzicman82] “I am aware of the FireStore and CitiDisk HD options, but why are they so darn expensive?!”
Because of the controller boards with processors inside them. Controller boards that interpret the footage and record it to the drives in specific ways.
[muzicman82] “Has anyone been able to just attach a $200 SATA hard drive in a $50 FireWire enclosure and have it work? Why isn’t this possible?”
Won’t work….reasons stated above. Processors need to interpret the incoming data and record it properly. For recording to the cards, those processors are in the camera, but NOT included in the signa being sent via firewire. Because the firewire port is meant as data transfer only…to copy footage off the P2 cards in the camera.
[muzicman82] “Aside from those, what options are there to record multiple HD-SDI streams to a single PC?”
COmputers can only record ONE stream of video.
Shane
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I was afraid of that. Are there any other drives besides those two that work?
I read on another thread that there’s a copy to disk option in the camera. Will it only do that while the camera is not recording? Or, can the camera do that after a P2 card if full? The thread indicated that the camera creates a new partition for each card it copies to any Firewire drive.
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[muzicman82] “I read on another thread that there’s a copy to disk option in the camera. Will it only do that while the camera is not recording?”
Yes. For this option you need to record to P2 cards, and then when they are full, you have to take the camera out of camera mode, dig into the menus and find the COPY TO 1394 command. Then it needs to copy the footage over. And yes, this takes it out of production.
It is much better to have a P2 store on site, or a laptop with PCMCIA slot and external hard drive on site.
Shane
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What’s the specified transfer rate of P2 cards?
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[muzicman82] “What’s the specified transfer rate of P2 cards?”
What? Transfer rate for copying the data from the card to drive? That is up to the data rate of the connection. USB and FW400, 400mbps. FW800, 800mbps. But, seeing that it is FW400 that you have for the camera, 400mbps is it.
Shane
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What I was getting at was the media transfer rate. I found it on Wikipedia. It says it has a maximum of 640 Mbit/s. This is good to know. This tells me that, theoretically, it makes no improvement putting a card in a laptop directly than it does using a FW800 card reader. It probably makes little difference using FW800 over FW400, and so on. Yes, I know that there are bus speeds to consider (as buses never perform at their specified speeds).
Doing the math, it would take at LEAST 3.5 minutes to copy a 16GB card. That doesn’t sound realistic at all.
Sorry for my ignorance here. I’ve only had the opportunity to work with P2 media and the HPX-500 once, on a one day rental. We have a gig coming up in a couple weeks and I’d like to know my best workflow.
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It takes about 8.5 minutes to copy a 16GB card.
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Using what gear and configuration?
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Windows laptop, PCMCIA slot to internal 4200RPM SATA drive.
You should be able to get even faster transfers if going to a faster hard disk (such as a FW800 G-Raid).
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This might be strange question, but.. Has anyone ever tried to plug a PCMCIA – firewire or sata card into the P2 slot and then plug in a HD drive from it???
You can get the PCMCIA firewire and sata cards for the MAC right? The P2 cards plug into the MAC.. I just have this hope that there is a way to save mucho money on P2 cards.
I hope to get either the 500 or 3000 camera after next years NAB.
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