New 60 GB video iPod for quick HVX-200 field storage??

[Steve Freebairn]

Well, in theory you shouldn’t need the laptop since the HVX200 can control a firewire drive. That will be a good use for the new ipod. Playback would be impossible right now with the setup you mentioned. If they put an offline card in the hvx200 that could do a live transcode to h.264 at 750kbps at 320×240 then you could put that on your ipod and watch that, but why would anyone want to do that. It would be such low quality that it’d be hard to see what was going on.

[Emery]

The HVX cannot control the firewire drive. That is why a firestore type device will be needed. So yes, you will absolutely need a computer to interface with any hard drive (ipod or otherwise.) Using an iPod as storage for the HVX is nothing short of, well… dumb. If your in a pinch it could be a life saver but otherwise youd be much better off getting a much larger firewire 400/800 hard drive which will be much faster and much cheaper.

[Barry Green]

[Emery] “So yes, you will absolutely need a computer to interface with any hard drive (ipod or otherwise.)”

Not exactly true. It is true that the HVX cannot stream directly to any old firewire hard drive for live capture (that’s when you’d need a firestore). However, the HVX CAN control a firewire drive for SBP2 copying of files.

So, if the iPod Video had a firewire port, you could do what you’re contemplating — shoot to the P2 cards, and when they’re full, offload to the iPod. Unfortunately it looks like the iPod Video doesn’t have a firewire port, so the point becomes moot.

You could still use any self-powered firewire hard disk, of course. Just not an ipod, and only because the ipod doesn’t have a firewire port.

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[Pierre]

Steve-

Hi… you wrote: “Well, in theory you shouldn’t need the laptop since the HVX200 can control a firewire drive.”

Is this new info? I remeber reading several times in the recent past that the reason you couldn’t use just any hard drive that is plugged directly into the HVX is because the hard drives don’t “know” what to do by themselves…. and that the HVX wasn’t able to control/tell the harddrives to “record now”.

Did something change or did I misunderstand something.

So based on what you wrote… you can literally plug your reformatted 60GB iPod into the firewire plug of the HVX and record roughly 60 minutes of DVCPROHD 1080P 24fps footage? Right? Or if the iPod can’t handle that then what about 720P?
I assume you just go into the menu of the HVX and tell it to bypass the P2 card and record into the iPod/harddrive?

[Pierre]

Nevermind….

I think everyone is writing at the same time. Everytime I post my question/reply, I see that someone has already answered the question!

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HaHa

[Matthew Romanis]

Hi Michael,
The HVX Can apparently control a 1394 Firewire drive for file copying purpose’s only. It can not use it as a surrogate live record drive, without the host control of something like a Firestore. From what I know of ipod, it uses a USB connection and thus cannot be controlled by the HVX. To use it as a file store you would still need to use a laptop as an intermediary. The write speed to ipod is quite slow compared to other dedicated storage devices.
I don’t know yet if the firewire capabilities from the HVX include powering the smaller 40-80g drives through the firewire cable. I have a couple of CUTIE drives from SAROTECH that would be great for for this purpose, if the HVX provided power through the 1394 cable.