Tapeless Digital Recording System

[Danny Hays]

I very rarely use tape anymore due to just that, and costly repair bills to repair a camera because it ate a tape. I use a Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle with my HDV camera, no tape, No m2t compression artifacts, but It’s always in my studio. In the field, I would go for this in a minute.

Hope this helps, Danny Hays

[Stephen Mann]

I bought some Sony HVR-DR60 Hard Disk Recorders a few years ago and will never go back to tape. I use the mostly on my Z1’s, but I have also used them on a PD-150 and VX-2000.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[John Rofrano]

[Stephen Mann] “I bought some Sony HVR-DR60 Hard Disk Recorders a few years ago and will never go back to tape. I use the mostly on my Z1’s…”

Same here. I have a Sony HVR-DR60 Hard Disk Recording Unit for my HVR-Z1U and I love it. It’s an outstanding unit that is very reliable.

The Maxell product is based on CitiDISK technology and there have been some bad reviews about CitiDISK dependability. Google around to get the whole scoop. I have no idea how this unit performs but I would be cautious.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Joe Mantaratz]

Been looking for any info on problems with Citidisk problems and only found this thread.
I recently bought 2 Maxell IVDR VC102 250 GB systems and have had nothing but dropped frames when filming in HD, SD is fine of course It does this every time it splits the file due to the FAT32 limitation. According to their specs they assure that no frames will be dropped. But alas they are dead wrong .

A week has gone by round and round with tech support which responds fairly quickly but admits little. They have told be that others have regained those dropped frames by using a utility like Simple File Joiner. So they have admitted they know about the issue without but not officially.

Tried the utility and it does work however by the time you join files and scrub (as required) you will have spent a load of time and lost all the benefits of going tapeless.

Can anyone shed light as to why this utility can see these frames while Vegas, Premiere, Final Cut cannot?

This is a huge issue so mine are being sent back unless a fix is coming soon. I liked the hard drive for all the obvious reasons but this is a waste of time. Any better suggestions for a hard drive based system?

thanks as always

[Joe Mantaratz]

Been looking for any info on problems with Citidisk problems and only found one thread.

I recently puchased 2 Maxell IVDR VC102 250 GB systems and have had nothing but dropped frames when filming in HD, SD is fine of course It does this every time it splits the file due to the FAT32 limitation. According to their specs they assure that no frames will be dropped. But alas they are dead wrong .

A week has gone by round and round with tech support which responds fairly quickly but admits little. They have told be that others have regained those dropped frames by using a utility like Simple File Joiner. So they have admitted they know about the issue without but not officially.

Tried the utility and it does work however by the time you join files and scrub (as required) you will have spent a load of time and lost all the benefits of going tapeless.

Can anyone shed light as to why this utility can see these frames while Vegas, Premiere, Final Cut cannot?

This is a huge issue so mine are being sent back unless a fix is coming soon. I liked the hard drive for all the obvious reasons but this is a waste of time. Any better suggestions for a hard drive based system?

thanks as always

[John Rofrano]

[Joe Mantaratz] “Can anyone shed light as to why this utility can see these frames while Vegas, Premiere, Final Cut cannot?”

It is quite common to have to use a utility to stitch back the split files to make the GOP complete. Sony provides one for their HVR-DR60 unit which I use all the time. If you are just dragging files from the recording unit on to your hard drive then you are causing the problem by doing this. You need to use a utility that will stitch the files as needed.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Joe Mantaratz]

Understand your point John but I fail to understand why there is no issue with SD only HD.

The tech docs don’t mention a word about requiring any 3rd party joiner software for this. The adverts and tech docs all mention drag and drop. To be honest I have used other devices and have never had this issue. Maxell suggestion is to also scrub the files with hdv splitter after joining. By the time all of this is done hours have passed and that is unacceptable.

Just can’t imagine this is the way it is supposed to work. We film with varied cameras depending on the shoot so I can’t have a proprietary device.

John why would the GOP not being complete cause Vegas to not see the frames while the joiner can? There simply must be a better way. Thanks as always

[John Rofrano]

[Joe Mantaratz] “Understand your point John but I fail to understand why there is no issue with SD only HD. “

Because when these devices capture SD they typically uses intraframe compression which only requires the current frame to complete an image, and when they capture HD they typically uses interframe compression which relies on a Group Of Picture (GOP) that is usually 15 frames to complete an image.

[Joe Mantaratz] “To be honest I have used other devices and have never had this issue. Just can’t imagine this is the way it is supposed to work. We film with varied cameras depending on the shoot so I can’t have a proprietary device.”

This issue has to do with the physical file size limitation of the FAT32 filesystem used by all of these drives and will only happen when you reach that limit. If none of your recordings reach this limit, then you won’t see the issue. But if you do reach this limit, you will always see this problem unless the device is smart enough not to break the GOP.

[Joe Mantaratz] “John why would the GOP not being complete cause Vegas to not see the frames while the joiner can? There simply must be a better way.”

If the current file reaches the filesize limit of FAT32 and is broken into a second file and that break happens in the middle of a 15 frame GOP, most NLE’s will not read the remainder of the incomplete GOP. Likewise if they see a file that starts in the middle of a GOP they won’t know what to do with that either. Utilities that simply copy bits without interpreting them, simply join all of the data together in one file and the GOP is re-united and can be read by the NLE (this is not limited to Vegas) NLE’s have no way of knowing that a GOP continues in another file so you must join the files to make the video complete.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Joe Mantaratz]

Thanks John now I remember reading this at some point and you just reconfirmed it. I will pass this info onto Maxell and ask them to have you on their tech team since none of them could offer a reason after a weeks time.

So now that begs the next question, which system is indeed smart enough to avoid this issue?
If recording to NTSF was an option this would be a solved but alas not the case.

[Joe Mantaratz]

Here’s the final update I hope helps others to avoid this issue.

Maxell tech finally got back to me ( via phone) and basically stated that they do not have a solution and are aware of the problem but not officially admitting anything. They have a new firmware coming out that “MAY” extend the file size limit to 4 gig instead of the 2 Gig split it is using now.

Shining Technology the company that actually writes the firmware and makes the drives is partially at fault. So the two units I have are useless for HD work unless countless hours are available to spend joining the files and then scrubbing them.

Hard to believe they market this and have not documented any of these issues. Once again we are the beta testers.

Advice to the rest…do not purchase these units you will just be wasting your precious time.