Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (
More info?)
On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 22:41:10 -0400, "TJM" <tjm@nospam> wrote:
>I agree!
>
>There are already hard drive recorder kits for DV camcorders (see the FireStore
>link by the other poster).
>
>With the introduction of several prosumer-level HD camcorders hitting the
>market, storage media will be the major limiting factor. Right now, the tapes
>will only hold 1 hr. of HD footage. With a hard drive recorder, that limit can
>be increased by a factor of 10.
>
>Plus, since most people transfer their digital footage to a PC, then having the
>hard drive record HD footage in your desired file format saves you the step of
>having to transcode to your PC....just plug in the 1394 cable and move the files
>right to your desktop PC!
I don't think it will catch on until 80 gig or so plug in drives are
cheap enough that you can buy them like tapes.
A *lot* of people shoot a lot of stuff -- several hours worth -- and
don't edit it until weeks later. A similar issue is keeping backup
copies of the originals.
If your camcorder has an internal hard drive (iPod-like), you can't
"change tapes" in the field. Instead, you have to copy it to some
other device, such as a firewire hard drive. The external
video-recording oriented ones are most convenient (and work of cours
with any firewire camcorder, even those using tape), but are
relatively expensive. Desktop/laptop external drives work, but how
many are you going to buy in order to archive old material, or store
working material?
If you shoot 12 hours of stuff on vacation, you can store it on 12
tapes (abou $40) or a couple 80gig hard drives ($100 on desktop,
double or more for portables/compact drives). Economics drives the
market here.
Who would want to be limited to a relatively short recording time on
hard drive, when tapes offer much more capacity for the money?
I see two markets. First, the consumer one. Current DVDR
camcorders using mpeg2 are prime candidates for "conversion" to hard
drive storage. A 20g (small iPod) drive, with fair battery life,
could handle 5 hours -- probably equal to its battery life. Give it
some DVD authoring/edit capability, and sell the buyer a DVD recorder
which links to it, and you have a "home DVD movie maker" device which
has potential. Drop an 80g drive in it (a bit pricey still for the
lower power ultra compact types), and you're talking 20 hours of mpeg2
recording (more at lower bit rate, if you really needed it).
The other is a very casual DV user, who rarely shoots more than a
couple of hours before editing, and is never rushed by overlapping
projects. The drive is presumably fast enough that it works fine to
edit from directly, thus saving capture storage. Because there is no
"master tape" kept, this is only going to be popular for people who
shoot, edit, and produce a finished product which never gets revised.
The other market is pro, and you've seen links to devices for that.
Dockable cameras can use anything as a recorder, including a hard
drive unit. External firewire hard drives w/recording capability are
a nice tool -- but too pricey for most consumer use. They do solve
one problem with tape -- recording time. OK, you can sort of solve
that using full size DV (3 hours on a big tape is no trouble), but you
still need to deal with transfer time. Pros can afford to pay extra
to save on editing/transfer time, because it pays.
>"Big Brother is Watching You" <big brother is watching you-@attbi.com> wrote in
>message news:3bw%c.261760$8_6.116661@attbi_s04...
>> When you think about it, a camera with a high capacity notebook hard drive
>makes
>> perfect sense. This would dramatically cut down on moving parts and mechanics
>of
>> the camcorder. It would also give you flexibility to choose different
>> compression formulas. Ideally you would probably like to be able swap in
>> different hard drives, kind of like battery packs. I'm not sure what the data
>> rate of HDTV in a camcorder would be, but I bet even a relatively small 40GB
>> drive would give you a whole ton of space, while also being much more energy
>> efficient because you would have less moving parts. I think the data rate for
>> mini-DV equals about 12GB per hour. So a 40GB drive would give you almost 3
>1/2
>> hours of space.
>>
>> I can't believe they aren't doing this already. The camcorders would be
>smaller
>> and more energy efficient.
You know the cheapest way to pull this off? Have the laptop with
firewire already. Many of those who'd want to do this trick have one,
and while a backpack/harness thing would be a bother, it is certainly
possible.
I don't know that they'd be more energy efficient. A tape drive
doesn't use much power. A hard drive does, especially running
constantly (as it would have to when recording). iPods and laptops
will power down the drive between reads, but a constant fast data
stream -- DV -- would preclude that.
I expect such a device to come along, but I'm betting that it will
be mpeg2 based, logically similar to the DVDR devices, and marketed
like a sort of TIVO camcorder.
--
*-__Jeffery Jones__________| *Starfire* |____________________-*
** Muskego WI Access Channel 14/25 <http://www.execpc.com/~jeffsj/mach7/>
*Starfire Design Studio* <http://www.starfiredesign.com/>
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