Test Bench: Shining Technology CitiDISK FW1256B-40 External Hard Disk
Shining Technology CitiDISK FW1256B-40 External Hard DiskCapturing video to a hard disk is everyone's least favorite editing task: it's time consuming, boring and, in the old days, was the most problematic aspect of video editing. The CitiDISK DV will capture DV straight to disk from your camcorder. Anyone who edits on a laptop in the field will find this external hard disk a useful production tool.
Is That a PDA?
The CitiDISK DV is basically a FireWire controller board, Lithium Ion rechargeable battery and a 2.5-inch laptop hard drive enclosed in a slick plastic case that's about the size of a thick PDA. There are a couple of buttons (that also serve as indicator lights) up top and a 6-pin FireWire port. The unit slides into a faux-leather carrying case that straps onto your belt.
The drive itself is a simple 5,400 rpm laptop drive that theoretically has a 12 Mbyte/second sustained data rate, which is more than enough for 3.6 Mbyte/second (25 Mbps) DV video. Our unit was the FW1256B-40, which is a 40GB drive that pragmatically holds close to 3 hours of DV fo…
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