Canon and Focus Enhancements announced the Focus Enhancements FS-CF and FS-CF Pro portable Compact Flash DTE recorders offering HD video recording to Compact Flash (CF) cards for Canon’s line of HDV camcorders and MiniDV camcorders. The new Focus Enhancements FS-CF units support 1080 24F, 25F and 30F, 50i and 60i frame rates in both QuickTime and M2T file formats. Additionally, 1080i 60 and 50 are supported in the MXF OP Atom format.

The new FS-CF Pro DTE recorder provides additional features such as video playback on the unit’s color LCD, MPEG-4 proxy file generation, wireless metadata logging, and much more. The Focus Enhancements FS-CF and FS-CF Pro DTE recorders are ideal for professional cinematographers and videographers looking to upgrade their existing Canon HDV equipment to a seamless file-based workflow. By utilizing solid state recording, ingest time into NLE systems is eliminated – saving time for busy professionals. Additionally, dual-recording onto tape and CF cards provides valuable backup footage on separate media.

“With the continued trend toward a fully digital file-based workflow, we are proud to offer our customers a new solution to adapt previously released Canon HDV camcorders into a file-based solution to allow them to take full advantage of all the benefits that flash media offers,” stated Yuichi Ishizuka, senior vice president and general manager.

Both the FS-CF and FS-CF Pro units feature a single card slot for recording to industry standard Type 1 CF solid-state media. Once video footage has been recorded to user-supplied CF cards, the FS-CF units are easily connected to both Windows and Mac systems via USB 2.0 from the FS-CF unit itself or the CF card can be read via standard memory card readers for a seamless workflow with popular NLE systems.

Highlights of Focus Enhancements FS-CF Pro and FS-CF units include:

• Create custom, NLE compatible (Final Cut Pro and Avid), clip and time code based metadata
• Dynamically log metadata wirelessly during recording (FS-CF Pro)
• Playback recorded content on the color LCD (FS-CF Pro)
• Easily browse thumbnails and details of recorded content on the LCD or the web interface (FS-CF Pro)
• Support of popular DTE formats such as QuickTime (1080 24F, 25F and 30F, 50i, 60i) MXF (1080 50i and 60i) (FS-CF Pro) and M2T (1080 24F, 25F and 30F, 50i, 60i) for HDV and RawDV, AVI Type 1, AVI Type 2, Matrox AVI, MXF (Pro Only) and Canopus AVI for DV
• Timelapse and single frame record (DV only) as well as retro-disk recording (FS-CF Pro)
• Side located, removable Compact Flash slot that accepts standard Type 1, minimum 30MB/s Compact Flash Cards (currently available up to 64GB)
• Polymer dust cover for shock and moisture protection
• Record over 2.2 hours of 1080i HDV on a single 32GB card
• 6-pin IEEE1394 interface to DV or HDV cameras
• Fast USB 2.0 interface to Mac or Windows based NLE systems
• Supports large file sizes with UDF disk format on CF cards
• Ultra compact design weighs only 12 oz and features silent fanless operation
• Color back-lit LCD for menu navigation and status
• Back-lit scroll wheel for easy menu navigation
• Removable 3-hour (record time) Li-Ion battery pack
• 12V power input and supplied AC adapter

Pricing and Availability:

FS-CF and FS-CF Pro are expected to be available through Canon authorized dealers in late April for an estimated retail price of $995 and $1,295 respectively.

Shane Ross runs the very fine blog: Little Frog in High Def, where he blogs about editing issues and technology. It’s one of my daily reads and you should definitely check it out.

Anyhow, in a recent post Shane goes off on a rant about the difficulties in working with HDV in a professional production environment. I personally thinks he sells the format short, he seems to have a real problem with some of the nitty gritty technical aspects such as capturing and workflow, and then goes on to dismiss the entire format out of hand as “unprofessional”.

I’m thinking he may have just had a bad capture day, but read his post and see if you agree with his observations.

Update: Shane’s taken down his original post, citing a bit of misplaced anger and frustration.

I was sitting here today pondering the end of tape, and what it means for video producers in the near future…

Now HDV certainly isn’t dead, and even MiniDV is still hanging on, I expect to see new models of both formats at CES next month. However I don’t think anyone will disagree with the statement that HDV will most likely be the last tape-based format that we see. New video recording formats in the future, will all be solid state.

Hastening the end-of-tape process is the fragmentation that seemed to happen in HDV, with each manufacturer adopting their own incompatible standards, progressive modes, and frame rates. For a while there the editing software programmers I talked to could be reduced to tears just by mentioning the phrase “HDV support”. MiniDV‘s dominance of the SD format was so complete, it was easy to forget that cooperation and compatibility among camcorder manufacturers has always been the exception, rather than the norm.

So out of the chaos of various HD formats and media types (HDD, DVD, SDHC, P2, SxS etc.) where is the next MiniDV? Where is the standard that will be the unifying format for the next generation of camcorders? From where I sit now, all the stars seem aligning around AVCHD on SDHC cards. Broad support from manufacturers and a unifying media standard are beginning to emerge, and these models are one of the fastest growing camcorder segments this year.

That’s not to say AVCHD is not without it’s problems. It’s very difficult to decode, and you need a massively powerful computer to edit with it in real time (This was also true of MiniDV back in the day). But the main factor hobbling AVCHD at the moment is what to do with all your video once you fill up your card. I know the short answer is, put it on your hard drive, but then what? You then need some kind of practical media management system, including backups and RAIDs. And will you even be able to hook up your current hard drive to a computer ten years from now? What is the digital equivalent of the shoe-box full of tapes in the closet?

The real limiting factor of AVCHD at the moment is the cost of the media. You simply can’t afford to buy a new HDSC card for every shoot, like you would for tape. Once the price of 8-16 Gig HDSC cards (which allow 40-90 minutes of high quality bit-rate AVCHD) drops to video tape range, say $5-$10 per card we will see an explosion of AVCHD as a viable format. At that price people can afford to store their video on the very durable cards themselves and not rely on the fragility of their hard drives to hold their irreplacable footage.

From what I see now, AVCHD and SDHC are the future of consumer video. What do you see?