I'm hoping someone here can help me. I can't afford it right now, but I saw in a video someone shooting with a XL-2 camera and a hard drive mounted to the back of it. Can someone point me in the direction of this type of hard drive? Who makes it, and where can I read about them?
Has anyone ever used one? I took the camera to church this morning ready to tape a Christmas play the children were doing. Set the camera up and did the whitebalancing, only to find I forgot a tape. Luckily somone else was taping it as well.
I found what I was looking for. It appears that Focus Enhancements no longer makes it. You can buy them new on Amazon for $1,300.00 or used for as little as $599.00 What do you all think of used equipment. Is it worth the savings, or should I just get a new one and pay double the price. That is when I can afford to do so.
http://www.amazon.com/Firestore%C2%BF-FS-4-Recorder-Direct-Technology/dp/B000KBMEOY
Buy a new camera that is tapeless?
Tapeless camcorder is good but if you already have a tape camcorder, there was an article in the most recent edition of Videomaker magazine with two new DTE hard drives.
Maxell iVDR VC102
Nexto NVS2500
http://www.videomaker.com/article/14672/
Plus you can get either (or both) a dedicated portable hard drive or a flash media recorder to augment your tape-based camera. I've been working tapeless lately and I do prefer it, but still like to have tape available as an option. Both images look the same except one you can download directly and the other you must digitize. Really, if you're working with an AVCHD based cam' you're spending about the same time for digitizing to convert your footage to uncompressed or a more manageable format for editing anyway. Focus Enhancement makes a fine and inexpensive flash media recorder to mount on your camera.
H.Wolfgang Porter, Composite Media Producer Dreaded Enterprises Unlimited, Inc. www.dreadedenterprises.com
B & H has the Datavideo compact flash card recorder that you can add to a camcorder and it is only $539 brand new with free shipping. My only concern is I think the CF cards are a little expensive. I wish they would make it using SD cards.
www.ynotvideo.us
Cville,
CF cards are more robust than SD cards (and are less likely to blow out of your hands on a windy shoot). They also seem to have longer data lives than SD cards. I've got a couple from when they first came out (128 MB and 1GB) and I used them in a camera most of those years though now just for archival stuff.
H.Wolfgang Porter, Composite Media Producer Dreaded Enterprises Unlimited, Inc. www.dreadedenterprises.com
composit1
Thanks for your take on the CF cards. I've thought about adding these units to my tape cameras to get a tape free workflow. Just need more billings to do that.
www.ynotvideo.us