By Ken Pyle, Managing Editor, Viodi View One of the things telco people experienced in the production of local content will tell you is that the production of local content is not easy. There never is enough time or enough staff. It might be part of the creative process, but people involved in the production process will spend every available minute trying to create the highest quality product possible. One of the challenges for management is to ensure that their production staff does not burn out as they face an endless stream of deadlines. Tools that allow the production people spend more of their time being “creative” are a necessity. A tool that could prove to be very useful for the independent telco is a Direct Digital Recorder, such as the Focus Enhancements’ FS-4Pro HD, FireStore. The FS-4Pro HD captures the camcorder’s digital signal in real-time, eliminating the time-consuming step of capturing video from tape. A Direct Digital Recorder is fundamentally a productivity tool, as it reduces the time required to convert raw footage into an edited product. It also provides new features, such as caching, which allows one to “go back in time.” This is a great feature for those instances where one only wants to record “exciting moments” or key sound bites. This brief video demonstrates this cool feature.
With the above as context, let us take a closer look at Focus Enhancements’ FireStore Offering. Focus Enhancements is a pioneer in the Direct Digital Recorder market and has been producing DDRs since August, 2001. Focus Enhancements also makes a series of related products, including a FireWire-based mixer, as well as a media-asset management system managing video assets. Focus Enhancements provides a number of different DTEs to meet various customer requirements.
Model (click for more info) | FS-2E, FS-3, DR-DV5000, FS-4Pro HD, DR-HD100, FS-C, FS-100 |
# of Gigabytes | 40 to 120 Gbytes |
Hours of Recording Time | 1.5 to 8 hours |
Cost | $1,295 to $6,995 |
The reviews I have read have been positive and it looks good on paper. Still, reading about it is one thing, but actually using it in a pressure-filled, live-shoot situation is entirely different. Our review methodology was a bit different, as, with most other things Viodi does, we literally shot first and asked questions later. Focus Enhancements provided a brand new Focus FS-4Pro HD 80GB demo unit. I was pleasantly surprised to see that is a pure hardware solution – no software to install anywhere! The other thing that was a pleasant surprise was the manual. It was user-friendly, as it was made of paper (instead of being a pdf on a software disk), it was spiral bound (a plus, because the pages stay folded over) and it was written exclusively in English (it made it much easier to find things than the tri-lingual manuals most manufacturers supply). It is well organized and well written with good illustrations. The only criticism I have of the manual is that it does not have a table showing which file format to use. The manual references a web page, but that web page is a general web page and it required further searching to find the referenced table. Selecting the right file format is critical, as we found that Adobe Premeire 1.5 and Sony Vegas 7.0 do not open Raw DV and AVI1 file formats (hint: AVI2). The user interface is intuitive, but it is important to follow the manual at least the first time. Again, the manual was very useful as it is small and fits into one hand while the other hand can manipulate the controls of the FireStore (and the pages don’t close because of the previously mentioned spiral bound). After a few times going through the controls, manipulating the menu becomes second nature. The control panel and associated display are straightforward. Overall, the unit feels rugged and like it could withstand a decent fall – but given it is a hard-drive, its not a good idea to drop it so be careful). Out of the box, it comes with everything you need to start shooting. It also comes with a belt clip and a mounting plate. It would be a nice touch if it had a leather carrying case to protect it during travel, but the lack of one is definitely not a showstopper. The standard battery is good for 90 minutes of recording (extra 90 minute batteries are $129., a 3 hour battery is available at $199 and is standard on higher capacity units.]. We found that we could shoot an entire day (not continuous and we would turn off the power when not in use) with the factory supplied battery. During that time, we had at least one session of at more than an hour and half The unit connects to the camera via a standard FireWire cable. It can be set up so that the camera controls the recording process; in other words, pressing the camera’s “record” button will activate the FireStore, pressing the pause button will pause it and so on. Alternatively, the unit’s dedicated buttons allow manual control of the recording process. The unit supports a serial connection between a camera and another device. For instance, this feature would be useful for recording a stream fed to a FireWire video mixer. The unit also allows time lapsed videography, which could make it interesting for temporary or portable surveillance applications. The unit allows both tapeless recording (if supported by the camera). In our test, we found it to work with Roger’s Panasonic AG-DVC30 and my Panasonic PV-GS70D. The list of camera compatibility can be found here. It is probably best to leave the tape in the camcorder, as the tape will provide a back up in the event of some sort of failure like a spent battery, a mistake in configuring the menu or accidentally pulling the FireWire cable. To this last point, we were concerned that we would pull out the cable. Amazingly, in the seven or so hours of real-life recording, we never once pulled out the FireWire cable. It fit nicely on the belt clip and its size is small enough that it did not restrict movement. As an alternative, we also were able to mount it on the Panasonic camera. We were not able to test all of the file formats, since we didn’t have all of the editing systems the unit supports. Also, we did not test it for High Definition operation. Overall, we found ourselves to be more productive, once we became comfortable with the user interface and the meaning of the various options. The nice thing is that most of the time the settings would be “set and forget.” It passed our most important criteria, which was to make us more productive. That gave us time to spend more time on the creative, as evidenced by OurTube (ok, maybe we need more than time to be creative). Based on our experience, we could recommend the Focus FS-4Pro HD as a way to make an independent telco’s video production staff more productive and less stressed.
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