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EricTheRed

How long will it take...

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It's food for thought but I thinks its many years away from being practical because:

1). At 3.6 MB per second (AVI file), a 2 gig memory stick would store about 10 minutes of video.

2). the 1 gig memory stick is currently $350. Compare to a $5 miniDV tape which holds around 13 gigs of AVI files (60 minutes).

Then again, my first 20 MB hard drive cost $500. Today a 160 GB hard drive costs $200, which is the equivalent of 8,000 20MB drives which would have cost $4,000,000.

So when 2Gig memory sticks are $10, I'll scrap my miniDV tapes forever.
Doc
http://www.manifestmaster.com/video

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I agree it's not ready yet, mostly due to price, not technical issues though. I'm just wondering how long it will take.

There are already tapeless MPEG4 video cams on the market. These have basically VHS quality but aren't really editable.

MPEG2 is DVD quality (depends on bit rate of course) With a pair of 2G sticks, you could get about an hour of DVD quality footage. While the sticks are currently very expensive, the costs are dropping everyday and the same arguments were used for Digital SLR's less than 2 years ago.

Don't see too many people here advocating for 35mm film these days.
illegible usually

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Within 4 years you'll seem some solid state 200GB technology that will be within a decent price range. Problem is it probably won't interface with any of our gear now. Nothing wrong with digital tape yet.

No matter how good she looks, someone, somewhere is
sick of her shit!

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Its already being done apparently...
http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1181816#1181816
In this instance replacing a hard drive on an Archos recorder/viewer, combined with a bullet cam.

The future is now.B|
--------------------

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

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There's a world of difference between a hard drive based recorder and a solid state one.

Hard drive recorders exist in both the broadcast and professional markets. The concept is you eleminate the time required to ingest for non-linear editors. The reality is that hard drives fail when you bounce them around a lot.

I know of no practical solid state field recorders although there are a few for some very, very limited uses where you just don't care that the maximum length is about 10 minutes or so.
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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I know Paul, its just that Didone said he 'Didit'.:)
He says he's getting decent record time, albeit at a lower resolution than you and I are probably accustomed to.
Personally I'd be twitchy about cutting up a brand new gismo like an Archos:S
--------------------

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

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Quote


I wonder how a microdrive handles freefall. It uses CF also though.



Microdrives do not handle altitudes above 10,000 feet MSL at all.

Any disk based system will not work for skydiving. They all have this same limitation.

_Am
__

You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

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To expand on this, I just read through the Functional Specification of the IBM/Hitachi Microdrive, and the operating altitude is limited to the range of –300 to 3048 meters.

Page 21 of http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/6EF902390528609A87256AC000679FD3/$file/dscm_sp40.PDF

Microdrives are completely inappropriate for use in unpreasurized aircraft. Pushing these limits will cause media failure with loss of data.

Knowing what I do of hard drive technology, I wouldn't expect this to change anytime soon.

_Am
__

You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

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Bump.

And this http://www.jvc.com/press/index.jsp?item=461&pageID=1

may accelerate the development. While JVC cams in general dont work for skydiving, and HDD based systems are out, it might spur the competition to make something we can really use.

Edit to add this from the Press release
Quote

Hard Disk Protection and Stability
A challenge in designing and building a hard disk camcorder is protecting the disk from shocks and vibrations. One way this is done in the Everio G camcorders is through a unique floating suspension system that effectively dampens vibrations through advanced polymer shock absorbers. Another security measure familiar to notebook PC users is its gravity-like force sensor system that automatically senses sudden acceleration such as in a free fall situation, and turns off the power to defend the hard disk so that a head crash can be avoided in many cases even when the unit is dropped.



Now that really won't do, a camera that senses freefall and shuts off! WTF were they thinking?
illegible usually

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Now that really won't do, a camera that senses freefall and shuts off! WTF were they thinking?



It's a good idea and if the system is well tuned there is a chance that Skydiving will not affect the harddrive protection system.

I've been trying to learn more about this system but couldn´t find anything relevant.

Would be interesting cause I work with these sensors :)

Jul.
JFK #1013
PM Me
No Adrenalin.... No Fun!
"Minds are like parachutes the

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I saw this http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=ModelFeaturesAct&fcategoryid=144&modelid=11368&pageno=1

and though it was pretty cool. We are getting closer I think. I wish someone would actually get down to making a camera just for us, I know the tech exists, it's just getting it into a nice small package that can be mounted and remotely operated.

The camera takes 640x480 video at 30 fps *not too bad* and can take 5mp stills at the same time.

unfortunately, no remote
illegible usually

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