Hey Mike--Firestore FS-4 Pro HD/Timecode

[Vystrcil]

Hey Mike,

There is a known issue with Edius and the Firestore when it comes to HDV. I use a Z1U and when I capture to the Firestore in HDV, I see the files on the drive, but Edius plays 1-3 seconds of the clip before it locks. I have spoken to Focus and they said that they were working with GV to fix the problem. This was almost a year ago. This is the reponse that I got from Matt at Focus...

"There is some known issues with TC and Canopus. The biggest problem we have had with our HDV support is that the individual camcorder manufacturers choose to put the recorded timecode into different areas within the MPEG transport stream. The NLE manufacturers also look in different areas for the TC. The reason you do not see these issues when capturing from camcorder (off tape) to the NLE is that the TC is basically restriped on capture (the correct TC value coming from AV/C communication between the camcorder and NLE). We are looking at what we can change to fix this.

One other issue with using HDV camcorders is that when you are recording to tape and disk simultaneously and triggering from the camcorder, there is always a small glitch in the beginning of the recording on FireStore or whatever is connected to the 1394 output (up to 2 seconds). This is caused by the codec on the camera re-syncing itself. The only HDV camera that gets around this issue is the GY-HD100/101 rev (A). On this model, you can set the priority for the codec to the tape or the 1394 output (FireStore). Canopus may be tripping up on this."

Do you know anything about this? If so, can you give me some insight? I have a $2000 unit gathering a lot of dust and wasting lots of time capturing. :)

Thanks in advance.

Scott

[GrassValley_KH]

What version of EDIUS are you running? I believe some FS-4 specific fixes have been worked into the more recent releases of EDIUS (ie. 4.24)

[Vystrcil]

That's what I had heard as well. I visit the DVInfo forum a lot. That is where I heard that they fix was in. Sad to say, it wasn't. There were several users on the DV Forum that tried. No love. The Firestore is a great tool and works all the time with DV, just not HDV.

[RonnieMartin]

I have the Fire store product as well and have never been able to get it to work. My experience with support from them is not as good as I had expected.

After several e-mails and phone calls that were never returned I finally gave up and just put it in the drawer.

In retrospect, I may have had better luck with the Sony Hard drive recorder. My capture times (3 hours) are killing me. That is why I just bought a new edit station (broadcast version) to be able to work with the new Sony XDCAM EX when it becomes available.

If there is a fix on either side of the problem I sure would like to know about it.

thanks

Ronnie

[tingsern]

I have identical issues with Firestore as well. Got a FS-4 that is now gathering lots of dust. Works well for SD but, once in HD - gave me helluva problems. I gave up. Now, I am using Panasonic's PCS60 to offload the P2 cards instead of attempting to record continuously to Firestore. My DVX202 with two 16GB P2 cards can do recording continuously very much like Firestore can. When one P2 card is full, I just unplug it from camera and copy to PCS60 - format the P2 card, and return it back to camera.

[Vystrcil]

Any one else from Grass Valley with information on this problem?

[GrassValley_BH]

A number of fixes have been put into EDIUS, and Focus made firmware updates too.

Do you have the latest firmware for your unit?