FIRESTORE AND VS4

Mike,

It has 10/100 unfortunatly no 1000 yet. The FSM has Analog inputs and outputs as well as firewire. We record multiple cameras and the graphics are inserted live. We never do Post on any Meeting. My concern is going from the FSM to my VS4 without doing any major work. I want to transfer the file, open it in media player, get a time and program the meeting to play. Done Thanks Come back on Monday and delete the file.(I am going to make an archival copy on vhs - yes I know VHS YUCK but it goes to archives never airing again and gets tossed in 3 years)

Gents,
I never wade into these debates, but reading your posts, I had to. The FireStore FS-M goes for about $2500 plus. I have had about ten years experience dealing with Videoincs/Focus Enhancements and I hate to say this but I have not found them to be an honorable company. They are in Campbell, CA and I have had many contacts with their staff. Their upper management approach has been to deploy a product, not support or develop it sufficiently and then abandon it. This statement overly dramatic and perhaps not on the same thread with the technical discussion that you are having but, I wanted to jump in and ask; why do you feel that you have to spend so much to accomplish capture of these meetings? I am not scared to spend money, we just put in a 3-channel Cablecast system to the tune of $80K. For our government captures we have employed HAUPPAUGE Win TV PVR's in cheap PC's and are transporting the large MPEG's by sneakernet on LaCie 80GB USB drives. A used Dell or HP laptop ($500) + a HAUPPAUGE Win TV PVR ($150) + a couple of LaCie 80GB USB drives ($200) = $950 and our results have been excellent. I'm sorry to chime in and put down FocusEnhancements, I've heard some good things about their FireStore product line, but in the world of public and gov't access, why spend $3000 on a FireStore FS-M solution when there are far cheaper and successful means?

craig@communitytv.org[8]

I have not worked with this unit either. But if you contact Focus, ask them if this unit creates Mpeg2 Program stream files (also known as system stream or Multiplexed). If it does make a single .mpg file with the audio multiplexed into it, then I would think you would have no problems playing on your Tightrope server.

If focus could send you a small sample file, maybe you can try to play that on your server to be 100% sure of compatibility. Or even ask for a demo unit and make your own.

As far as what we use at our facility, We have a Optibase MovieMaker 200S card and software to "record" our meetings. It does a great job. Running on a windows 2000 PC it is very reliable. We have a Gigabit Ethernet card in the machine and can transfer the file over the GigE LAN to the server's storage drive in a matter of minutes. We encode our meetings at 3Mbps (video and audio totaling 3 Mbps). We have never seen a reason to increase this and it saves a lot of disk space over say 8 Mbps like we use for our edited programming. If storage was no issue, then I am sure we would use 6Mbps. But right now we only have 500GB of storage and it is 3⁄4 full. (might be time for a upgrade I know [:0] )
I know the Optibase MovieMaker 200S Xpress can encode up to 6 Mbps and is like $1,600 from some online retailers. Just add a nice little PC and your set. I know Tightrope uses these cards and they work very well.

Good Luck!
[8D]
Grant

Hi All,

I'm interested in reviving this topic a bit. Perhaps more of you have entered this area. While we have particular needs, I'm interested in getting a sense of what different folks do, so that I may glean information from that.

On our end, we are interested in streamlining our field to air process, perhaps by buying one or two FS-4s (or similar). I'd be interested in hearing from some of you who record to disk and your flow. What equipment do you use? What hurdles have you found?

Our service area includes 5 towns, so we cover 5 selectmen's meetings, 4 school committees, and various other events. We have no permanently installed equipment per se. In 4 of the town halls we have rack cases kept on the premises that hold a small audio mixer (mackie 1202vlz), a modulator (for live meetings), and a small collection of microphones. We then bring a sony vx2000 and record to mini DV.

Back at the ranch, we encode those tapes real-time via a canopus box, while using a videonics titler to add a crawl with meeting information. Meeting times range from 1/2 hour to almost four, so we experience a turnaround time equal to the time of the meeting, plus trimming the resulting mpeg file (for tape changes).

If we could go from a disk recording in the field to air with minimal processing, that would be great. Ideally such a process would actually reduce our labor time.

An issue: lower thirds or otherwise identifying meetings. If we go from disk to air we'd need some way of inserting them. Requirements including being very low cost and--if used in the field--easy to use for the videographers and durable for transport.

I have been using a Firestore FS-4 PRO 80 for several years with my Sony PD-150. If you want to do DTE (Direct-to-Edit), make sure you buy a model that has that feature, as well as making sure all your settings are correct on both the camera and FS-4. The Pro version will record in a variety of formats, including Quicktime.

It's a great product. I record to the unit, bring it back to the studio, connect a firewire from the FS-4 to the Mac, change a setting on the FS-4, and drag-and-drop the files directly from the FS-4 onto the Mac hard drive. No capturing required. Just start editing!!!! We use FCP v4.

John M. Goran, NCE
Cable TV Coordinator
Brunswick TV 3
28 Federal St.
Brunswick ME 04011
Office 207.725.0614
Fax 207.725.6637
tv3@brunswickme.org
www.brunswickme.org

Well the Firestore FS-M is not going to be released any time soon.

This is what I have:
Mini PC with Canopus MVRD2200V card that records MPEG1 and MPEG2
Numeric Pad - No Keyboard
Touch Screen - No Mouse

Custom Active Desktop to launch apps, move files and rename to avoid the accidental overwriting of files.

Software is great - it includes a preview and has a large round record button to start and stop recording.

Set user Config. Record Limit of 1hr (Because that can be easily be burned to DVD)

This is in the studio so lower thirds are recorded live.

When a volunteer has finished recording they push a button that I have called "Finalize Segment 1" and the file is moved to another folder that is only accessible by staff. The file is also renamed to the correct format so it is ready to be moved to my VS4.
(###-1-showdescription.mpg)

This solution should be a semi-permanent setup in a meeting room or portable studio road case.

I know there are other less expensive capture cards out there but for me it ended up being all about the simplicity of the software. After all the guy on the street needs to be able to run this when staff (only 2) is dealing with other things. I don't know about everyone else but I don't have the time to babysit for every public access show that is produced at the station. Sometimes I need to attend to engineering in other areas of the station while they produce a show so they only come get me if there is a major problem.

Perhaps this is slightly off the thread, but if you have a DVD changer in your singnal flow, then buy a DVD recorder for less than $100 and plug your camera into it. We had used it (just like we had with an FS-2 and an FS-4) and you can preset the quality to have room for 2, 4 or 6 hours on the dvd. Need to trim some footage at the begining or end? Set up the show in TRMS to play the DVD as such. We have done school committee meetings with a dvd recorder. It takes a couple minutes to finalize when you are done, but certainly no longer than it takes for you to break down your other equiptment. Firestores (at least the portable ones) are great when you need to move your camera around while shooting and record to disk without nasty cables. But in this case, you aren't. Depending on physical setups, you could leave the dvd recorder with the audio equiptment at each location. Less to lug around, less to lose. If you are concerned about if your video and audio are actually making it to the dvd recorder, you can hook up a small tv, ect to monitor from the recorder. I don't believe you can do that with the portable Firestores.

Just a thought to save you some duckets...

Michael Dube
617-290-6453
trmsboards@mikedube.com

Mike:
I certainly concur regarding the DVD recorder as master record deck. About two years ago we pulled out our DVCPro decks from our Bd. Mtg control room and installed four DVD recorders (1 master, three ISO's for our three camera setup). Since then we have never had a failure on any of the DVD decks nor issues. We do record in LP (4 hour mode) and things work just fine. Only three times have I had to eject the disk and insert another one (over four hour meeting). This process takes about 60 seconds. So you always make sure it is at a moment that you won't miss any real business. As our master DVD recorder has a hard drive as well, if we know ahead of time, we will record to the HD and then dub it out to DVD. This is a real-time process so I just leave it overnight, but...

Anyway, the cost and performance is awesome, and if you have a VS4 server with the DVD encode option, any DVD's can easily be dropped to MPEG-2 on server. As a note, we use the FireStore-3 on our JVC-5000 ENG camera and have had few problems (Focus is a suspect company in terms of support so beware). But for the cost, the DVD recorders work great.

David Shulkin
Operations Manager
Bloomfield Hills Schools
Michigan

<h4>in case you need to understand a subtlety
about the system, you’re armed with a grasp of how Cablecast sees, and then in
turn, rocks your world.</h4>

David,

Just out of curiosity, what DVD recorders are you using? Consumer-level or pro-level? And what kind of inputs do they have?

We still use our DVCPRO decks as backup to recording our council meetings, but rely primarily on recording to DVD, then VS4 DVD import for the workflow, and it works great. But occasionally, we get a bad disc or a mysterious gremlin that prevents finalization of the disc, and we end up going back to the backup...

We also have Firestore FS4 Pro drives, and we use them primarily for recording with camcorders, which works out great. But for meetings, since we finish these up around 9 or 10 pm, the LAST thing we want to do is dump the footage into a NLE, edit, compress, burn a disc and then import to the VS4! I think we would use it for this purpose if the VS4 were able to take DV25 files.

Shawn Serre
Pittsfield Community TV

Interesting discussion. Curious to see that even with disk recording some of you still keep the DVD as the main media.

I presume that those of you who are relying on DVDs to go from field to the VS4 are using some sort of titler in the field? If so, what do you use?

The idea of buying 4 or 5 DVD recorders for less than the price of the FS4 we were looking at is intriguing, but I'm halted in several places.
1) that pesky titler. When you've got a 2-3 hour meeting, it's nice to let the viewers know a little about it if they're just tuning in to.
2) dependability of the recording vs tape vs hard disk recording
3) it feels like a step backwards to me as we look to a future of all-digital data/work flow

Shawn (hello), could you say a little more about the turnaround time on using the FS4? I don't mind if it happens the next morning as that's what we do with all our meeting recordings now, but I'd like to get a better sense of how long that took for you using the FS4 and Final Cut Pro (is that what you use for this purpose?). Our FCP machines are networked to the VS4, so if compression time wasn't to bad, we could skip the burn-to-disk-DVDimport routine and save or transfer to the VS4 drive.

thanks all.

-nick

We wouldn't bother ripping the DVDs. We'd just slap them into the DVD changer. We would only use the changer for school committee meetings and programming given to us on DVD.

We had a character generator that could be controled my Tightrope for a general label. If we ever wanted to let the folks on camera have their names on screen (for vanity purposes or to train students behind the camera) we would use a portable CG on a laptop or use our toaster for a multi camera shoot.

The dvd changer isn't all that much money and the serial to USB cable to let Tightrope to control it was about $15 (maybe $10). Why take up the storage space and go through the trouble of ripping it?

Plus, how are all of you backing up all of your shows?

Tape based backup is slow and expensive.
External drives are expensive and prone to injury if dropped.
Aren't most of you burning your mpegs as data to dvds that will last about 30 years if stored correctly? Or as video dvd's which allow for easy playback in your signal flow and allow for a new sales revenue by selling dvd copies to people who want it?

Michael Dube
617-290-6453
trmsboards@mikedube.com

Mike, we find that since we are archiving to DVD anyway, why not burn the disc and then rip it into the VS4. Keeps the workflow consistent. We manage the space on the VS4 by occasionally weeding out older programs that are no longer currently in the schedule (after we transcode to the VOD server).

Nick, to your point, I am familiar with your situation as you know...you've got a tough schedule with so many different selectmen and school committee meetings. To keep the titling high quality, I think you're best shooting on the FS4 drive (recording miniDV tape as backup), transferring the files to FCP, adding titles, then encoding to MPEG for the server. The actual firewire transfer of the files from FS4 drive is a matter of minutes (maybe 6 min per hour of footage?).

You could also go with the DSK option that TRMS offers. We use that for putting up the channel bug, "LIVE", etc. You could put up text or a crawl for people at home to let them know what meeting they're watching. Of course, this doesn't get printed on the tape. To do this, you'd need a CG/keying device of some kind connected somewhere downstream of your server video output.

If you wanted to speed up the process, and record on DVD at the location, you would have to go lower quality on the titles... you could add a cheap CG in each location or bring it along with you and hook it up each time. But then you should also have a graphics person with you, extra monitors, etc. Pretty cumbersome.

This all still beats what we used to do there--record on SVHS 160-min tapes, insert-edit the titles (yes, using tape-to-tape edit) at the beginning/end of the program, slam it into the deck and program the LGX manually. Yikes!

Shawn Serre
Pittsfield Community TV

We used a Compix with a laptop. Tiny little breakout box that would hook into the PCMCIA slot. Same exact card and software as what you find in their big honking units. Keeps the work flow familiar and you can reuse the same files that you have with the Compix that TRMS can control. Definitely as high quality as your graphics person can create. How much storage do you have in your video server? Ours was 250 GB which would fill up very very quickly until we hooked it up to our 12 TB of Apple storage. Putting the disk into a DVD changer is the only thing that is different in the work flow, as its still a show that you schedule. In fact, not putting ripping a DVD seems like less steps in a work flow.

Michael Dube
617-290-6453
trmsboards@mikedube.com

We have 1 TB of storage on the VS4. We've never really come close to running out of space. We've got 6.4 TB available on a SAN that's used by our Macs and Final Cut Pro, although we don't have the two systems tied together. I've got extra ports available on the Fibre Channel switch, perhaps someday...

That compix unit sounds pretty cool. I know we were looking at compix for our main CG a few years back, ended up going with Pinnacle Deko.

We never bought a DVD changer. We had CD changers for our bulletin boards, and they kept burning out on us. So we went straight from the Panasonic MicroCart (DVCPRO) to the VS4, never looked back!!

We roll three records. One consumer Panasonic DVD on a 4 hour record, one on a six hour record for those times when the meeting goes over 4 hours, and a full size DV tape as a backup. We bring the 4 hour disk back and stick it in a Tascam DV-D6500 serial control DVD player. We got the Panasonic DVD recorders from Best Buy for $170 each. The Tascam player was $500 from B&H and the eight port serial controller card that fits in the Cablecast box was... (help me Andy) about $400? We had some issues with the Tascams acting flaky when they were stacked in the rack, but since we put a full rack space in between each one they have worked fine. I think there was inadequate ventilation. This settup has worked for us because it's cheap, fast and we don't have to load our server with meetings (and we do a lot of meetings). Oh, and yes we use five Hitachi cameras, three are on Eagle pan tilt heads, and Inscriber for graphics.

To revive this topic yet again: Those who use Firestore FS-4 pro units, does anyone want to move captured files to the server without the interim step to FCP or another editing program? I'm curious about the process of stitching the 2GB files together to create a single video file. Any suggestions apart from direct MPEG capture, rather than any attempt to use Quicktime or DV files?