Baby Hi Def Hard Drive « Making the Movie

18Jul/060

Baby Hi Def Hard Drive

Stephen Schleicher reviews the CitiDISK HDV:

The drive is very simple and easy to use. The videographer connects the camera to the drive using a FireWire cable (usually a 4 to 6 pin), turns the unit on and whenever the user presses the record button on the camera, the signal is simultaneously recorded to the drive.

The largest of the models, the FW1256H-100 (reviewed here), can capture 420 minutes of HDV or DV. Even the smallest drive Shining Technology offers can capture 180 minutes of video goodness. With a huge drive size, you don’t have to worry about changing to a new tape at an important moment. In fact, if you run out of tape, CitiDISK will continue to record, while you pop in a new tape.

Why use tape if this disk takes care of everything for you? Connectors are a tricky thing and I’ve found during tests of this and other HDD recorders that if the connection is lost, so is the video. Best to have a back up than nothing at all. If the connection to the camera (or computer) is lost, all three of the lights on the front of the CitiDISK will flash to let you know there is a problem. If you want to risk it, you can manually start and stop the record process.

The CitiDISK captures in Raw DV, Windows AVI2, QuickTime MOV, and M2T for all HDV footage at a sustained 12MB/second. While having the M2T is great, Final Cut Pro does not natively recognize the format. You will have to use a conversion utility to do that. Not a big deal, but it does increase workflow time.

Because the CitiDISK is compatible with Windows and Mac, the drive is formatted as FAT32, which means files will have a 2GB size limit. If you record over the size limit, CitiDISK HDV will automatically create a new clip sequentially numbered.

This nifty device will set you back almost a thousand clams. With battery packs, you can record for eight continuous hours - yikes.