Deuce 1 #1 October 29, 2003 I'm curious as to how many gigs an 80 minute tape represents. With 2 gig cards now comercially available, I'm wondering how long it's going to be before we have a CompactFlash DV camcorder. If it kept the current level of resolution for 60 to 80 minutes, it could probably do a minute at full resolution, 12 megapixels, for a minute, if the computing power was there. Hmmmm. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quade 3 #2 October 29, 2003 For DV25 (what we're using) 1 gig = about 4.5 minutes. For 60 minutes of storage you'd need about 14 gig. Hmmm, some software, a 20 gig iPod and a FireWire camera head . . . could get interesting.quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Deuce 1 #3 October 30, 2003 I bet we see something like that in about a year. I just think the issue for most of the designers is having what looks like nothing more than a big lens. The only drawback to the micro cameras is those micro lenses that don't seem to transmit enough light and resolution. One of the things I like about Canon digital cameras is that they allow for the memory of the cards to improve, so the capacity of the camera to hold images just keeps going up. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nacmacfeegle 0 #4 October 30, 2003 "I'm wondering how long it's going to be before we have a CompactFlash DV camcorder. " I have no doubt the storage capacity will continue to increase at a reasonably satisfying rate!I think the bottleneck could be the read/write speed of the storage medium. Quades 'vision' of a simple lens/CCD unit hooked up via firewire, or even USB2 to an Ipod sounds closer to something we could reasonably expect see. I think you'd still need some sort of onboard compression system to keep things manageable, but this already exists on all domestic DV cams. Exciting times for us technophiles.-------------------- 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 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
velo90 0 #5 October 30, 2003 Quote"I'm wondering how long it's going to be before we have a CompactFlash DV camcorder. " I have no doubt the storage capacity will continue to increase at a reasonably satisfying rate!´ Let me know when they can store 200 minutes of video and I'll be interested. That is the amount I have after a busy weekend filming tandems. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gus 1 #6 October 30, 2003 QuoteI'm wondering how long it's going to be before we have a CompactFlash DV camcorder The 1st generation is already here so it shouldn't be long before before we see higher resolution solid state memory video cameras. GusOutpatientsOnline.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
airgord 1 #7 October 30, 2003 I'm lucky I can remember where I put them after the tape is filled. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
monkeyKam 0 #8 November 2, 2003 Whacky that this topic was here... I jusdt got off the phone with one of the engineers from the company that is manufacturing my monkeyKamera. They have already built prototype digital video recorders that are basically video iPods. Another VERY groovy thing about this little doo-dad is that it can record multiple video signals at one time (4 at the moment). In other words, you could have 4 or more angles of video recorded at one time and then edit them together as if multiple camera people had shot footage. It turns out that the circuitry to compress raw video signals down to miniDV compression are on just a chip, today (so I understand). The device is slated to act simply as a FireWire hard drive when plugged into your editing system. You copy the footage over to your editing system and wipe the recorder clean for another go. The internal technology is very similar to the drives in the iPod. They're working on the user interface and ports/connectivity options. Not sure if these will look as cool as iPods (I love my 40 gig iPod, BTW!), but they are going to be tiny. Laptop hard drives are rugged and very, very tiny. As for the micro camera and micro lenses, you will be amazed by the quality of the video that comes out of the monkeyKamera. The 480-line 1/3-inch CCD is amazing. The optics are quite impressive, considering their diminuitive size. It is very difficult to see a difference. Every time I show the 4-way footage from Nationals, camera people are wowed at how it looks like a Sony TRV image. Anyway, very exciting times for us tech geeks, indeed! Can't wait to show these things off in the real world. Blue skies and safe swoops! Andy "I drank what?" --Sophocles Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quade 3 #9 November 2, 2003 I'd be very interested to see how the drives work at altitude. I'm guessing that the engineers have no idea how they'll behave and I'm further guessing that they won't behave the same as at sea level. Ask them about the operating specs for atmospheric pressure. Oh, speaking of the monkeyKamera . . . there are a couple of technical faults in your article. Specifically about how resolution works with regards to television. We can go off-line in PMs and talk about it or talk about it out here in the open if you'd like.quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Wags 0 #10 November 2, 2003 QuoteI'd be very interested to see how the drives work at altitude. Hard drives need "air" to work properly. I work at Hutchinson Technology, we make the suspensions that hold the read/write head in hard drives. Our suspensions hold the head less then 3,000th the thickness of a sheet of paper from the surface of the disk, and that head rides on a cushion of air. At high altitudes, there is little or no air for the head to ride on, and your disk will crash easily. Get up high enough, and the head will just drag across the surface of the disk. I would be curious to know if anyone with a digital camera has taken a microdrive to altitude. Here is a link to a page on my companies web site that explains in painful detail how the hard drive works, and how the head (slider) flies over the surface. http://www.htch.com/primer.asp Did you guys notice that Panasonic records at a max of 704x576, 6mb per second, 10min on a 512mb card. That proves they have a way to record high quality, now we just need some bigger cards. I can see it now, a large good quality lense with a slot for a memory card in the back. Blue Skies, Wags Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quade 3 #11 November 2, 2003 QuoteI would be curious to know if anyone with a digital camera has taken a microdrive to altitude. As a matter of fact, yeah. Craig O'Brien (OB) did some very early work with the Canon D30 and a 1 gig micro-drive a couple of years ago. It was crashing at altitude just like you have explained. This, and a couple of other reasons, are why we're going to need something for skydiving that's totally solid state. OB's experiences a couple of years ago is what lead me be so curious about this current crop of drives. When I had "suggested" mounting a simple FireWire camera on an iPod, it was simply for illustration purposes. I knew full well it probably wouldn't work at altitudes as high as say, 18,000 MSL, but it would almost definately work at lower altitudes most ground bound engineers would think of.quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kallend 1,635 #12 November 2, 2003 QuoteQuoteI'd be very interested to see how the drives work at altitude. Hard drives need "air" to work properly. I work at Hutchinson Technology, we make the suspensions that hold the read/write head in hard drives. Our suspensions hold the head less then 3,000th the thickness of a sheet of paper from the surface of the disk, and that head rides on a cushion of air. At high altitudes, there is little or no air for the head to ride on, and your disk will crash easily. Get up high enough, and the head will just drag across the surface of the disk. I would be curious to know if anyone with a digital camera has taken a microdrive to altitude. reply] I thought the drives were hermetically sealed.... The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites quade 3 #13 November 2, 2003 QuoteI thought the drives were hermetically sealed. Everything has its limits. Perhaps the seals work very well from say, sea level to 10,000 feet, which by the way is a typical spec if you look around at spec sheets for drives and even a lot of solid state components. For instance, take a look at THIS spec sheet for the iPod.quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites kallend 1,635 #14 November 2, 2003 QuoteQuoteI thought the drives were hermetically sealed. Everything has its limits. Perhaps the seals work very well from say, sea level to 10,000 feet, which by the way is a typical spec if you look around at spec sheets for drives and even a lot of solid state components. For instance, take a look at THIS spec sheet for the iPod. In terms of pressure difference, that's pathetic. Like 10 ft underwater. I find it hard to believe the seals around a drive housing are that poor.... The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites quade 3 #15 November 2, 2003 QuoteI find it hard to believe the seals around a drive housing are that poor. That's the difference between theoretical and applied engineering. It also gives some insights into the two different ways to write specs; what's required to get the job done (like a military funded spec) or what the lowest common denominator of all the components of the off the shelf equipment are capable of. Since the iPod was designed using off the shelf components and the mass market didn't require performance on top of Mount Everest, well, 10k is a reasonable number. The reality is that they don't, usually, need to be any better than that, so why spend the time, money & effort to make them any better? Oh, there's -probably- at least a good 20% fudge factor in there and maybe upwards of 100%, but by stating 10k in the spec, nobody can legally claim shenanigans if it stops working at 10k+1.quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites ypelchat 0 #16 November 2, 2003 QuoteI'm curious as to how many gigs an 80 minute tape represents. With 2 gig cards now comercially available, I'm wondering how long it's going to be before we have a CompactFlash DV camcorder. If it kept the current level of resolution for 60 to 80 minutes, it could probably do a minute at full resolution, 12 megapixels, for a minute, if the computing power was there. Hmmmm. Compact flash cards made it to 4Gb. http://tinyurl.com/kivh And the Compact flash card capacity is expected to exceed 16Gb by the end of 2004. as for the price...... Yves. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites ypelchat 0 #17 November 2, 2003 QuoteQuoteQuoteI'd be very interested to see how the drives work at altitude. Hard drives need "air" to work properly. I work at Hutchinson Technology, we make the suspensions that hold the read/write head in hard drives. Our suspensions hold the head less then 3,000th the thickness of a sheet of paper from the surface of the disk, and that head rides on a cushion of air. At high altitudes, there is little or no air for the head to ride on, and your disk will crash easily. Get up high enough, and the head will just drag across the surface of the disk. I would be curious to know if anyone with a digital camera has taken a microdrive to altitude. reply] I thought the drives were hermetically sealed. I know a guy who has had several IBM Microdrives fail, while using them in his helmet mounted camera. He stopped using them. They just can't withstand the rapid change in barometric pressure. Yves. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Wags 0 #18 November 2, 2003 QuoteI thought the drives were hermetically sealed. No, they are not. They acutaly have a small hole with a filter to keep out dust. The reason I have heard that they are not sealed, is that they would have to make the case mutch stronger to maintain presure. Again, this is a cost issue. Maybe someday they will make some sealed micro drives for us extremests. Here is a picture of the air hole in my laptop hard drive. Blue Skies, Wags Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites monkeyKam 0 #19 November 3, 2003 Wags is correct: The 1 GB IBM drive does not function well above 8,000 ft. I got CF errors after about 8K or so. It's amazing those little buggers work at all, they're so dinky. I'm really not sure what the storage system I mentioned will do at altitude. I suppose I could take an iPOD up in the plane on a load tomorrow and see if the drive can bring up a song on jump run. :) Hmmm... Maybe an old laptop is a better Guinea Pig. But then, maybe the drive technology is better lately, so an old laptop wouldn't be a good test subject. It's late. Too much thinking... "I drank what?" --Sophocles Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites nacmacfeegle 0 #20 November 3, 2003 It should be relatively straightforward to build a pressure housing, with suitable glanded ports for cables etc. Is that the only constraint? Temperature, G-Forces? If the whole set up is bigger than say a portable minidv VCR, are we just talking about a different coloured mousetrap?-------------------- 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 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Join the conversation You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account. Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible. Reply to this topic... × Pasted as rich text. Paste as plain text instead Only 75 emoji are allowed. × Your link has been automatically embedded. Display as a link instead × Your previous content has been restored. Clear editor × You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL. Insert image from URL × Desktop Tablet Phone Submit Reply 0 Go To Topic Listing
quade 3 #13 November 2, 2003 QuoteI thought the drives were hermetically sealed. Everything has its limits. Perhaps the seals work very well from say, sea level to 10,000 feet, which by the way is a typical spec if you look around at spec sheets for drives and even a lot of solid state components. For instance, take a look at THIS spec sheet for the iPod.quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kallend 1,635 #14 November 2, 2003 QuoteQuoteI thought the drives were hermetically sealed. Everything has its limits. Perhaps the seals work very well from say, sea level to 10,000 feet, which by the way is a typical spec if you look around at spec sheets for drives and even a lot of solid state components. For instance, take a look at THIS spec sheet for the iPod. In terms of pressure difference, that's pathetic. Like 10 ft underwater. I find it hard to believe the seals around a drive housing are that poor.... The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quade 3 #15 November 2, 2003 QuoteI find it hard to believe the seals around a drive housing are that poor. That's the difference between theoretical and applied engineering. It also gives some insights into the two different ways to write specs; what's required to get the job done (like a military funded spec) or what the lowest common denominator of all the components of the off the shelf equipment are capable of. Since the iPod was designed using off the shelf components and the mass market didn't require performance on top of Mount Everest, well, 10k is a reasonable number. The reality is that they don't, usually, need to be any better than that, so why spend the time, money & effort to make them any better? Oh, there's -probably- at least a good 20% fudge factor in there and maybe upwards of 100%, but by stating 10k in the spec, nobody can legally claim shenanigans if it stops working at 10k+1.quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ypelchat 0 #16 November 2, 2003 QuoteI'm curious as to how many gigs an 80 minute tape represents. With 2 gig cards now comercially available, I'm wondering how long it's going to be before we have a CompactFlash DV camcorder. If it kept the current level of resolution for 60 to 80 minutes, it could probably do a minute at full resolution, 12 megapixels, for a minute, if the computing power was there. Hmmmm. Compact flash cards made it to 4Gb. http://tinyurl.com/kivh And the Compact flash card capacity is expected to exceed 16Gb by the end of 2004. as for the price...... Yves. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ypelchat 0 #17 November 2, 2003 QuoteQuoteQuoteI'd be very interested to see how the drives work at altitude. Hard drives need "air" to work properly. I work at Hutchinson Technology, we make the suspensions that hold the read/write head in hard drives. Our suspensions hold the head less then 3,000th the thickness of a sheet of paper from the surface of the disk, and that head rides on a cushion of air. At high altitudes, there is little or no air for the head to ride on, and your disk will crash easily. Get up high enough, and the head will just drag across the surface of the disk. I would be curious to know if anyone with a digital camera has taken a microdrive to altitude. reply] I thought the drives were hermetically sealed. I know a guy who has had several IBM Microdrives fail, while using them in his helmet mounted camera. He stopped using them. They just can't withstand the rapid change in barometric pressure. Yves. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Wags 0 #18 November 2, 2003 QuoteI thought the drives were hermetically sealed. No, they are not. They acutaly have a small hole with a filter to keep out dust. The reason I have heard that they are not sealed, is that they would have to make the case mutch stronger to maintain presure. Again, this is a cost issue. Maybe someday they will make some sealed micro drives for us extremests. Here is a picture of the air hole in my laptop hard drive. Blue Skies, Wags Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites monkeyKam 0 #19 November 3, 2003 Wags is correct: The 1 GB IBM drive does not function well above 8,000 ft. I got CF errors after about 8K or so. It's amazing those little buggers work at all, they're so dinky. I'm really not sure what the storage system I mentioned will do at altitude. I suppose I could take an iPOD up in the plane on a load tomorrow and see if the drive can bring up a song on jump run. :) Hmmm... Maybe an old laptop is a better Guinea Pig. But then, maybe the drive technology is better lately, so an old laptop wouldn't be a good test subject. It's late. Too much thinking... "I drank what?" --Sophocles Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites nacmacfeegle 0 #20 November 3, 2003 It should be relatively straightforward to build a pressure housing, with suitable glanded ports for cables etc. Is that the only constraint? Temperature, G-Forces? If the whole set up is bigger than say a portable minidv VCR, are we just talking about a different coloured mousetrap?-------------------- 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 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Join the conversation You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account. Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible. Reply to this topic... × Pasted as rich text. Paste as plain text instead Only 75 emoji are allowed. × Your link has been automatically embedded. Display as a link instead × Your previous content has been restored. Clear editor × You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL. Insert image from URL × Desktop Tablet Phone Submit Reply 0
Wags 0 #18 November 2, 2003 QuoteI thought the drives were hermetically sealed. No, they are not. They acutaly have a small hole with a filter to keep out dust. The reason I have heard that they are not sealed, is that they would have to make the case mutch stronger to maintain presure. Again, this is a cost issue. Maybe someday they will make some sealed micro drives for us extremests. Here is a picture of the air hole in my laptop hard drive. Blue Skies, Wags Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
monkeyKam 0 #19 November 3, 2003 Wags is correct: The 1 GB IBM drive does not function well above 8,000 ft. I got CF errors after about 8K or so. It's amazing those little buggers work at all, they're so dinky. I'm really not sure what the storage system I mentioned will do at altitude. I suppose I could take an iPOD up in the plane on a load tomorrow and see if the drive can bring up a song on jump run. :) Hmmm... Maybe an old laptop is a better Guinea Pig. But then, maybe the drive technology is better lately, so an old laptop wouldn't be a good test subject. It's late. Too much thinking... "I drank what?" --Sophocles Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nacmacfeegle 0 #20 November 3, 2003 It should be relatively straightforward to build a pressure housing, with suitable glanded ports for cables etc. Is that the only constraint? Temperature, G-Forces? If the whole set up is bigger than say a portable minidv VCR, are we just talking about a different coloured mousetrap?-------------------- 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 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
