HD Field Recorders for Live Production--UPDATED!

Recording Media

This is where it gets confusing, as the range or recording media varies from readily available spinning laptop hard drives and solid state drives to proprietary hard drives and recording media. I’m a big fan of being able to use media that I can buy from a computer store because cost and replacement is so much easier, and sometimes overnight shipping isn’t fast enough when you need it right away.

Media also needs to transfer quickly so you can backup footage to a client hard drive or transfer to your editing system. I prefer media that I can dock with an eSATA connection or connect to my computer with a USB3.0 connection. USB2.0 is just too slow, and I work exclusively on Windows systems, so FireWire 800 is of no use to me, although Mac users still use this format. Thunderbolt connections are not of interest to me at this point as I don’t have a single component that utilizes it, but MacBook Pro users and the users of the new crop of Windows systems with Thunderbolt support may want to look into this standard.

Now for a little rant directed at component manufacturers: I find too many manufacturers assume that all their users use Mac computers, but this ignores the 92% of world users who don’t. The implications of this Mac-centric feature design is that this makes it difficult to transfer footage to Windows users, be they the video editor or the client who wants to instantly view dailies. Implementing Mac-centric design means relying on the HFS+ file formats, as AJA does with its entire Ki Pro line. Blackmagic Design made the same mistake when they first launched their HyperDeck recorder, but later fixed this with a firmware update that added the ability to record to the more compatible exFAT file format that works equally well on Windows and Mac computers.

Power Options

A/C power and a battery backup should be a requirement for all recorders. Unfortunately, too many offer only one solution. An A/C power-only unit can benefit from a simple uninterrupted power supply (UPS) to protect from power loss. On the surface, many portable units appear to lack an A/C power input but those that accept Sony L-series batteries can use a simple A/C-to-Sony battery plate that ships with Sony battery chargers, but is also available from Atomos. On my Atomos Samurai I use one A/C battery adapter and a second Sony NPF970 battery to ensure that I have redundant power.

Unlike tape that simply stops rolling, if you interrupt a digital recording, the file will get corrupted and may not be easily recoverable. Last week I was hired to operate a video switcher at a concert and had my dedicated 20-amp circuit get turned off on me immediately at the conclusion the show. Unfortunately, I was tied in on the same supply as was the LED wall, and whoever turned off the wall didn’t realize it. It happened before I had a chance to stop the recordings on both the AJA Ki Pro that my client supplied and the Atomos Samurai that I insisted was required for backup. We weren’t using a UPS and both units were being powered by only A/C (the Samurai via a battery plate adapter). Needless to say, there were some very tense moments when my client realized that the entire recording could be lost and I’m sure some regret that they didn’t run iso recordings in each of the cameras.

I also ran into a situation late last year when I was editing directly from the primary recording media on a quick turnaround for an out-of-town job and I got hit with a power surge that wiped out my hard drive. Fortunately, I recorded and left a backup with the client, but that was a 5-hour roundtrip to fetch it from my new location.

Recovery Options

I’m not too familiar with Ki Pros--mainly because they are Mac-only devices--but here is what the rental company who supplied them to my client had to say about them: “Don’t get me into the the Ki Pro debate. I don’t like them, clients love them.”

I’ve already mentioned they also lack a video display but they do have a nice audio level VU meter and the audio inputs are line/mic-switchable. Unfortunately, the Ki Pro lacks a recovery option. My client found out about this the hard way. I should note that the files can be recovered; this company has built a business around recovering Ki Pro footage that got corrupted in one of several ways. The cost is $249 for what I would have required.

I think I earned my clients’ trust on that concert job as I was able to quickly recover the 4-hour live video switch in about 30 minutes because Atomos has a recovery function that I was prompted with as soon as I turned the unit back on. I made sure I had a UPS for this process.