Component to FireWire conversion?

Q: How do I convert from component video to FireWire?

A: You need a converter, and there is a number of them, ranging from $140 to $3,000. All of these units can work with NTSC or PAL signals.

• Grass Valley (formerly Canopus) ADVC-700, approx. $2,000: a 1U rackmountable box that does a great job converting, plus additional features: balanced or unbalanced audio, RS-422 (aka Sony 9-pin VTR control), LTC.
  Pros: compatible with nearly any FireWire-equipped device on Planet Earth, clean conversion that Canopus and Grass Valley are famous for, deck control, XLR/balanced audio, renowned brand.
  Cons: not exactly cheap
  Bottom line: if you need XLR, RS422 or LTC, take this one.
  
• Data Video DAC-15, about $800: Component to DV/FireWire and back, RS422, unbalanced audio only.
  Pros: robust industrial unit from a well established manufacturer of broadcast appliances, large buttons to switch between inputs and outputs, mostly BNC connectors (a good thing).
  Cons: no balanced audio (XLR) I/O.
  Bottom line: need a decent quality professional converter? This is the one.
  
• ADS Pyro AV/Link, (also: Google shopping search) about $140: RCA connectors, quality and reliability maybe so-so compared to ADVC-700, and the quality of its component input may not be that much better than S-Video. And if S-Video is good enough for you, I'd recommend ADVC-110, for the same reasons as ADVC-700: compatibility, reliability, quality. No RS422, balanced audio or LTC, of course.

ADVC-700 and DAC-15 units are bi-directional, i.e. convert from component video (YUV) to FireWire/DV and back, while Pyro AV/Link has component input only, but not output.

Vista 64 upgrades

So it’s getting to be that time for Windows OS 64 bit upgrades. God I remember the windows 2K to XP pro months (though I’d prefer not to) as a time of utter frustration for us and our clients. So in the next few days I figure I’ll give you all a few hints to make everything go a little bit smoother. I'll be posting here and of course the full "to do" on the DV411 website.
We are all looking forward to February when 64 bit drivers are expected for most third party I/O hardware. Lets hope they accomplish this feat!

The magic link: changing the administrative email address in PayPal

Do you have a PayPal account? Ever tried to change the administrative email address on it? How was it? For me, it was horrendours: 5 years of dismal failures - until today. And today is the day when I said to myself, once again: kudos to the powers of Google. I worship you. You helped me find the answer.

Aided by Google, I ran across a blog article about the same issue, posted by the incredibly nice folks at Tez and Dro. Their instructions worked like a charm:

1. Log in to your account at https://www.paypal.com/.
2. Copy and paste the following magic link, https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_profile-logins-change-admin in to the address bar.
3. Select an existing email address from the drop down menu that you want to make the new administrative email address, and click "Continue". You are done! The email address you selected will now be the administrative email address.

Why is it a big deal? Because nowhere on PayPal site, you can find this information, and you cannot do it yourself without knowing that magic link above. Your attempts to contact PayPal Customer Service or Support will be futile. They will send you useless instructions without the magic link. They will promise to update your account themselves, only to never do it. They will ignore your requests. I have had at least five incredibly frustrating email exchanges with PayPal, over the past five years.

I honestly don't know why this is such a big deal, but regardless: thank you Tez and Dro!

SSDs are coming. No, really.

Sandisk announced a new line of SSDs on Jan 8 (thanks for the tip ZDnet!) that take a step closer to the tipping point where regular, spinning hard disks no longer make sense for some people. People for whom pure capacity per dollar is less of a priority vs. power consumption, reliability, or speed.

A 240GB G3 series SSD drive from Sandisk will sell for $499, and will come in either 1.8" or 2.5" versions. Its main advantage is speed - 200MBs read and 140MBs write speeds - about 4 times faster than those of a 7200rpm desktop drive.

Put 5 of these babies on a fast RAID0 controller, and there you have 1.2TB array with a theoretical bandwidth of 1GBs, for under $3K. While that may be still expensive, the kicker is that it is fast enough to pull two streams of 10-bit 1080/60p, which normally requires a stack of 20 desktop or server drives in an array requiring lots of power and cooling.

We are getting to a point where uncompressed HD editing can be done on a laptop in a Starbucks shop.

DV411 has moved!

The new address, as of November 1st, 2008:

DV411 Inc.
5853 Uplander Way
Culver City CA 90230

View Map

Bigger and better organized space, way better parking.

The phone numbers remain the same:

310-838-9000 main
310-838-9320 fax
877-299-4111 toll-free

Seagate announce first 1.5TB desktop hard drive; 500GB 2.5" drives

The capacity race is on... According to Seagate this drive represents the largest increase in storage capacity in the last 50 years, a feat made possible by improvements in perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.

- sustained data transfer rate of up to 120MB/s

- 3Gbit/s SATA interface

- 32MB cache

The Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB is set to begin shipping August 2008.

Also announced today is a 500GB 2.5-inch hard drive for use in notebooks. Called the Momentus, they will be offered in 5,400 and 7,200 RPM flavors called the Momentus 5400.6 and Momentus 7200.4 respectively. The 5,400RPM drive will have an 8MB cache while the 7,200 RPM version will have 16MB.

And, according to Seagate, the Momentus is a tough drive:

Both Momentus drives are built tough enough to withstand up to 1,000 Gs of non-operating shock and 350 Gs of operating shock to protect drive data, making the drives ideal for systems that are subject to rough handling or high levels of vibration. For added robustness in mobile environments, the Momentus 5400.6 and 7200.4 are offered with G-Force Protection, a free-fall sensor technology that helps prevent drive damage and data loss upon impact if a laptop PC is dropped. The sensor works by detecting any changes in acceleration equal to the force of gravity and parks the heads off the disc to prevent contact with the platter in a free fall of as little as 8 inches and within 3/10ths of a second.

Momentus 5400.6 and 7200.4 hard drives will begin shipping in Q4 2008.

Sources:

• Seagate announce first 1.5TB desktop hard drive, by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 11:49 am, July 10th, 2008.
• Seagate's PR

Avid Xpress Pro software is "End of Life"

Avid has merged Avid Xpress Pro software into the Avid Media Composer product line. As a result, there will be no further sales of Avid Xpress Pro after June 30th 2008 and there will be no further major releases of Avid Xpress Pro software. For more information, please see our Xpress Pro page.