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Maxell iVDR Xtreme In the Field

Nov 24, 2009 12:00 PM

Digital storage of video images on tiny hard drives is bringing improvements to the world of cinematography much as it has to portable consumer products. However, when a hard drive fails, "catastrophic" is not too extravagant a word for describing the results. That's especially true for cinematographers who shoot capture-it-or-lose-it activities such as concerts and sporting events. Cinematographer/director/producer Philip Marcus, founder and owner of Put On Productions, experienced that first hand.

Marcus, whose long list of credits includes music videos and feature films, began to notice that when shooting concerts, the internal hard drive in his HD camcorder would skip as he approached the stage, forcing a reboot. While he managed to recover relatively gracefully from these potentially disastrous situations, the problem had to be rectified. To come up with a solution, Marcus benefitted from the technical acumen he amassed as an avionics specialist with the U.S. Army 116th Aviation Company, with whom he flew and serviced helicopters during the Vietnam War. His instincts led him to think that the ear-splitting sound pressure levels near the stage caused the drive to fail. To verify this, he put the camera near the loudspeakers in his Hummer H2 and cranked up the volume on its thunderous sound system. The drive promptly failed. That identified the problem but didn't solve it. After speaking at length with the camera manufacturer, it became obvious there was no quick fix.

A serendipitous surprise

At the 2009 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas, a conversation with a Maxell sales engineer turned to Marcus' unusual problem. The engineer told him Maxell might just have the answer, a new 250GB hard drive called iVDR Xtreme, and offered to send him one to try. The iVDR family of hard-disk storage cartridges comes in several form factors; the iVDR Xtreme is designed for exceptionally rugged use, which makes it unique among portable data storage devices.

According to Maxell, the iVDR Xtreme cartridge can withstand a nonoperating shock of more than 2000G and an operating shock of at least 350G, so it can repeatedly survive drops of more than 4ft. onto a tile floor without damage. It can also operate over a temperature range of -40 degrees Celsius to 70 degrees Celsius and at altitudes as high as 10,000ft. Maxell's two-piece iVDR Xtreme architecture isolates the drive from other parts of the cartridge, and the two pieces can be reconnected 10,000 times without degradation or failure. The drive itself is suspended inside the cartridge shell, which accounts for its high resistance to shock and vibration.

When he received what was then a preproduction version, the iVDR Xtreme was configured for Panasonic HVX series camcorders. Marcus put his electronics skills to work again to modify the USB connection and power supply to match those required by his Sony PMW-EX3 camcorders. Working with Maxell's engineering department, he built a 6V lithium battery pack to power the unit and modified a USB extension cable with a compatible connector so he could mount the drive on his belt and set out to work.

"The drive just worked phenomenally," Marcus says. "Not a skip, a blip, nothing. It simply worked perfectly. I can put 6 or 7 hours of HD video on the drive, which makes it excellent for concerts, and I no longer have to worry at all about whether I'm going to lose anything I shoot. In production shows, I have only one chance to capture footage, and the drive puts me in a confident position because I know I'm going to get the shot. I can assure you that's a big relief."

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