Portable HD Recorder Boosts Data-Rate to 160Mbps

September 12, 2007

Source: Convergent Design

Convergent Design confirmed today that Flash XDR™, their new portable CompactFlash® based HD Recorder, will support the MPEG2 422P@HL profile: 4:2:2, full-raster (1920x1080 / 1280x720) I-Frame only at 160Mbps. This enhanced capability comes in addition to the previously announced support for HDV, XDCAM® HD (35 Mbps) and 50 Mbps 4:2:2 long-GOP MPEG2 data-rates.

Flash XDR is the first ultra-portable HD field recorder which utilizes CompactFlash media coupled with the high-quality, reprogrammable Sony MPEG2 CODEC. These two key technologies allow Flash XDR to redefine HD field recorders in terms of size (similar to a USB drive), weight (2 Kg), power (8 watts), noise (no fans), and affordability (US $4995).

The all solid-state construction opens up unrealized applications where older tape or disk-drive based solutions were too large, too heavy, too noisy, too costly, or too fragile. Now, with the addition of the 160Mbps, 422P@HL I-Frame profile, videographers and cinematographers can enjoy ultra-portability with superb video quality coupled with the ease of I-Frame based editing. (Note: by populating both Compact Flash slots with 16GByte cards, Flash XDR can record approximately 26 minutes of video at the 160Mbps rate).

Flash XDR is an ideal upgrade path for HD-SDI based HDV camcorders. The live HD-SDI output (direct off the CMOS/CCD A/D converter) is far superior to the native HDV recording capability. Due to the constraints of tape-based recording, the HDV-2 format, for example, squeezes a 1920 x 1080 video stream to 1440 x 1080, decimates the color from 4:2:2 to 4:2:0, then applies long-GOP MPEG2 compression to squeeze the bit rate down to 25Mbps (from the approx 1Gbps uncompressed rate). Flash XDR, on the other hand, utilizes high-performance (340 Mbps I/O) CompactFlash memory enabling a much higher data-rate (160 Mbps) with full raster (1920x1080) and full 4:2:2 color space.

Flash XDR also offers affordable HD recording from live-event switchers, micro-miniature cameras (Iconix) or virtually any HD-SDI source. While the 160Mbps rate is excellent for high-end work (cinematography or green-screen), Flash XDR's data-rate can be dialed-down to HDV rates (19.7 or 25Mbps), perfect for HDCAM SR or telecine off-line. Finally, for ENG / OB applications, the ASI output adds the versatility of streaming directly to a satellite uplink.

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