New surprises from Doremi

By Oleg Bondarev

Review contents:
Disk recorders: past, present and future DV MasStor — a new page in NLE history Hard disk recorder DataVideo DV Bank DN-100 New surprises from Doremi Doremi Labs disk recorders and servers Disk recording devices of Ikegami Whipflash2 disk recorder Panasonic DVD recorder Sony disk recorders

“…steel horse is going to replace farmer’s gee-gee…” (“12 chairs”)

V1… Not without reason this disk recorder (DDR) model of Doremi labs. has such name. It really has became the first among the equals. It was first DDR which got unprecedented popularity. It was a model which had just one serious update and it has been on the market more than six years! And it take place under the situation when in the fast developing computer business any model developed more then three year ago seems hopeless old. What is the secret of this elder man popularity? It looks not very attractive and has industrial design — nothing redundant, general DDR’s features… But are they so general? From outside it looked like trivial professional tape recorder with two removable disks instead of tape transport mechanism. If talking about disks V1 was “omnivorous” — it got any disks of SCSI, SCSI2, Wide SCSI (after update or with adapter), UW SCSI standards. Even quite popular in some days removable magneto-optical media can be used within this model — cool, isn’t it?

Most of those days and (it may be quite strange) modern DDRs operate under control of any OS. This is UNIX in the best case or at least MAC OS, and in worst case… so… you understand. V1 despite of it’s computer nature has no operation system! It has only the set of simple commands which is mostly entirely conforms to the one of usual professional VTR. The only difference is that for example the “go to” command it realizes instantly and such parameter as “preroll” (time of rewinding) is equal to zero. This whole set of commands is realized by means of RS-422 interface, i. e. from the point of view of the any VTR V1 is just traditional VTR but with rewind time equal to zero. For anyone who is familiar with TV production and broadcasting process it is impossible to overprice the convenience of such device. Besides, in difference with traditional VTR this disk recorder can deal with play list — any sequence of video clips which can be recorded on the hard disk in any order. And this play list can be downloaded either from V1 front panel or practically from any computer (Wintel, MAC, Unix) using RS-422 or Ethernet interface. This list can be edited “on the fly” right in time of it’s execution. And it make V1 closer to the devices of another class — to video serves (by the way, we’ll come back to this matter later). Just one detail — if control computer has failed or has been totally disconnected V1 will continue to execute the last command, i. e. it will entirely process the current play list. Besides, V1 had lots of pleasant extras like built-in LCD monitor or, for instance, external control panel. And the main feature was the price of this DDR which was most acceptable in the class of devices — V1m model (without front control panel) was less than $5000.

V1 disk recorder. Front (above) and rear view

It may be sad to understand but we are all getting old as well as equipment does. Doremi Labs announced about closing V1 manufacturing: starting from September of 2002 it is not on sale anymore. There is the only and most cheap V1m in line which doesn’t have front control panel and can be controlled by means of external controllers only. What came to replace the old lady? One can be quiet — the company has produced the whole line of new products with totally all new design and inner filling but the concept of disk recorder has remained as before. The direct replacement of V1 is new V1-400 model which has mostly all functional features of predecessor. Main difference is new stylish design of silver housing.

The main features if V1-400:

• operation system — no;
• video inputs/outputs: Y/C, Composite, Component, SDI (optional);
• audio inputs/outputs: balanced XLR, non-balanced RCA, AES/EBU;
• compression — M-JPEG;
• standards supported — PAL/NTSC;
• in/out of LTC time code;
• synch in/out (BNC connector);
• slave/master modes control via RS-422 (Sony) interface;
• dimensions — 19"x3RU.

V1MPEG-2 model

As we can see besides external view there are mostly no changes. But the next V1MPEG-2 sufficiently differs in terms of inner content and functionality. Just look at it: it is two-channel model and can be extended up to four channels. Besides it can record video material in MPEG-2 format and playback it during recording process simultaneously with necessary delay. Or it can playback the material selected according to play list which as been edited as necessary. In other words this device may be used as classic delay line of as two-channel (or four-channel) video server with the only difference that upon problems occurring with control computer such server is honestly executing last command received.

Additionally there are design differences, for example featured flipping out LCD-monitor under which removable disks are placed. The main new features of this model are MPEG-2 compression with bit rates up to 50 Mbps and two or four channels.

V1U for uncompressed video

The device V1U with no compression was created for operation with high quality computer graphics. And, finally, for those who need use of HD formats there is V1UHD model. Of course these are not all models produced by Doremi Labs Company. There are lots of intermediate models and many options like different types of digital and analog inputs, new external RCV2 remote control consol which can control up to four devices, built-in LCD-monitor etc. But all of this is insufficient because the main is that new model line still features combination of functionality and high level of reliability.

By Tivionica Broadcast Systems