Focus Enhancements FS-5 DTE Recorder

NOW SLEEKER, MORE SYNCHRONIZED

Bruce A. Johnson

November 1, 2008    Source: Studio Monthly

In the time I’ve been writing for video magazines, I’ve had the opportunity to test just about every hard drive recording device ever released. Some were OK, some were terrible, but few have shown as much promise as the drives built by Focus Enhancements. I still own and use an FS-3 for specialized recording jobs, like long records, for time – lapse and when I have a really fast turnaround edit. What could possibly be missing?

Beating the Log Slog

I have found one immutable truth in television: Logging tape is the worst job in the business. And after-the-fact logging could be largely prevented if only there were a person assigned to the job in the field. Of course, no shooter wants a PA looking behind his head all day to read timecode numbers. So, in addition to being a fully functional DV and HDV recorder, the FS-5 has another, almost incredible, trick up its sleeve. With the addition of a commonly available USB WiFi transceiver, the FS-5 will transmit timecode data to an Apple iPod Touch, and allow an on-scene logger to mark in and out points and add rudimentary notes on the fly. All the logging info is then sent back to the FS-5, where it is dynamically combined with the clips themselves for access in the editing process. What could be cooler than that? Well, relax; the FS-5 isn’t perfect.

But before we hit the downsides, let’s talk about all the other good stuff the FS-5 has. First, even though the drive capacity has swelled to 100 GB (over 8 hours of capacity,) the FS-5 is much more compact than its older siblings, having been whittled down to a svelte 3 x 5 ½ x 1 inches and 14 ounces — with a battery installed. It used to be that whether a hard drive recorder actually worked was almost secondary to how you mount it and how you power it. The FS-5 has fixed this conundrum in style. An optional mount embraces the handle on the top of your camera, and the FS-5 glides into it like a hand in a glove. And the battery? It slides fully inside the unit, and mounts with a satisfying "click."

All the Moving Parts

Once you power the FS-5 up, the new color LED screen teases you that maybe, just maybe, it will double as a video monitor. Sorry, folks, it isn’t that nice, but it is remarkably readable, and provides an enormous range of information. Only nine buttons and a clickable jog-wheel adorn the faceplace of the FS-5: a power button, four transport buttons (record, play, pause and stop) and four "soft buttons," whose functions change depending on the mode of the FS-5. The soft button functions read out on the LED display. The jog-wheel provides access to the nest of menus, but it’s a little small and touchy for a guy with mitts as big as mine.

If you have ever used a Focus Enhancements product, operating the FS-5 will be immediately familiar. Once you get past the more common menu choices, like codec choice (in either DV or HDV there are many options, including MXF, QuickTime and M2T), you find selections that inform you in no uncertain terms that this is a computer, and it wants to talk with other computers. Setting IP addresses, gateways and SSID values is easily accomplished, although you want to be careful to get it right. Solid TCP/IP knowledge is a must to get the FS-5 talking to the outside world.

(Close-up)

But once you do it...wow. There is something undeniably cool about holding an iPod Touch (or iPhone or other WiFi device) in your hand and seeing timecode running almost in sync (actually, a couple of seconds behind) with the camera way over on the other end of the room. The FS-5 uses metadata templates (XML files, to be exact) to customize the display on the Touch and the metadata stored in the clips. And here was where I found my first question about this mode of operation: The iPod Touch interface is cool, but it doesn’t seem very usable. Buttons are small and easily mis-punched, and inputting data beyond in and out points and pre-programmed comments is torture. Even micro-laptops like the ASUS Eee PC would be a much better platform for logging in conjunction with the FS-5, and I can’t think of any reason why they wouldn’t work.

The other major disappointment for me — an Adobe Premiere Pro user — is that (at the time I write this) only Apple Final Cut Pro supports the FS-5’s metadata tagging. I borrowed a Macbook Pro for my tests, and when the clips are imported from the FS-5, it’s true: there are in and out points on clips, and information on the clip appears on the timeline and in the bin as notes. I cannot adequately express how impressed I am with this capability. But if it only ever works on FCP, I’ll be a pretty sad editor.

The folks at Focus Enhancements continue to impress. It’s great to see this kind of imagination applied to one of the grunt jobs in video production — and if producers would learn the value of adopting field logging in the way the FS-5 makes possible, great cost and time savings would invariably result. If that was all it brought to the party, the FS-5 deserves awards. But in its current FCP-only incarnation, it will be of limited utility for the non-FCP part of the world. Here’s hoping that the FS-5 will be talking to a lot more editing applications in a hurry.