By Andrew Liszewski
The advent of digital cinema cameras has given the independent filmmaker a relatively affordable way to produce films that look like they were financed by a large studio. But the hardware remains on the bleeding edge and there’s still the issue of storage space to deal with. Keep in mind that when shooting at 2K resolution you’re capturing 24 2048×1556 images every second and there’s currently digital cinema cameras capable of working at 4K as well. So that’s where the Codex Portable field recorder becomes extremely useful.
It’s basically a battery powered RAID that uses interchangeable disk packs and can be connected to the most popular digital cinema cameras currently in use including Sony’s HD cameras, the Dalsa Origin, the Thompson Viper FilmStream, the Panasonic Genesis, the Arri D-20 and even the RED camera. Basically all the toys I put on my Christmas list each year but never get. Because it uses visually-lossless compression the Codex Portable isn’t perfect for every digital filmmaker but odds are if you don’t have millions of dollars worth of effects lined up it will serve you just fine.
And since it’s designed to be used on location no matter where that may be the Codex Portable has a rugged carbon fiber case and includes a built-in touch screen and dedicated transport controls. The aforementioned disk packs come in either RAID 3 configurations ranging from 400 to 800GB or flash memory configurations ranging from 128 to 512GB. While that may sound like overkill at the highest quality you’re actually limited to about 3 hours worth of footage which is why the disks can be swapped out.
[ Codex Portable ] VIA [ fxguide ]
