Focus Enhancements Firestore FS-100

Recently, Watoto Child Care Ministries shot a documentary on children in Uganda who have lost one or both parents to AIDS. The tools of choice were Panasonic’s HD AG-HVX200 and FireStore’s FS-100 DTE recorder.

“We would have needed to purchase several P2 cards to meet our recording needs and that was just too expensive,”explains Watoto’s Media Director, Martin Berg. “I thought about recording directly to a Macbook Pro hard drive but I couldn’t exactly mount the laptop on the camera or slip it in my pocket.”

Berg turned to the FS-100 DTE long format HD recorder. Designed to work with the HVX200, it lets videographers record DVCPRO HD, DVCPRO 50, and DVCPRO/DV streams directly from the camera to disk via FireWire. With the standard 100gb (160gb also available) the FS-100 offers long recording times at a price point far less than several P2 cards.

It is slightly larger than a Palm Pilot device and weighs 1.5 lbs. It is designed for rugged conditions, with a six or ten-second electronic shock cache to ensure no loss of footage.

It also features time lapse (DV mode), retro disk recording, scene marketing, and clip categorization.

FS-100 enables recording DVCPRO at 720p 24/25/30 (model dependant, PAL/NTSC) in P2 or Quick-Time file formats at native frame rates. Only the required frames are recorded. It also supports variable frame rate (VFR) recording for slow motion and fast motion effects.