REEDSBURG, WI — At the IBC show in Amsterdam, Sound Devices (www.sounddevices.com) introduced its FileSafe technology as part of its 2.02 firmware release for its multi-drive, network connected video and audio rack-mounted recorders. Incorporated into the Video Devices Pix products, including the 270i, 260i and 250i, as well as the Sound Devices 970, FileSafe recovers video and audio files if, during recording, drives are unintentionally removed or power is lost.
“Pulling a drive mid-recording with a Windows, Mac or other hardware-based recording system will most likely result in corrupted files,” says Dan Desjardins, software development manager at Sound Devices. “It’s taken some clever engineering to make FileSafe work, especially with high bandwidth ProRes and DNxHD video files.”
During recording, data is written to a proprietary Sound Devices file format optimized for high-data rate, realtime video and audio recording. Video Files have an ‘.sdv’ file extension and audio files have an ‘.sda’ file extension. When a recording ends, files are automatically “finalized” by converting the ‘.sdv’ files to QuickTime movie files and the ‘.sda’ files become ‘.wav’ files. This process typically only takes a couple of seconds. In the event that files cannot be finalized, whether due to power loss or inadvertent drive disconnection, they still remain intact on the drive. These files are recovered simply by inserting the drive back into a Sound Devices or Video Devices rack-mounted recorder. Each time a drive is mounted, the recorder automatically scans for unfinalized files and finalizes them.
In the absence of a Sound Devices or Video Devices rack-mount recorder, the FileSafe Mac or PC utility, which is available as a free download (www.sounddevices.com/products/filesafe/) can be used to recover unfinalized files. Simply connect the Pix drive caddy via Firewire, USB or eSATA to the computer, open the utility and point it to the drive’s directory path containing the unfinalized files and click ‘Scan and Finalize.’
In addition to FileSafe, the new 2.02 firmware release includes longer file-splitting options, RS-422 control improvements and enhanced metadata editing.