Rosendahl bonsaiDRIVE - Mains Version

The Rosendahl bonsaiDRIVE is a miniature high quality portable video and multitrack audio hard disk recorder aimed at the film and video post production, video assist and multimedia markets. As an instant access stand alone recorder, it will certainly also find its place in the video monitoring and security industry.

bonsaiDRIVE was born from the idea of having a complete stand alone, synchronisable hard disk recorder as a portable media storage device, instead of a removable hard disk of comparable size and weight.

Running on mains or 12 volts DC, the unit records uncompressed 4:2:2 PAL or NTSC video together with 10 audio channels on standard IDE hard disk drives.

A Huffman codec provides a lossless video compression of 2:1 resulting in a superior video picture and a data transfer rate of 10 Mbyte/s, which is well within the capabilities of standard IDE drives. The audio channels are arranged as an analog stereo pair and a digital 8-channel ADAT stream and are 24-bit at 48 kHz sample rate. Professional synchronisation I/Os include timecode, Sony 9-pin remote control, MTC, MMC, video sync input, word clock output and GPIOs to allow perfect integration in postproduction or multimedia installations.

The front panel can be removed from the machine and used as a separate remote control with a standard 9-pin cable connection. A second 9-pin connector allows an additional external machine controller to be connected.

All configuration menus and settings are implemented as an interactive on screen video display, together with insertion of timecode and audio levels in the program video if required.

As each frame is recorded individually, jog, shuttle and playback from 0 to +/- 200% can be realised with playback similar to a professional, analog VTR. Sync audio is output in all modes including reverse, jog and shuttle giving a »Tape playback« feeling.

bonsaiDRIVE's firmware can be updated through any serial port of a computer (MIDI or COM). Loader programs for PC or MAC as well as the firmware files are available on this website (support section).

The optional 270 MBit SDI card provides additional serial digital video I/Os according SMPTE 259M-C and supports eight channels of 20-bit SDI embedded audio (SMPTE 272M-A).

Features:

• Records uncompressed 4:2:2 PAL or NTSC video on standard ATA-133 IDE drives and consumes 40-60 GBytes/ hour because of our lossless huffman codec
• 10 uncompressed embedded audio channels, 48 kHz, 24bit, two analog, 8 digital in ADAT-format or SDI embedded
• Integrated synchroniser with LTC, MTC, MMC, Sony 9-pin, word clock, genlock
• Mains or 12 volts DC version available, very low power consumption, no fan inside
• Removable front panel can be used as remote controller
• Option port for digital I/Os: 270 MBit SDI with embedded audio
• Crash, Assemble and Insert record modes, Editing with audio crossfades, TC chase modes, Loop and other auto play modes, programmable TC offsets...