External video encoder

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limegreen

103 posts

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#20464 27-Mar-2008 15:23

This is maybe slightly tangential to home theater, but I remember last year seeing somewhere on the great interweb a small device available in NZ for under $200 (about $176 at the time if I recall correctly), a small box that was capable of taking most sort of analogue video feeds (say from an old VCR), encoding them as an mpeg and storing them directly onto a USB key.

If anybody has any idea where I saw this, or what exactly it's called, I'd be really appreciative. Or any other creative solution to take the output of a video camera and get it onto a USB key with NO COMPUTER. No fricking round. Just put the key in and press a button.

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CYaBro

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#119066 27-Mar-2008 15:37

Something like this?

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limegreen

103 posts

Master Geek

#119073 27-Mar-2008 15:51

CYaBro: Something like this?

Yes!!! You have no idea how many hours I have spent and not re-found this (although I think that's because most of the keywords I could think of applied to many other things). That's really similar to the original thing that I saw. However, what I'd really like is one that would write straight to a USB flash drive. It's for a student exercise, and USB drives are the floppy of the new millennium.

In the past we've had old skool video cameras recording onto full size videotapes, but most of the students no longer have VCRs in their flats. I'd really like to replicate that simplicity though. DV cameras that write to proprietary small DVD-Rs are expensive and annoying, and SD etc. cards are not as ubiquitous as USB keys...

EDIT: I'm now wondering if this is what I saw, and if I mis-remembered it writing to a plain old memory stick.

richms

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#119460 28-Mar-2008 23:22

I think you might have issues finding something that can record direct to a USB device, but some HDD recorders have a USB port on them. I dont know if they extent to copying files off the HDD to the USB device connected - ones like this http://chinadigibay.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=437 may do it, but I have not tried one.

Otherwise just tell them to get a USB SD reader and some cards - works out not much more expensive the a usb stick and means they can use it in cameras etc as well.

This one is cheaper but no USB host ports http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info.php/pName/multimedia-hard-disk-drive-scheduled-tv-recording/

Richard rich.ms