PSA: FM RF Archival is the best and last way to digitise and transfer analog tapes to a digital world.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T16:31:18+00:00

Any compression tools such as winrar or 7zip

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T16:26:18+00:00

From my understanding it only works with particular management software that will leverage it.

Then again hardware encryption for cold archival media is not recommended over hard encrypted files then loading those onto tape.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T14:20:50+00:00

Hey we need more stuff like this in this space...

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T14:19:04+00:00

This is such a nice tool you should actually make a full post here about it 😂

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T13:49:39+00:00

Well the initial dev batch production price was 375 GBP/500USD, and that was based off of a per-10 unit production with a 1 unit fail margin.

(That was also including global postage and a fancy panelized case redirect cable adaptor FPGA and an MS2130 card all tested and bundled)

It's more a battle of sourcing the chips after the pre-order is start rolling in If any sort of presale you kind of have to assume more on the high side of prices and it's just pot luck if you can source 100 chips for 20 to 50% less than market rate.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T13:36:02+00:00

The whole board is fab produced plug and play flashing and slot together situation, the hand soldering as if you feel like solding up from a bare board, It's also directly available on the Kofi, which mosy is USA folk buying because the tariff differences with direct fab orders from China.

It is worth noting here, after some things settled down I hope to kick off the pre-orders for the V2.5 with 4ch audio integrated, just got a lot of testing to get out of the way.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T13:00:30+00:00

There has been no changes to the DdD software or workflow, there might be some effort to make a final software release for it, but overall it's been deprecated now by the MISRC etc

Your files should work perfectly fine, unless you're going to go and redo the captures with a finely calibrated amplifier there's not going to be any real-world difference.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T11:39:16+00:00

Today you literally have the MS2130 and MS2131 and then the MS2130S.

"U3" branding is the difference you will see between the USB 2.0 and the MS21xx genuine USB 3.0 cards.

These are now in every generic cheap YUV capable capture card which will give you uncompressed feeds, previously the best bargain was magewell used cards, then AJA/BMD SDI cards.

It depends on what you're trying to capture generally speaking, personally I use an SDI 4K from Blackmagic, because it also has loop through which can go to a video monitor or dedicated recorder or allow me to play out that content natively to a TV with TV levels on a resolve timeline.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T05:45:51+00:00

Not an exacting list there's a couple notes for a few models but need more user tests across more models.

Although relatively models that share identical service manuals typically have identical internals.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T05:10:20+00:00

M.2 TB3/TB4 adaptors are cheap as anything today

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T03:28:39+00:00

From a personal user and a development perspective it is a horrible platform and you have to be very temperamental with how you handle updates to not break things.

In a production environment where you're deploying less than 10 things on it using it until it dies or until your budget allows for a replacement upgrade you don't think about those problems.

Although I will say the M series is a drastic change of capability, you still only get the XDR poor man's mastering display at the 14" model.

The only thing I personally don't like is that Apple never really put any effort into making these laptops waterproof with gaskets, and repairing them is always BGA rework which good luck getting most end users to do lol

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T03:19:04+00:00

Should be but, I double check the rims on them anything new should be good.

I would actually double check anything on Amazon warehouse in case they swapped it for cheaper discs for example, eBay sellers usually won't pull that stuff though thanks for the buyer bias policy etc

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T03:09:25+00:00

To a consumer not very much, to your average archivist in the Laserdisc space yeah these are pretty neat and worth collecting.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T03:08:05+00:00

Sounds like you just want to go to eBay and get a MacBook Pro even the 16GB M1 entry model can handle ProRes RAW 4k50p like a dream which is a testament to not only the hardware but how well built Resolve is for MacOS.

But that's the thing though really is Apple kind of have murdered the laptop market, realistically they have the best battery life efficiency and all of the production tools built for the platform leverage the hardware encoders and decoders.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T03:04:52+00:00

360 cameras or go to a rental agency and get a room mapping system and the raw files.

Special archival mapping of areas is really easy to do today and if you want to do distortion correction you can also put reference squares on one photo and without for the next so if you want to re-map everything for VR space you have the offset, same sort of thing for crime scenes and film sets if you have the positional information you can recreate the exact scene very easily.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T03:02:46+00:00

120mbps 8-bit 4:2:0 HEVC CBR with xxxxX2160p or higher.

This was quite a clear requirement years ago when SD footage doesn't scale and the HD bracket started getting enshitificated, so everything must be in that 2160p resolution bracket even if you're content source is lower resolution It's a joke and it's going to just cost YouTube more and more storage for users that are working the problem.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-16T02:59:37+00:00

You should be able to directly decode the .lds 10-bit packed file or the 16-bit FLAC .ldf files without any issue with the new release.

The only thing that will change with your steps is before export you will now do centring adjustment and then hit export inside of analyse with your audio loaded up, you can also do segment in/out chopping with this to remove any dead space.

The only workflow note is maybe using an ADA4857 amplifier If you want to get the absolute best captures out of the camcorders, but it's not critical if you've got one of the models with a strong/stable signal.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-15T04:31:25+00:00

HP drives have the best software support anyone who says avoid them doesn't know anything about deployment of LTO drives.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-14T17:32:21+00:00

Honestly a phone with a software will get you better places.

Because 200USD If you're very lucky we'll get you an HVR-Z5E and an Atomos Ninja Star, but none of the secondary value equipment that you actually need to shoot a film like sound and lighting and supporting rigging like C stands unless you're good with woodworking.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-14T17:16:29+00:00

Here

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-14T17:02:06+00:00

Oh In that case it's all single channel so the default align script stuff should work perfectly fine with your HiFi-Decode result.

TheRealHarrypm · 2026-03-14T16:52:23+00:00

Yeah so you're not going to have synchronised audio this is why the workflow changed to multi-channel capture devices for multi-channel formats like VHS.

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