GO Broadband Unleashed

On-The-Go

Nexto ND2725 + SBACUS + 12V battery
My review:

Everyone who owns a Sony PMW-EX1 would probably have this problem unless you were a large production with an infinite amount of money to burn. Sony/Sandisk's SxS are not cheap and with 16gb only covering 50 mins in 1080p HQ, many of us had to look for an alternative solution to recording longer. E-Film in Australia came out with the brilliant M&R adapter that allows use of normal high speed SDHC cards as a recording medium (with EX-1 firmware upgrade 1.11) to capture with overcranks up to twice the native framerate. However, those who consistently use the overcrank feature of the EX-1 would still require the use of the SxS.

At times, my work sometimes needed me to shoot at locations without any power source and carrying my Macbook Pro was not a feasible option so I had to find an alternative method of backing up and shooting for extended periods in the field. My search came upon the NEXTO Video Storage. This device is sold as a casing for a 2.5" hard disk that allows transfers of all the major flash media on the market via its build it adaptor slots and a OTG (on-the-go) USB port and for my case, this OTG port was the selling point because it not only allowed me to transfer my SxS cards in the field through the Sony SBACUS (powered by a 12v video light battery) but also allowed me to duplicate and mirror its content to an external USB hdd.

Some of you would probably be asking, why the NEXTO? Its almost 4 times more expensive than a normal OTG hdd which could do the same job. Well, if you are transferring 2-4GB of data, that's all fine but when each of your transfer is 16GB, then time takes a toll on battery life. The NEXTO VS is so far THE fastest device on the market. Transfers of 16GB of data takes a maximum of 14 mins from both SxS and SDHC. Even if you only had two SxS cards, you could theoretically shoot non-stop swapping and transferring between the two for as much as your hard disk could hold. Right now, I have a Hitachi 250GB installed and thus with both the on-board (80gb est transfer) and (inclusive) external LIPO battery (80gb est transfer), I could shoot in overcrank continuously for more than 10 hours. Now that is more than what anyone could ask for. Even if i needed more transfer time, I could buy more LIPOs from the local RC hobby shop for an additional 160gb transfer time for less than $100.

At the moment, the NEXTO also serves to transfer audio from a portable field recorder via the SDHC slot. Simply brilliant.
One thing to take note, however, like all things that work on spinning platters, you need to be careful. HDD can go at anytime especially when on the field. Until cheaper SSD drives comes on the market, we'll all just need to be extra careful.

My workflow in the field is as follows:
Shoot until full / Record Audio until full
Change over to 2nd slot and continue shooting / Change to 2nd SDHC Audio
Copy both cards into the NEXTO
Once work is done, connect NEXTO via -ESATA
Transfer both video (Sony SxS Transfer) and audio (Copy) simultaneously into work drive
Edit.

External Reviews
http://www.cameratown.com/reviews/nexto_extreme/