Frequently Asked Questions

1 — How many hours can I record?

Although storage capacity will vary depending on recording format as well as the type of footage itself, the HR-1 can store and play back up to 18 hours of footage at full resolution 1920 X 1080 24P 10 bit clips.  The HR-2 can store and play back up to 17 hours of footage at full resolution 1920 X 1080 24P 10 bit clips.  The HR-F1 can store and play back up to 10 hours of footage at full resolution 1920 X 1080 24P 10 bit clips from a single disk, but it also offers hot-swappable media.  Please contact our Customer Support group at support@wafian.com for more information regarding other products and recording formats.  Note that the system will stop recording and display a warning message when it has only 500 MB of storage capacity left on disk.

2 — What type of compression does the HR-1, HR-F1 and HR-2 use?

Wafian DDRs record using the visually lossless Cineform Intermediate format, which uses a full frame temporal wavelet transform. This improves image quality through the post-production process compared to legacy codecs that use DCT.  The award-winning Cineform codec preserves visually lossless quality even after more than 15 generations of post-production rendering from your source.  Compression ranges between 6:1 to 10:1, depending on the footage.

3 — Can I record uncompressed?

Recording uncompressed is not supported.  Recording to the award-winning Cineform Intermediate format has been tested on Film-out projects by recognized Hollywood producers and the quality is not only more than fit for the big screen, but “visually perfect”.

4 — Is the HR-1 portable?

The HR-1 is not self-powered.  However, the portable HR-F1 was introduced at NAB 2007 and is DC and AC powered.  This 10bit 4:2:2 recorder has removable drives and is designed with field use in mind.  Wafian recorders can work using HD-SDI feeds up to 100 meters away.  Before the release of the HR-F1, the HR-1 was used on a variety of projects where it was adapted into a mobile system. 

5 — Do Wafian DDRs record audio?

Yes, all of Wafian DDRs can record 2 channel 48k audio from Analog, or AES/EBU sources, and 8 channels from HD-SDI.

6 — Is my footage safe?

The safety of your footage is a must, under our recorder’s mirrored drive configuration, your content is always safe!

7 — How do I offload my footage into a hard drive, network, or into my editing station?

Wafian's recorders are designed to give you flexibility by allowing you to connect to any device not only via HDSDI, HD component, or IEEE 1394 for playout, but also to your network, external drives, or directly to your editing stations via USBII, Firewire, or Ethernet ports.  By default, your footage is recorded into a media folder within the “M:” volume of your recorder.  This volume is automatically shared for read access on your network, so that computers can access the recorded media with the following path:  \\wafian-hr1-0003\media

Replace hr1-0003 in the name above with your recorder's serial number.  Also, be sure to ask us about our removable media kit.  This kit increases your storage capacity by allowing you to easily off load your media, and it gives your media mobility as soon as it is recorded.  For more information on extracting footage and removable media, please visit our knowledgebase.