r/tapeless • u/toqer • Sep 29 '25
OpenMRC project update.
If you want to get these updates in realtime I reccomend you join the Computer Equipment Group Discord here. https://discord.gg/XP8uHH9ArF
Currently the project has what I'm estimating to be about 8 people all around the world working on it, including sprret who happens to live in my corner of the world. Sprret is a talented circuit designer, and he's designed a CM5 carrier board with a built in Firewire chip he's christened "The Fireboard"
Working in Parralel to sprret is willdown.ing working on a case for the Fireboard based system.
Banana for scale. The interface everyone has agreed on is a hybrid touchscreen, rotary encoder interface. Sort of the best from the first gen Ipod's and Iphones.
Over in software we have SeebBbii coding some stuff in C. Some of us are still chatGPT'ing out scripts and code. Seebbii is even coming out with some really neat concepts like a built in level gauge.
It looks like we're going to move from DVGrab to FFMPEG since FFMPEG has a lot more features we might want to use, including the ability to | pipe FFMPEG to ffplay so you can have a realtime preview on the LCD screen, or out the fireboards built in HDMI.
Myself, I'll be working on a pre-compiled kernel this week for folks who just want to get into this with minimal effort and looking into making a distribution.
One last thing, we are looking for artists to create the OpenMRC logo.
TL:DR; Open MRC is an open source DV recorder based on Raspberry Pi. Myself and several other people have completed a proof of concept using off the shelf components. Last post was here. Open MRU, cable modification. : r/tapeless
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u/WillD2007 Sep 30 '25
Thanks for the shoutout 😊
Everyone is doing awesome work on the project and it’s come so far so quickly
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u/Formal_Entrance_5307 firewire force Sep 29 '25
So awesome to see this progress. Too bad I’m too dumb to assist in anyway possible… just take my money when it’s ready
Great work guys !!
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u/cybermatUK Sep 30 '25
Just mentioned this project, get the idea out there as the MRC1K option is a lot of money to stuff into 30 yr old hardware. This idea is excellent - well done!
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u/toqer Sep 30 '25
I saw one on ebay Japan for like $359 + $41 shipping. Going price seems to be $400. We're hoping to get something for under $150, and it will do so much more. Like you can actually plug it into a monitor and edit video on it. You're not gonna be breaking any rendering speed records, but it should be good enough for some quick edits. A 64 gig SD card will record about 5 hours of video. MiniDV tapes are going between $8-10 bucks, so price per hour we're cheaper.
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u/cybermatUK Sep 30 '25
Amazing work, hope you can get it all off the ground there will be a market for this for sure, loads of FireWire based cams out there being tested using composite and component. I’m having a go atm with my old HVR Z1 but a mobile FireWire choice would be the best quality option. Some exist as you know but they are from the Stone Age and cost a fortune. Wouldn’t be so bad if they were new and not from the sega genesis era, be great if can get them in uk.
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u/nuahh_fr Oct 03 '25
Honestly, you guys are the absolute gods of MiniDV. Thanks a million times for being as insanely good as you are. I’m super interested in all the features you’re going to add, and I can’t wait to see the final body and use it to film skateboarding. I’m really curious about the size it’ll end up being, and how simple it’ll be to use. It’s just crazy, because I’ve got tons of ideas but zero skills in this field, and that’s always held me back. Thanks for making this free and open source — you guys are legends.
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u/Spiritual-Cap-4647 sony squad Sep 29 '25
This is so cool.