Fast Forward Video's Recon 4 circuit board is a Composite and S-Video recording and playback device designed for standalone operation. It was designed as a subsystem for applications requiring video conforming to National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) or Phase Alternation by Line (PAL) specifications. The Recon performs compression and decompression at user-specified ratios as low as 4:1 at 25 frames (50 fields) per second in PAL. The compression method conforms to the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) standard (Motion JPEG). The primary design goal was professional image quality. In addition, the Recon adheres strictly to standards including RS-170A (NTSC) and CCIR-601.

When recording, the Recon converts an analogue NTSC or PAL video signal to a component digital format, compresses the digital video signal to a JPEG data stream, and sends the compressed video directly to an ATA/IDE (ATA/ATAPI-4) hard disk. Control of the board is available through a serial port RS-232 interface. This port may Optionally be configured as RS422/485. The Recon 4 circuit board also comes with USB connectivity.

When playing back, the Recon retrieves the compressed video data from an IDE hard disk, decodes the JPEG data into digital component video, and converts the digital video to analogue NTSC or PAL video signal.

Composite video and Y/C connectors, decoder, and encoder are included on the Recon board. The board's pixel resolution is full bandwidth CCIR-601, which is 720 X 486 in NTSC and 720 X 576 in PAL. Sampling is maintained at 4:2:2.

The Recon4 board is RoHS compliant.

The Recon4 board is designed for OEMs or other parties to create a product using the very successful Fast Forward Recon4 'Engine'. The Recon4 does not include buttons, drives, or other cables. Some examples of product created with the Recon include the Fast Forward DigiDecks, and Xi Decks.

Please see the Recon 4 Technical Reference document and control protocol documents within the summary on the right of this page.

The Recon's primary design goal was to maintain video quality at a level suitable for use in professional video applications. This goal dictated that the sync timing of the output signal must conform strictly to the RS-170 standard (NTSC).

Most important, however, is image quality. Based on subjective evaluation of JPEG compressed video, Fast Forward Video determined that a compression ratio of 5:1 or lower would yield image quality comparable to the Betacam SP�� format, and thus satisfy most professional video users. To support a sustained data rate at this level, the designers of the Recon included an IDE hard disk controller on the circuit board.

The design includes an on-board 80386EX microprocessor to oversee the hardware and to provide a control interface over the serial ports.

All of the Recon's subsystems share 32 megabytes of dynamic random access memory. This memory is based on a true multi-port architecture that allows direct access by the JPEG codec, the disk controller, and the local 80386EX microprocessor. Direct access to this memory permits each of the subsystems to perform to their maximum potential without concern for DMA contention.

The M-JPEG compression ratio setting on all Fast Forward Video products are user selectable from 4:1 to 20:1. In practice, it is advisable to set the compression to correspond with the best quality to storage ratio. A setting of 7:1 is a good setting for general purpose Betacam images, 10:1 for S-VHS, 15:1 for VHS. The rule of thumb for minutes of storage generally available is compression ratio is roughly equivalent to minutes per gigabyte. For example: 10:1 compression ratio x 80 gigabytes = 10 x 80 = roughly 800 minutes recording time, or approximately 12 hours.