There's a strange issue about the still store speed...While the Kalypso works for the most part on 100-base-T, there are 2 parts of it that operate at 10-base-T: External Aux Panel communications and the Still Store. This is a hardware issue, and I doubt that version 14 (whenever it comes out) will take care of this problem. I used to use CUTE FTP to do my transfers (both switcher data and Still Store data), but I was told by the GV engineers that the FILE OPS portion of the Kalypso menu IS an FTP program - so there is no advantage to using a 3rd party's FTP program...and in any case, it's still going to be 10-base-T regardless of what you use. I don't map my computer as an external drive anymore...to many hassles with anti-virus software & firewalls. I just plug my computer's CAT-5 connection into the Kalypso switch and run the Kalypso Menu program on my laptop; thus I do ALL of my file ops directly from my laptop and the Kalypso's main menu never sees my computer as an extrnal device...it's all pretty seamless. Slightly off topic, but (I think) cool nonetheless is this (based on the above paragraph): if you go into the panel diagnostics (the "Vulcan Handshake") and change the panel IP address for the menu from the Kalyso's menu IP to your PC's IP address, the DPOPs on the switcher will change your PC's Kalypso Menu instead of the Kalypso's own menu. Now THAT'S something that your EIC's don't want you to know about (and I'll bet that you can appreciate why)! This works only on those menus that are ethernet-based (have no hard buttons - on the older menus, the RS-422 cable did the communications for the DPOP's).

Just to defend the PC side of things :-) Any FTP program will do this; I happen to use IPSwitch's WSFTP. You can even enter the FTP address right into Internet Explorer and you'll be FTPing in and out in no time - simple drag-and-drop.

I migrated to mac osx and use this great ftp program called transmit to pull files off the still store and put them back in. This way you don't have to map your pc as a network drive - you do the pulling and pushing from the pc. You can ftp right into your folder (192.168.0.22/User/myfolder). I gave up trying to save clips - it was faster to recapture them than to file transfer them - but stills are another matter. Any chance GVG is likely to speed up the networking to the Still Store?

Rick, you're right about the format issue. I tend to always work in the same format, so it doesn't affect me and that's why I didn't factor that in...sorry. But even if you save everything in a folder on your PC, you could still create a new folder for the other format & then use the SS Loader program "off-line" (like on your way to/from the remote) to do the conversion. The down side of this is that the current SS Loader program won't do animations...I believe that the after-market SS Loader out of Australia does do animations & batch transfers, but I don't know if it'll do HD format conversions.

The only problem loading stills from your own memory will be which format they were originally stored in. For instance, 720P HD files will not be seen on 1080i HD Kalypso. Yes the thumbs will appear in the still menu, but they will be in the wrong format for the switcher. In other words, as long as you store you still data in the same format you will be fine, otherwise you will need to "store" that information again depending on the trucks (switchers) configuration!

As you probably already know, each still store file on the Kalypso is actually 3 files: a BMP for the thumbnails, a GVA file for the metadata, and a GVI file for the actual image data. You need to make sure that you copy all 3 files for each still, or else you won't be transferring all of the necessary information. I just finished using a HD Kalypso for Jeopardy in New York City - what I did was to first create my own folder for the show...I don't like using the DEFAULT folder, where everyone else puts all of their stills. I also run the Kalypso menu program on my laptop - this is the place where I do ALL of my file ops...not through the main menu; although putting in a thumb drive and using it as an external drive SHOULD work just fine - I use 8 GB drives & they all work OK. In my computer's Kalypso menu FILE OPS menu, I just highlighted my stills folder, pressed COPY, opened up my show folder in my computer and pressed PASTE. This copied the whole stills folder with no problem. Well, not quite with NO problems - somewhere during the week I had built one V/K animation in my folder that was 10 seconds long in 1080i. After waiting for over 2 1/2 hours for the copy operation to finish, it apparently turns out that if you're doing a huge file transfer like this one, the Kalypso loses communications with the external drive or computer somewhere around the 2 hour mark...the only apparent cure that I found is to restart the menu application on the laptop. But to make a long explanation shorter, I would suggest that the hot tip is to copy the whole folder in one operation - it sure beats doing the multi-select & having to make sure that you didn't miss one of the individual still's 3 necessary files...and you're right - it's a lot easier than using the Still Store Loader program.

After you loaded the stills, did you reboot the still store and or the swicther? I have had to do that before the stills would be "there". I never tried using a Zip, but I did save to a 1Gb thumbdrive. BTW, I just used the COPY feature and not the still store loader. To copy the one animation that I needed took a while, several minutes.