Recording to external device

[Brad Neal]

Well, I picked up my new 500's today, but the cards are on back order (boo-hiss).

Anyway, I was able to make a connection via USB between the camera and a laptop, but I couldn't figure out how to record anything. It seems that the manual stops at making the connection (page121).

I loaded the driver and software, but am pretty much stuck from there.

What am I missing??

Thanks,
Brad

[EditingFX]

Think you'll need a tool like DV Rack (now Adobe Capture) on PC or Scopebox on Mac. I just recorded some 1080 to my MacBookPro via Scopebox. Both of these offer waveform, vector, histo, audio, TCR scopes in addition to recording (with optional 1394 start/stops). I sometimes shoot "news style", where as soon as the camera stops, it's time to edit (on a short deadline), so having it ready-to-edit is a huge plus. That said, I believe it'll be possible to edit directly using the 500 as a "source deck". (Only day 2 with the 500, so haven't had time to test that yet.)

[hunter richards]

If you have final cut...

Go to "Capture now", Set the preset to what recording formatt your using (Wont work with native modes), the change your device control to "non-controlable device".

Frame up and press the capture now button!

(DO IT THROUGH FIREWIRE not USB)

Cheers.

-hunter

[hunter richards]

OH YEAH! AND>>>>

You can also do it using a mac, buy opening up quicktime and going to "New Movie recording", go to prefrences and change the device to your camera, set the codec to "Device native", Reopen the new movie recording and you will see the live feed coming from the camera, press record and it will save the files to your desktop!

Dont waste money on scopebox unless you really need it!

[Brad Neal]

Does anyone have experience porting directly to an external drive and eliminating the laptop route?

The biggest concern that I have about that is not being able to review the recorded material, but it sounds a lot more convenient than messing with setting up a laptop.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Brad

[smelni]

its not possible - a simple hard drive is not smart enough to know what to do with the data stream

[pathfinder]

If you want to capture the camera's signal directly to laptop and use EDIUS BROADCAST, here is How I do it and it has worked for me.
- Connect your camera through the ieee1394 port of the 500 to your laptop
- turn the camera on and make sure your laptop detects the camera. laptop will see your camera as another external device.
- Open Edius Broadcast.
- click on capture, scroll down to Generic OHCI input and click on it. the input settings will come up.
- Choose Generic OHCI input under Input device.
- Select DVCPRO HD 1080/59.94i
- click OK and you should see what you're shooting on Edius's preview monitor.

If you want to record to an external hard drive connected to the laptop, just assign that drive as the footage captured drive under edius' settings and it should work.

Cheers.

[Brad Neal]

Thanks for all of the feedback.

I am running under Windows XP Pro, so FC, is really not an option.

We use Avid and Premiere Pro CS3 - I personally have more experience with PPro, so that's where I spend most of my time.

I have the new version of OnLocation, and according to the manual, it will handle DVCPRO - HD, but I have never really put it to the test as we were tape-based until just now.
My predicament is that I have a shoot coming up the first part of October that will require 2 cameras and about 8 hours of recording on each camera - so I need a fail-safe solution for acquiring this footage.


I guess next step should be to strap one of the new 500's to my laptop and record a bunch of footage using OnLocation to see if there are any issues with dropped frames, buffer over-runs or anything of that nature.

Any suggestions are totally welcome.

Thanks,
Brad