Firewire Host Mode Dumps in the field ???

HC Arnold

HC Arnold

Active member
Greetings. Does anyone have any experience with using an external Firewire drive to dump directly from the hvx? I saw this in the manual and wonder why this wouldn't work as a great ,cheap, way to dump footage on a shoot. Seems like all one needs would be a $200 / 200 gig external 1394 drive !?!
Thanks for your advice.
 
It does work, but it's got issues, such as that you're limited to 15 partitions (so max of 60gb when using 4gb cards) and the camera doesn't supply bus power so you'll need a self-powered hard disk, and also the camera can't be acting as a camera when it's offloading footage so that means you have to stop shooting to do that. If you can live with those limitations, it's one of the cheapest ways to get footage off the cards and onto a hard disk.
 
thanks , i got a lacie 150 for 100 bucks (15x8= 120).
Dumps (with verify ) took about 8 min in the field
not bad
thanks
 
Dump the dump

Dump the dump

Off the top of my head...

If I had two external drives, could I...

Dump the 4gig P2 cards 15 times to external 1.

Using a laptop with both drives connected, drag and drop all of those files from external 1 to a single partition on drive 2, thus having 60gigs on one partition on drive 2.

Erase drive 1. Repeat.

At the end of the day, I can fill drive 2 up completely. Right?
 
Many thanks.

By the by, I am on my second viewing of the HVX Bootcamp DVD, preparing for my first big shoot with it next week. Great work!
 
Barry

When the HVX formats the firewire drive for its host mode, is this format compatible with both Mac and PC drive formats?

i.e. when one uses a laptop to mount drives for a bigger bulk dump, as thehardcorekid suggests, would that (better) be a Mac or a PC laptop?

(I understand that you can use Macdrive for the PC or just mount the PC drive on a mac, but which is natively compatible, and would result in faster transfers, both laptop systems being comparable?)

Thanks!
Cheers
Chris
 
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Does anyone know what format the HVX formats the HD to? Is it Fat32? Also if so does anyone know if it exhibits any of the problems present when importing to a mac? I'm trying to work out my workflow.
 
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