HVX200-Can I build a cheap external Hard Drive?

O

Onjay Films

New member
I need to know if anyone's built a 500 gig external hard drive, that connects directly to the HVX200 without the need of a computer and hopefully without a P2 card. I will be shooting only in HD. Cheap!-is the goal. I can pick up 500gig hd under $200. But a Focus Firestone 100gb hd runs $1,499. Help!

Thank You....
 
You cannot record directly to an external hard drive from the HVX200.

That's why the Focus FS100 cost as much as it does.
 
I know that I can download directly from the camera with an installed P2 card to an external hard drive. I need to know what others know.
 
You can download directly, but have to stop to do it. You can also use HDRack and run it through a laptop. Though, after so many bad experiences with the registration of that product I have a hard time recommending it. Plus, on one shoot, it added a strange green line down the edge of all of the clips...

Adobe bought them and they are incorporating the direct to laptop solution into their suite.
 
And if I'm not mistaken, you can only download directly to a USB-To Go drive. I don't think a Firewire drive will work for discarding P2 cards. But I could be wrong. I use the Firestore, so I have my bases covered.
 
What you need to know:

The HVX will stream its video output on the firewire port.
You can't record that stream to disk just by plugging a dumb firewire or USB disk to it.
You need either a hardware controller (FS100, citidisk etc) or software (DV Rack + certain NLEs) to manage the stream and write files to the disk.

Otherwise you can record to P2 and then transfer the P2 file contents to an external hard disk. (you can't shoot while transfering)

To connect a external drive for this you can either use the firewire port in Host mode but this is limited to 15 card loads only (so most of the space on 500Gb drive would never be used). The HVX manages the drive and file transfers and offers a verify option.

For USB the camera can only be a device, so you would need a USB ON-THE-GO drive to be able to manage the file transfer. There would be no verify option. You could use all the capacity of a 500GB drive.

Remember that neither the firewire or USB connectors on the HVX can provide bus power so your external hard disk will need its own power source (battery or mains).


Try search back though the forum, there have been many threads on in the field offload disks.


Personally I use DV rack on a laptop for longform if I can be teathered.
Otherwise I record to P2 and offload to the laptop or if I'm really being mobile I have a minature 40GB firewire drive with a battery pack.
 
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