T2i Live Capture to Mac or PC

P

Phill Mason

Member
Hi guys, I'm recording some tutorials in the studio and would like to know if anyone is successfully making live captures direct from the 550D (T2i) to a PC?

I bought 2 550D's (aux cams) the other day to complete a 3 camera setup along with my existing HVX200 (main cam) and after converting some of the .MOV files captured on the SD card of the 550D and using MPEG streamclip, to convert to a usable file for editing, its painfully obvious that this is not a great workflow.

I've had the luxury of my Panasonic MXF files dropping right onto the timeline in Vegas via the Raylight codec and editing and workflow has been a breeze - and really fast.

The restriction of the 550D only capturing single 4GB clips to the SD card and then having to stop the tutorial to hit record on the cameras again is breaking the filming flow.

I basically need more recording time without interruptions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q: Is anyone managing to live capture direct from the camera to either Mac or PC? If so, how and what cables, boxes, cards etc are you using?
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Any help, advice, ideas in this area would be greatly appreciated - thanks.
 
Last edited:
Anyone used this yet with a T2i? Can it record HD straight to your computer or is it SD only?
 
Thanks kevinottawa and danmarell, I grabbed the software and gave it a go.

And to answer AlexD's question, no it doesn't capture HD - either 1080 or 720p.

I got it up and running on my editing PC ok and it captured a decent 25 - 29. something fps (seems to vary a lot) with a max res of 1056 x 704. So I guess you could class a 480p in there, but I ideally want 1280 x 720 to match my other cameras. I loaded it onto an older XC cube PC but only managed to get a low 10 - 12 or so fps, so ditched that. Couldn't get it to launch at all on my Macbook Pro!!

It's a great tool and allows for wonderful remote focusing on a larger screen due to the 5 x zoom feature built in, (not the 10x) but you don't really need that. It gets rid of the annoying white focus box during recording and outputs a fairly decent looking avi file.

I believe this is open license software and it would be great to see some clever programmer-techie person run with it and tweak it a little into an amazing piece of software.

With a choice of some various compression formats and higher res recording facility for movies, this EOS Movie Record would be the answer to many problems.

Big Kudos to the creators and programmers behind this wonderful piece of software, if you could just stretch the boundaries a little further, you'd have a business right there.

Great for capturing SD footage for DVD's

Thanks for the opportunity to try it out, much appreciated.

Cheers
Phill
 
I use it a while ago and found out that it created some files on my destop. a lot of it. I dont know those files and some are in png. also after removing the camera from my usb trying to put off my 7D, it does not shut off. it just went to normal after removing the battery.

its nice but Im afraid to do it again .
 
Firewire is stable, usb's rate fluctuates and can drop too low. I remember a few years back I thought I could edit off a usb 2.0 drive (Fast HD), after about 10 hangs rendering and playing back I popped the HD into a firewire enclosure and never had any trouble editing off a external.
 
Phill Mason said:
Only works with firewire. Don't know why it won't recognise a USB connected camera, there is enough bandwidth on USB 2.0 480mbps to capture live video ok.
Click to expand...

I don't understand, T2i doesn't have a firewire output...?

When I try eos_movrec with the usb cable, it gives me the error: can't initialize your camera! check connection.

do you have any idea?

Mac osx 10.6
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top