This weekend I just finished shooting a short film on the JVC HD101u as the DOP. The production rented the camera and we shot 720/24p. I spoke to the editor about getting the footage onto a computer later and she said that she didn't think there would be too much of a problem. We shot a few tapes and after passing them off to her she said she couldn't get them on to her computer with the equipment she had, so instead we were left using the camera to capture all the tapes onto the computer. This worked fine for the first day and a half. Half way through the day on Saturday the computer stopped recognizing the camera and we were unable to capture any of the footage.

We tried different firewire cables and different computers so we essentially came to the conclusion that it must be a problem with the camera. The rental house was closed on Sunday so there was nothing we could do and our rental period was over this morning so we no longer have a camera. We have no way of getting the footage on to the computer and I was wondering whether any one had any cost effective ways of getting this footage on to the computer. We're a group of film students so we really have no money to spend and the school isn't being very helpful in trying to get our footage onto their computers. Any suggestions of how we could get this footage on to the computer now would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Renting a JVC BR50 deck would probably be the cheapest and simplest solution, I know some rental houses have them. Explain your problem and tell em' your film students and maybe you can get a deal, also maybe somebody here could help you out - where are you located?

Funny the camera would suddenly stop working.... Hope you guys didn't blow a firewire port. Any firewire cable hot swapping going on?

Oh, and whenever you hear this phrase; "didn't think there would be too much of a problem" ...it's going to be a big problem :)

Good luck

Justin, if you have connected and disconnected the FW cable when either the camera and/or the computer were on there's a possibility that you have fried one of the ports. While the computer's port can be replace, if the machine is a tower, or supplemented, the port on the camera needs to be replaced by JVC's technical support. Always be sure to connects and disconnect *any* cable from the camera when it's turned off.

Thank you Paolo and Burk.

The camera was always off when the firewire cable was connected to the computer and once we turned the camera on the computer automatically detected the camera. I was aware of this problem from reading it on the forum in the past and made sure not to disconnect/connect the camera while on.

I'm located in Toronto and I will pass on the information to the editor to let her know about the deck hopefully rental for one day won't cost us much more than $100 here.

Thanks for the replies.