I just found the pdf manual I saved long ago & after searching the pdf it seems it's limited to being formatted as FAT32.

Yup, confirmed by trial also, won't recognize NTFS.

Sigh.

Hi Oliver,

That sounds about what I got but I do notice a slight jump in the video also. Are you running the REC MODE in cache or normal?

Garrett

I was using it in REC MODE, not cache.
Cheers, Oliver.

another heads up guys/gals.

I got 2 transcend 133x 32gb cards for mine and they arent fast enough to keep up with all my stopping and starting. It throws the unit into error and you might not notice this until after a few minutes of working. This leads you to rely on your tapes, and you dont want that.

I can only assume a faster cf card will help to alleviate this.

with all my stopping and starting.

How much stopping and starting are you doing?

Brian, I'm using my MRC1 on an XL H1A so the mounting is easy. I just made a custom bracket that connects into the FS bracket that comes with the camera. It looks cool and makes the camea balance better in my opinion. For the XH A1 I would consider making a custom bracket from a thin peace of sheet metal that connected under the camera using the tripod mount. Have it extend backward and off the the right side of the camera (looking from the back) so it would sit roughly where the HD-SDI jack pack sits for the G1. Then have the MRC1 face out with the battery next to the camera. Use a 1/4" x 20 screw to secure it for underneath like it was designed.

As far as the timecode I always set to free run and non drop frame so it doesn't matter that the tape rolls after the CF starts to record. I did shoot tape and CF this last weekend and the timecodes are spot on.

I got a 1' firewire cable from Fry's electronics locally but I'm sure you can find it online somewhere. I think my cable cost $8.

Garrett

Thanks for the comments Garrett! Can you post a photo of your mount. My feeble mind can't picture what it looks like. Also which cards are you using?

So, no more dirty heads or replaying/rewinding etc on a tape? Sounds almost too good to be true, but from reading the last 18 pages, just "GREAT" and "TRUE".

So, how do you watch footage you recorded to the card with the camera using the LCD screen? Do you select clips?

What are you guys/gals doing to back up your footage if not using tape?

Serisously, what are the best cards to use? I think space and speed and reliability are the 3 main qualities to look for in a CF card.

I'll try to post some pics later tonight. I've got 1 8GB Sony UDMA CF (300X), one 8GB Sandisk Ducati, and 4 16GB Kingston (133X). All of them perform flawlessly in capturing video.

I filled all four Kingstons this last weekend during an all day dance recital shoot. I was able to get each act on one card. During the intermission I put the card full of video that I just got finished shooting into my laptop and started playing it. I was planning on just checking to make sure there were no problems and when people started seeing it they wanted to see more so I left it running during the entire intermission. It definately helped create more buzz about the DVD so I'm sure having people see will help with sales.

When I got home I just popped each card in copied the files over to my editing machine. It took approximately 8 minutes a card (there was as little over hour on each card). So over hours of footage shot and in about a hour of ingest time I was ready to edit. Unfortunately my other camera (XH A1) was recording to tape so I had 4+ hours of ingest to do on that one.

Transfer times are faster with my Sony or Sandisk cards but the Kingstons only cost me $25 each so I can't complain.

So I have been following this thread for a while and have a few questions:

1) Will there always be dropped frames when the file splits?
2) Will the Sony wrap program fix this when it puts the files back together?

I shoot mostly recitals and concert and need the long recording time and can not afford to have any dropped audio frames. Any comments would be appreciated.

Thanks you.

So I have been following this thread for a while and have a few questions:

1) Will there always be dropped frames when the file splits?
2) Will the Sony wrap program fix this when it puts the files back together?

I shoot mostly recitals and concert and need the long recording time and can not afford to have any dropped audio frames. Any comments would be appreciated.

Thanks you.

I think someone already stated that this is not an issue if set up correctly with the XH A1. If not set up correctly, I believe there is a 3 second frame drop or something I read early on. I then read that if a clip is created because of lenghth of video shot before hitting stop record, you can merge the two clips together when editing and you can see you hadn't missed a single frame.....if I read this correctly.

I'll try to post some pics later tonight. I've got 1 8GB Sony UDMA CF (300X), one 8GB Sandisk Ducati, and 4 16GB Kingston (133X). All of them perform flawlessly in capturing video.




Thanks Garrett! Just FYI to everyone, B&H has a FW800 CF card reader for $59.95 and it has a $35 mail-in rebate. Lexar | Professional UDMA FireWire 800 CompactFlash | RW034-001 (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=cart_accessories&A=details&Q=&sku=492648&is=REG)

FYI - Rebate end today... 1/15/09

How does this unit work in cold weather?

Hey Derrick if you know where that post is where they describe the setup so there is no dropped frame I'd really appreciate it. I looked back through and couldn't find it anywhere. I tried every conceivable combination of camera and recorder settings and I still get about a 6 frame drop out of sound and the last frame of the ending file doesn't exactly match to the first frame of the new file.

Jonathan, I too shoot a lot of recitals and shows and have the camera running continuously for up to two hours. Before I had to worry about making a quick tape change every hour. Now, I'm waiting for 64GB CF cards (hope the Sony unit will support them that big) so I can go 4 hours. I do also capture to tape simultaneously both as a backup (I'm a huge believer in redundancy) and for archive. I figured I'd just save the parts where I have tape changes to DVD so I will have a complete archive copy.

I always shoot with a minimum of two cameras and capture sound via a mixer and laptop. So the couple of frames dropped between files is no deal breaker for me but it would be nice to just be able to pull the files into my NLE an connect them end to end.

Only few things are holding me back from pulling the trigger :

1) That drop in audio while the CF reader splits into another file due to the file system limitation. Doing long ceremonies, having a drop in audio during an important part would suck. Then I'd have to break out the tape archive and grab that piece. Derrick, what would be "the correct setup"?

2) Not sure how I would capture HDV -> ProRes in FCP using these clips.

3) Ger mentioning of the unit erroring out with certain cards. I guess I'd have to spring for the more expensive cards.

4) Is this thing hot swappable? Like when a card fills up, can I just swap in another card while the tape is recording?

It's either the CF recorder or buy a Switz light and have some pocket money for next month..lol.

Hi Randy,

I haven't tried swaping cards out when the tapes running. I'll have to try that tonight.

Garrett.

Thanks Garrett! Just FYI to everyone, B&H has a FW800 CF card reader for $59.95 and it has a $35 mail-in rebate. Lexar | Professional UDMA FireWire 800 CompactFlash | RW034-001 (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=cart_accessories&A=details&Q=&sku=492648&is=REG)

FYI - Rebate end today... 1/15/09

Thanks for the heads up!

Hi Randy,

I haven't tried swaping cards out when the tapes running. I'll have to try that tonight.

Garrett.

Sounds good! Please try these two methods :

1) When data fills up and unit stops recording.

2) Mid write of the data (unit hasn't stop recording).

I suspect number 2 will be a big failure but am curious as to how number 1 will do.

Thanks for volunteering Garret!

How much stopping and starting are you doing?

A lot.
Basically you need to give the unit time to write the file to the card before you press rec again. You'll get away with it most of the time but get caught now and again.


now i actually just keep it recording to avoid this problem.

Unfortunately my other camera (XH A1) was recording to tape so I had 4+ hours of ingest to do on that one.



You could have done that on the journey home with the unit. No pc required for capture any more! Just play the tape on the cam and push REC (both buttons) on the unit.

I have 3 of these units with my 3 A1 Cameras. At the beginning I was not sure of the investment, Now I'm thinking I did the best. We are shooting multicamera weddings and we are saving a significant time in capturing tapes.
So far no error with CF transcend 133x 32G cards. Changing the tape after an hour It was no creating any significant drop out in my audio.
I let my tape finish and the unit still recording. I change the tape and then I hit record. The tape started recording and the unit instantly creates a new file. on post I did not see any big drop out.

Ok... so the credit card is heating up but I found some more deals.

https://www.abesofmaine.com/item.do?item=SDCF16GBXIII - These are the 16GB 30MB/s San Disk Cards. If you buy 3 of them they give you $45.00 off instantly, use the promo code LOYALTY10 for another $10.00 off, then there is a $100.00 mail-in rebate. After all that the total for 3 cards with shipping is $153.24 which works out to $51.80 per card (they are $84 on B&H). Rebate end on the 17th so order now.

Sony HVRMRC1K Memory Recording Unit | Full Compass (http://www.fullcompass.com/product/362140.html) -Full Compass is carrying the unit for $783.21 ($884.95 on B&H).

Be sure to see the deal above from B&H on the FW800 card reader.

I have 3 of these units with my 3 A1 Cameras. At the beginning I was not sure of the investment, Now I'm thinking I did the best. We are shooting multicamera weddings and we are saving a significant time in capturing tapes.
So far no error with CF transcend 133x 32G cards. Changing the tape after an hour It was no creating any significant drop out in my audio.
I let my tape finish and the unit still recording. I change the tape and then I hit record. The tape started recording and the unit instantly creates a new file. on post I did not see any big drop out.

So when you were changing the tapes, the unit is still recording? Then when you hit REC on the camera to record after changing your tape, the CF unit split the file it was presently recording at the time?

Just wanted some clarification. If so, I'm sold. lol

Ok... so the credit card is heating up but I found some more deals.

https://www.abesofmaine.com/item.do?item=SDCF16GBXIII - These are the 16GB 30MB/s San Disk Cards. If you buy 3 of them they give you $45.00 off instantly, use the promo code LOYALTY10 for another $10.00 off, then there is a $100.00 mail-in rebate. After all that the total for 3 cards with shipping is $153.24 which works out to $51.80 per card (they are $84 on B&H). Rebate end on the 17th so order now.

Sony HVRMRC1K Memory Recording Unit | Full Compass (http://www.fullcompass.com/product/362140.html) -Full Compass is carrying the unit for $783.21 ($884.95 on B&H).

Be sure to see the deal above from B&H on the FW800 card reader.

My wallet hates you Brian. Sweet deals!

I may just bite on the sony unit....argh. Just pulled the trigger on the CF reader to get that rebate too.

My wallet hates you Brian. Sweet deals!

I may just bite on the sony unit....argh. Just pulled the trigger on the CF reader to get that rebate too.

My accountant/wife hates me.... haha.... And I am not even getting a cut....

I have 3 of these units with my 3 A1 Cameras. At the beginning I was not sure of the investment, Now I'm thinking I did the best. We are shooting multicamera weddings and we are saving a significant time in capturing tapes.
So far no error with CF transcend 133x 32G cards. Changing the tape after an hour It was no creating any significant drop out in my audio.
I let my tape finish and the unit still recording. I change the tape and then I hit record. The tape started recording and the unit instantly creates a new file. on post I did not see any big drop out.

Here is the sample.
Picasa Web Albums - JJvideofilm - HVR-MRC Sony ... (http://picasaweb.google.com/JJvideofilm/HVRMRCSonyUnit#5291751559865770786)

Here is the sample.
Picasa Web Albums - JJvideofilm - HVR-MRC Sony ... (http://picasaweb.google.com/JJvideofilm/HVRMRCSonyUnit#5291751559865770786)

Thanks for the video. Correct me if I'm wrong, but for the first 5 seconds of that clip, you did not have a tape recording and when the glitch happened, that's when you hit REC on your camera? If that's the case, you were really careful to not have the camera move at all while inserting the new tape.

You let the tape run out and didn't hit REC to stop the tape right? When it was out of room, you ejected it out and put another tape in then just hit REC again? I'm also assuming that if you would have stopped the tape before it ran out then the CF unit would have stopped as well?

Just want to make sure I got the exact sequence in which you did this.

Thanks for the video. Correct me if I'm wrong, but for the first 5 seconds of that clip, you did not have a tape recording and when the glitch happened, that's when you hit REC on your camera? If that's the case, you were really careful to not have the camera move at all while inserting the new tape.

You let the tape run out and didn't hit REC to stop the tape right? When it was out of room, you ejected it out and put another tape in then just hit REC again? I'm also assuming that if you would have stopped the tape before it ran out then the CF unit would have stopped as well?

Just want to make sure I got the exact sequence in which you did this.

Randy you are Correct!

Here are some pictuers of the Sony on my XL H1A:

For some reason my last post didn't upload the pictures. Hopefully this one works.

Randy, tested the card removal during filming and no problems. I did not just eject the card but instead hit the stop button then removed the card, put a new one in and started the unit by hitting the (two) record buttons. Then I tried start stop from the camera and it all syncs up fine.

There is a red light on the back that tells you it's recording and when you get down to around 4 minutes of time left it starts blinking. It doesn't change when it's completely out though so once it starts blinking change out cards at the next opportune moment.

The unit is actually pretty smart. My timecode is set to freerun NDF and it pics up perfectly to match the tape. No glitches on the tape during card change out. Other than hearing me change the card and noticing a slight movement (I didn't lock the tripod head down during the card change) you wouldn't know anything happened from looking at the tape.

I'm getting more impressed with the Sony recorder as I find out more about it.

Garrett

Randy you are Correct!

Wow! Thanks for the info Jose. How did you keep the camera from moving during the tape change? heh

Randy, tested the card removal during filming and no problems. I did not just eject the card but instead hit the stop button then removed the card, put a new one in and started the unit by hitting the (two) record buttons. Then I tried start stop from the camera and it all syncs up fine.

There is a red light on the back that tells you it's recording and when you get down to around 4 minutes of time left it starts blinking. It doesn't change when it's completely out though so once it starts blinking change out cards at the next opportune moment.

The unit is actually pretty smart. My timecode is set to freerun NDF and it pics up perfectly to match the tape. No glitches on the tape during card change out. Other than hearing me change the card and noticing a slight movement (I didn't lock the tripod head down during the card change) you wouldn't know anything happened from looking at the tape.

I'm getting more impressed with the Sony recorder as I find out more about it.

Garrett

Awesome. Freakin Awesome. I wonder why the unit has two record buttons, lol. I appreciate you doing that test. That's a BIG advantage.

So final assessment :

When out of tape, unit has about a second loss of audio and video while recording to card when new tape starts recording.

When out of CF card room, tape has no problems when switching cards. On unit, press stop when ready then press both REC buttons on unit to resume CF card capture.

This thing rocks! I actually like the 4GB file limit. I can back up each file to a single dvd when archiving with tape.

Thanks for the info Jose and Garrett.

I'd agree Randy, this little device is pretty awesome. It does have some small things that it could do better but I can live with them. And the ability to download and begin editing about 4 times faster than through tape, plus already have my archive copy on tape makes this thing more than worth the price for me.

Plus, I think it look cool.

Garrett

Can anyone answer the question on cold...how does it perform when used in cold temps 0 - 32 F?

Upon doing some research, the only HDV format will be M2T which sucks for us Mac users.
Roscor Corporation - Discount Video Warehouse (http://www.dvwonline.com/content/view/615/646/)
(See bottom of page)

Well, it's not all that bad: Sony has developed a plug-in for Final Cut Pro, but not for Final Cut Express.

Daan,

When you get the unit up and running could you please try simultaneously shooting HDV to tape and SD to CF, to see if there are any problems.

I would also love to know if the record to 14 second cache works.

Thanks

Bob

Bob, can you explain what a cache is? Sorry, kind of new to this and don't know what this really means.

In a certain mode "cache", the device will continually be holding in memory the last 14 seconds of video so that when you start the record button you have actually recorded the previous 14 seconds of video.

It means you could wait until the football goes into the net and then start the recording and you have the ball prior to it going into the net.

Has this been tested out?

Bob

It means you could wait until the football goes into the net and then start the recording and you have the ball prior to it going into the net.

Has this been tested out?

Bob

Fantastic, now if the cache was increased then you could take your camera to New York and capture footage of the jet ditching in the Hudson. :-)

Yes. I videoed a clock and pressed rec when the second hand hit 12. Playing back, the video clip started from when the second hand hit 46 seconds, ie 14 seconds earlier. Cool feature!
Oliver.

That is awesome! I film hunts and sometimes, you may have the camera rolling, but not hit record on time. That is a cool feature!

Yeah, this is one great feature. I recently did a dance show that they decided to just start without any warning. The sound guys usually give me a heads up about 30 seconds ahead and I can make sure all my sound/video is rolling. So, when the music started without any warning I had to scramble. Good thing I remembered to get the camera rolling first then run to fire up my audio. That 14 second cache saved the first number.

Garrett

I am very interested in this unit for my XH-A1 but I have one major question that I have not gotten a definitive answer on:

If you are filming a two hour show, are there dropped audio frames when the unit makes a new file?

Does the sony program or clipwrap fix this?

thank you.

Hi Jonathan,

From my experiences with it, I am getting about 5 1/2 frames of dropped audio and it misses two frames of video in the new file. What you see if you put the two files together at the break point of the first file the audio drops for about 5 1/2 frames then picks up in sync with real time at the start of the next file. For the video, the end of the first file is in sync, then the first two frames of the next file are the same and they seem to be two frames ahead of real time. Then the third frame falls back into sync with real time.

I was using the Cache mode so maybe if you don't have it on the files won't have this odd behavior.

This isn't a huge problem for me as I always run two cameras and a separate system for audio when I shoot a show. I also run tape as well as the Sony so I have just gone to the tape and taken the 10 frames each 20 minutes I need to make it look seamless. A bit more work but since the time codes match for the tape and CF unit it's really easy and fast to do the small tape capture I need.

Garrett

You that have the HVR-MRC1K, can you show some detailed/different angle photos (top, both sides view, of the attachment and cable routing. This Photo leaves out top view and right side view and how the velcro is installed. Thanks.

You that have the HVR-MRC1K, can you show some detailed/different angle photos (top, both sides view, of the attachment and cable routing. This Photo leaves out top view and right side view and how the velcro is installed. Thanks.

I would be interested in more photos as well.

Has anyone that purchased this unit been sorry.
I hate to spend the money but boy this would save so much time.

I use some large fast cards for my canon 1Ds Mark III and 1D Mark III, can I use these cards with the Sony unit, then reformat and use back in cameras?

You that have the HVR-MRC1K, can you show some detailed/different angle photos (top, both sides view, of the attachment and cable routing. This Photo leaves out top view and right side view and how the velcro is installed. Thanks.

Hey Rob,

Do you just remove the unit from the camera to change the card? Makes me nervous since the door is "flimsy" as it is.

Brian, That's my point. I copied this from "Kevin Leeyuen" on page 13. I can't tell whats up with it , how this was done, or how it works. It's like a movie trailer , I really don't know whats up! We should always try to post so us dummies can learn how to implement what someone has brilliantly came up with:-)

It also cuts down on the questions you have. If you give me the info up front, I will just say
" Hey Thanks, and good job" and mean it.

P.S. I,m Guilty! I read my post that's 4 up from here (on page 20), and I didn't let you clearly know that I copied the photo from "Kevin Leeyuen" on page 13 of this thread.
I will now whip myself, with a microphone cord! With the XLR end exposed! Shame On Me!:)

I got mine today. It definitely makes the front end heavier when mounted in the hot shoe. Does anyone have any other mounting options (with photos)?

Well, it's not all that bad: Sony has developed a plug-in for Final Cut Pro, but not for Final Cut Express.
A simple solution is an app called ClipWrap (http://clipwrap.com/).
It wil take your m2t files and rewrap them in a QT wrapper.
there is no transcoding of the file, as the file is just rewraped, so Final Cut can recognize it.

It is amazingly fast and works great, give it a try. I use it often going back and forth between Vegas on the PC side and FCP on the MAC side.

I got mine today. It definitely makes the front end heavier when mounted in the hot shoe. Does anyone have any other mounting options (with photos)?

How about getting a handle bracket and mounting it to that.
this way the weight is centered on the center of the camera and not the front.

The only downside for A1 users is that teh transport controls are on the handle.