Okay, I'm just curious, who out there has two XL2's at hand? I'd like to know if anybody has bothered to transfer Custom Presets from one XL2 to another, via FireWire as described on page 71 of the operator's manual. The instructions are just a tad vague, but here's a recap:

1. Connect one XL2 to another XL2 with a FireWire cable.

2. Power up the SENDING camera (export settings) to "External Control" mode.

3. Power up the RECEIVING camera (import settings) to any Camera mode other than "Green Box."

4. On the RECEIVING camera, open the menu and select Custom Preset --> Read Preset, and the Import Preset menu appears.

5. Then select Sel. Preset and choose the file you want to import (which the receiving camera is reading from the sending camera).

6. Toggle the Sel. Position, which opens the Select Position menu.

7. Then use Sel. Preset to choose the file location you'll be writing to (or overwriting, if a file was already there before; make sure it's unlocked so you can overwrite it).

8. Then choose Overwrite --> Yes. The file has now been moved from one camera to the other. Sure beats doing five pages of preset menus by hand, doesn't it?

Pretty soon the SDK folks will provide utilities for downloading preset files from the camera to your hard drive, and from there, file sharing on the web, or whatever... the XL2 holds three preset files but you could maintain a whole library of 'em on your computer and load the camera with whatever presets you need for the day. Pretty cool, huh?

Hey Chris,

We currently have a few XL2's on hand for ResFest 2004. Swapping Custom Presets between XL2's is done exactly as you described and works pretty easily - provided you remember to carry a 4-pin to 4-pin FireWire cable with you. I always carry a FireWire cable kit with me these days.

I too am looking forward to seeing C++ software developers embrace the XL2 SDK kit.

Miss 'ya!

- don

Chris,

Thanks for the heads up about that. It will save a lot of post-production tweaking on multiple camera shoots.

Steve

Chris,
I thought that there is already some Canon software that enables you to control the XL2 from a laptop, as well as save the settings and transfer them to other cameras.

Robin

Robin, there is DV-PC Recorder, which is a pretty basic app which writes edit-ready files to a laptop's hard disk, but I think that's all there is now from Canon Inc. My understanding is that they're leaving everything else to the third-party software folks through the SDK.