Hi all. I received my unit Thursday and thought you would like to know what I have found. First off. I do dance recitals from a single camera fixed location. I used to have a 100k studio with a Sony 370, but dumped all that and I now use a Sony DCR PC120 (mini DV) and edit with the Matrox .100 Extreme and use Sonic to produce DVDs. My shoots range from 2 hours 20 minutes to over 4 hours. Up to this point I have been using 80 minute tapes, but a couple of new clients' recitals are continuous and I can't stop to change tapes. I decided to go with the FS-4 PRO instead of a second camera.

I have only done my testing in my home and so nothing has been tested in the field yet.

First problem. Powering the FS-4 for more than 90 minutes. I can't depend on have AC available every where I shoot so the power must be battery. I solved this by building a external power supply using a 5 amp hour sealed lead acid battery. I recorded for straight 3 hours, stoped and formated, and then recorded another 3 hours, stopped and formated and ran another hour and 25 minutes and stopped only because the battery pack of the camera became exhausted. I ran the FS-4 with the external battery along with the 90 minute battery pack. When the camera quit, the power indicator on the FS-4 showed half charge. It would appear that my external power pack will run the FS-4 for over 9 hours.

BTW, I ran the camera with no tape in record pause mode (if I had used a tape the camera would shut down after 5 minutes).

Power problem solved - on to the next problem. I found that I had embeded beeps at the end of every clip. The clip could be any length or one of the 2 gig clips - it didn't matter. I called support and they suggested I use the Type 2 avi format (I was using the Matrox Avi). That didn't help. I rendered a small seris of short clips and produced a DVD to see if the beep was just a function of the DV editing setup. The beep migrated to the DVD.

I then recorded a couple of short clips and played them back through the camera - listening with my studio headset and verified that the beep was embedded in the files on the FS-4's hard drive.

Migrating thru the menus, I noticed that the beep that is made when you press a key on the FS-4 IS THE SAME BEEP I HEARD IN THE CLIPS!

I selected ALARM OFF in the menu and guess what? the keys don't beep when pressed and the embedded beeps in the clips disappeared. Focus will have to do head scratching on that one.

Last problem, 174 minute recording time. I really need at least 4 hours 30 minutes of record time. I purchased the 40 gig unit because of a great deal I was getting, but I need the extra recording time. I plan on attempting to swap out the 40 gig with a 80 gig as soon as it arrives (next week). I let you know my findings.

joe

it sounds like the beeps were picked up by the onboard camera mic.

you can get more recording time by swapping a larger hard drive into the firestore, just like you would with a regular computer.

Just curious if the drive swap went ok?
IS the internal drive SATA or IDE connection?

it sounds like the beeps were picked up by the onboard camera mic.

you can get more recording time by swapping a larger hard drive into the firestore, just like you would with a regular computer.

can i put a 300GB hard drive in there? what size is the hd?

Rolland,

it is an ATA6 laptop HDD.

James,

If you can find a 300GB 2.5" HDD, then give it a try. It should work IMO.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=63372

I found the above post after searcing, on how to do the swap.

the largest size notebook drive is 160gb
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=2010150380+1035907889+130971534+1309721217&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=380

they cost about $200 from the above store.

Good luck, Rolland

thanks for the info guys.

Hi Joe,

Focus does make a 3-hour battery for the FS-4/DR-HD/FS-100/FS-C. Any Focus dealer is able to supply it or it can be purchased from the Focus webstore.

Thanks,
Matt