I would greatly appreciate more recording time autonomy.
I wonder if there are compatible batteries on the market providing greater power autonomy = capacity greater than 1200mAh?
Do I have to avoid purchasing non-Sanyo packs?
What kind of solution is recommended?

Erick,

I doubt that you'll find anything, since the battery must fit inside the case. Sanyo is a premiere manufacturer of lithium batteries, and I imagine they already pretty well have optimized things. Just carry an extra battery!

If you need a long continuous run, just run the AC charger/adapter through the little adapter block. It might also be possible to use an external battery through the block.

Thanks for your reply David. What do you mean by using an external battery through the block? Can you explain?
What kind of external charger may I use if I whish to charge 2 packs at the same time?

Erick,

Amazon sells a stand alone charger for the HD1 battery, this will permit you to charge one battery while using another. Catch is that you still need to replace the battery in the camera when one run out.

David's suggestion is to instead plug in your camera charger to the camera while recording, you can power it either from a regular power wall outlet, or you can use one of the battery powered inverters, they cost you about $100 and will run the camera as an external battery pack.

I made a adaptor to make it possible to mount the camera on a tripod while running on external power, www.bophoto.com/HDV email me if you need one.


Bo

www.bophoto.com/panos

Erick,

Bo said it pretty well. In case there is some confusion, the block I'm talking about the little black thing that plugs into the camera connector that normally connects to the cradle. Thus you can connect the AC unit to the camera without using the cradle.

I thought Sanyo was going to have an external charger available; maybe that's what Bo got.

Erick,

No I did not get the external charger, but its about $50 from Amazon. I have been using the cable with the adaptor you refered to - this is why I made the tripod adaptor to make it possible to capture say 1 hour speaches in web-mode or the 640x480 mode.

This camera does wonderfully for web-media, only problem is that it looks completely silly to hook a external mic or radio-mic to a camera which is smaller than the wireless mic reciever. (smile) So if the next generation would include 1-2 wireless mic's along with a ambient sound mic.. all wrapped into the size of a pack of smokes.. well that would suit me very well.


Bo

Bo,

I still need some clarification:

1. if I connect the AC unit to the camera through that little adapter, do I charge the battery at the same time or is it disconnected from the power circuit?

2. may I use a so-called external battery pack with very high capacity outputting 5v DC?

3. may I use a car charger with adequate specifications? (5v - 2A/h???)

Erick


>>1. if I connect the AC unit to the camera through that little adapter, do I charge the battery at the same time or is it disconnected from the power circuit?

YES it will be charging just like when you plug the power cable straight into the little square adaptor which came with the camera.

2. may I use a so-called external battery pack with very high capacity outputting 5v DC?

YES.... "qualified yes" as long as it have what you define as "adequate specs". Don't go wiring it wrong and blame me. (smile) Personally I use a external powerpack with a 110 v outlet and plug my Sanyo charger into that.

3. may I use a car charger with adequate specifications? (5v - 2A/h???)

YES as long as you do the wiring so it will plug into the adaptor which shipped with your HD1 in the first place.

Basically the tripod adaptor is designed to permit attaching the camera to a tripod while leaving the power/usb adaptor "brick" in place and plugged into anyone of the cables you chose. this is why I moved it off-center so it would be easy access for cables.

Hope this helps.


Bo

Guys is there a car charger for HD 1?

I have not seen a "Sanyo" branded carcharger.

But there are several chargers which can be wired to the right output.. or you can plainly pickup a $20 inverter from PepBoys and plug your regular sanyo charger into it.


Bo

www.bophoto.com/HDV - Guess what Windows Vista b2 actually works... Yehaa..!

Thank you Bo but can you be more specific on inverter from a Pep Boys. Like voltage dc or ac and etc.

Just ask the guy at PepBoy's the thing looks like a little club - plugs into your 12v dc outlet and delivers 110v in the form of a regular power plug which your regular charger for the camera will plug into.. inverters creates alternating current and are available in lots of forms and sizes. you pay more money for more capacity. but generally you only need a little one to pull a charger. (smile) - there is really nothing to be specific about, just go buy one and try it. if in doubt bring your HD1 charger and make sure the plug will fit in the outlet. ;-)


Bo

www.bophoto.com/HDV

Has anyone seen a Solar charger that i can use for Sanyo HD 1?

One Problem guys. 4gb is the max right now and thats 1 hour and so is the battery :-)

So whats the point of a battery that can run more than 1hr since you MUST at that time stop recording to at the minimum swap memory cards ?

Just curious!

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/

Chris,

That is for HD 720P - however shooting a VGA 30 frames.. you can shoot a lot longer. I stuck mine on a minitripod and shot a conference session. dumped it to a DVD and it was stil as good as anyone can play on their home DVD in the first place. sooo for VGA recording for web or video... longer runtime is interesting.


Bo

www.bophoto.com/HDV

One Problem guys. 4gb is the max right now and thats 1 hour and so is the battery :-)

So whats the point of a battery that can run more than 1hr since you MUST at that time stop recording to at the minimum swap memory cards ?

Just curious!

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/


That's why i bought this from this forum http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=69559 direct transfer to Ipod from your camera i have 60 gb i pod can you imagine how much i transfer to my ipod .

One Problem guys. 4gb is the max right now and thats 1 hour and so is the battery :-)

Is the Sanyo restricted to 4GB cards, SD can go much higher I believe, and then there is the IDE SD card converters? Can, it take advantage of the extra capacity?

What is an IDE SD adaptor ? as far as I know there is no SD card larger than 4gb right now so its irrelevant. I imagine and hope it will support 8gb cards once they appear.

as for battery life if this camera becomes popular enough making a LARGER battery will not be hard. just leave off the battery door. Should not be that hard at all to get many times the current battery life using this method.

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/

I thought I saw some mention of cards much bigger then 4GB, or even 8GB, coming eventually (which is alright just buy them when they are affordable enough).

It is a hard drive interface that plugs into a SD slot, I think I saw one for the Nintendo DS. This could make doing record times cheaper than a flash card in the short term.

The one I saw was for MS DUO (also the DS is not SD IIRC just similar)

anyway thats for microdrives which were 4gb no better than our 4gb SD cards

8gb would be nice paired with a 2hr battery !!

They have 8gb CF cards for under $200 now. a SD to CF adaptor would be nice.

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/

I wasn't aware they were that cheap. The latest micro drives are 12GB, and bigger can be expected. But 1.8 inch drives go to something like 90GB, and should be able to interface to such a thing (not to mention that millipede 100GB SD card IBM is planning).

I think it's going to boil down to the maximum cylinder/head/sector count, filesize, and file count that the HD1 can handle. FAT32 is limited to <4GB individual files, so people should be prepared to record HD in one hour max increments. There is a question of what the maximum file count will be. I do know that SD cards hold a theoretical maximum number of files in a directory... 255 less hidden and system files if memory serves. If this theory holds up, we aren't likely to be able to record more than about 250 X 4GB of video, or 1TerraByte of HD video. I think the 10 days of total recording capacity would be great, but the 1 hour max length for clips could be a real limitation.

As a heads up to people watching eBay, the 8Gb SD cards you have read about are not measured in GigaBytes, but rather Gigabits... these are 1GB cards, craftily disguesed.

The 255 limit is overcome by using multiple folders, and cameras already do that...is not uncommon to have more than 255 photos.

about the 4GB limit on file size (also there is a 32Gb limit in total capacity with FAT32) I am sure that if it is an issue cameras may be updated to automatically start a new file as the limit is reached. Also another option is to support NTFS.


I think it's going to boil down to the maximum cylinder/head/sector count, filesize, and file count that the HD1 can handle. FAT32 is limited to <4GB individual files, so people should be prepared to record HD in one hour max increments. There is a question of what the maximum file count will be. I do know that SD cards hold a theoretical maximum number of files in a directory... 255 less hidden and system files if memory serves. If this theory holds up, we aren't likely to be able to record more than about 250 X 4GB of video, or 1TerraByte of HD video. I think the 10 days of total recording capacity would be great, but the 1 hour max length for clips could be a real limitation.

As a heads up to people watching eBay, the 8Gb SD cards you have read about are not measured in GigaBytes, but rather Gigabits... these are 1GB cards, craftily disguesed.

1hr incriments is fine as long as the camera handles this seamlessly. IE I can not imagine anyone even noticing it until edit time.

this might also be why they limit it to 4gb ??

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/

32gb ?? every fat32 partition I have is over 32gb ?? can you elaborate on this ?

I have had bad encounters with NTFS in the past so I tend to do everything fat32 except for one partition for when I get a download that is over 4gb :-)

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/

Starting a new file at 4GB is a clear solution, but I don't expect they do that automatically now and I don't anticipate Sanyo will release a firmware update for this when they won't even fix known flaws.

I believe the mathematical limit to a FAT32 is 2TB, so barring limitations of hardware, we should be able to accept new higher capacity cards. Keep in mind that FAT32 looses some efficiency when partitions exceed 8GB.

It really doesn't matter about all these things, just that we are not limited to to 4GB 1 hour at a time.

The reason for the 32 Gb limit is from the format program:

from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat32:

Windows 2000 and Windows XP can read and write to FAT32 filesystems of any size, but the format program on these platforms can only create FAT32 filesystems up to 32 GB. Thompson and Thompson (2003) write[4] that "Bizarrely, Microsoft states that this behavior is by design." Microsoft's knowledge base article 184006[3] indeed confirms the limitation and the by design statement, but gives no rationale or explanation. Peter Norton's opinion[5] is that "Microsoft has intentionally crippled the FAT32 file system."

32gb ?? every fat32 partition I have is over 32gb ?? can you elaborate on this ?

I have had bad encounters with NTFS in the past so I tend to do everything fat32 except for one partition for when I get a download that is over 4gb :-)

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/

Have to agree with Wayne on this one. Still, one question begs answering.

When streaming video is recorded on a FAT32 partition in Windows, and the filesize grows too large, the file becomes corrupt. We should be testing this when 8GB cards become available. In the past, I have recorded long sessions (kids Christmas play for example) where the total runtime would exceed one hour. If the cam jumps to file 2, great. If it ends recording and I have to press a button to start it again, fine. If it corrupts the file and I can't recover it without liberally applying brilliance, I'll want to know so I can prevent the scenerio.

Of course, this is assuming the format of the memory card must be FAT32, and that's something I havn't qualified. Has anyone tried an NTFS formatted card?

I think the reason that they can go to bigger sizes is because they adjust the size of the blocks/sectors. It goes back to the old saying, nobody would ever need more than 640K memories for programs. Likewise, they probably though 4GB was more than what people could use.

The original MS flash file format they used in PCMCIA and with compact flash, and probably most, was based on FAT-16, I don't know what they do today.

Chris, I agree with you about corruption, probably pays to make Sanyo aware of the problem and solutions before they make a firmware update/HD1a. It would be great if Sanyo did something unique, and made the firmware of the HD1 open and provided a programming manual. There are risks, but a simple programming interface that quarantined programs from any sensitive part of the hardware that could be damaged would do the trick. I could do some neat tricks on something like that.

Actually, I think I would prefer the HD1, if it could be firmware upgraded to the new model, and new batches did not have any of the bugs. that would be nice, custom comrpession routines 10 bit etc.

I have found some pricing on micro drives, surprisingly cheap, be good if you could connect through IDE to SD adapter.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=29927

Several vendors are now selling DB-L40A batteries (1350 mAh) on eBay now:

http://search-desc.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=bs&sbrftog=1&from=R10&satitle=sanyo+hd1+batter*+1350*&sacat=-1%26catref%3DC6&fts=2&sargn=-1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=60502&ftrt=1&ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=

any affordable prices on OEM Sanyo batteries ? (my sanyo external charger will ony charge sanyo batteries ) and since I paid $40 for it and love how tiny it is I am not looking to get yet another charger :-)

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/