Does anyone know if it is possible to record HD directly to a hard drive, bypassing the need for a P2 card? Obviously it would decrease mobility but in a controlled interior setting, it would be great.

Or, I guess, the bottomline is that I'm trying not to buy a P2 card until that get to be at least 16gb. Until then, aside from bootlegging a signal out of the camera (to a deck) while in P2 mode, is there any way to get the HD "look" out of the camera and to tape (if a hard drive won't work)...?

Thanks for any help!!!

Yes.

In FCP, just connect the camera to the computer via firewire, open LOG AND CAPTURE, set device control to UNCONTROLLED DEVICE and then hit CAPTURE.

You will need to capture this to a FW800 or SATA RAID or better.

Thanks for much for the quick reply, this is defnitely encouraging. I actually have Avid HD 5.2 at home. Hopefully there is a similar option for the Avid.

And please pardon my ignorance with FW800's, but when I get the drive, a standard firewire will work? I don't need a special video card to process the media?

YOur machine just needs a firewire 800 port. And the best drives to get for this are G-Raids, as they are 2 hardware raided drives that give great read/write speeds.

HOWEVER...I do not know if these are compatible with Avid. Avid likes to make sure that only Avid products work with Avid products.

Good point. Has anyone tried going direct to Avid?

I've had no problems recording HD (1080i & 720p) straight to a FW400 hard drive. Here's my chain: The camera (FW400) to my 250GB HD (FW400), then the drive to the MBP (FW400). I do have an Express34/FW800 card on order, but it works fine as it is. I've had NO dropped frames.

In some testing, I've gone direct to FCP 720/24p to the internal HD without dropping frames.

Shane's the man, but I do not necessarily believe you need FW800 to capture, at least 720.

Thanks so much guys, I totally appreciate your help. It's saved me a lot of headaches.

Matthew Cohen at Tekserve in New York turned me on to this direct capture to external hard drive via Laptop arrangement that he has been testing and found to be very reliable: HVX200 camera connected to MacBook Pro FireWire port and an external drive connected to a FireWire ExpressBus card soon to be available from Sigg (Matthew's been working with a prototype). He suggests that it works best with camera and drives on separate I/O busses. For people who are in the New York area, you'll find lots of Mac expertise at Tekserve just like you find lots of HVX expertise at Abel Cine Tech in New York and Los Angeles.