Hello. I had a basic question. I was wondering if the Sony HVR-A1U could record straight to a computer tethered through a firewire cable? I need to work on a project for my job where I might need to be doing a lot of recording of instructional material and would rather tether the camcorder to my computer and record straight to it than deal with recording to tape and then transferring to a computer. Thank you.

Manuel,
Welcome to DVInfo.net!
Yes, you can record straight to computer. Any limitations would be related to computer HDD and processor speed. In fact, Adobe has a product called "OnLocation" that does exactly this. However, many NLE's will allow you to capture live material in HDV straight from the camcorder as well. OnLocation offers some advanced tools, but the quality is identical, since the camera is providing the same data stream down the Firewire cable as tape recieves in the recording process.

Thank you Doug. That helps a lot. I will tell my boss this.

I tried HDVSplit to capture from a live Firewire stream. Was I amazed! Straight to my notebook HD with no hiccups. I also recorded to my 500 GB USB drive with no problems.

POSSIBILITIES!!!