Hi all,

A bit of a basic question here, but does the HV10 register as a video object in Windows via Firewire in the same way as older generation DVCams? My reason for asking is I have to purchase a device for my employer which will serve several purposes.

1) Be accessible as a web-cam like device to broadcast company meetings ( my idea here is to hook onto the DV feed using a 3rd party application, like with older DV cameras ).

2) Be available for use at offsite events for recording etc.

3) Now as long as the HV10 does perform like older DV cams in Windows, does anyone know if it will continue to feed the firewire / DV feed while recording as well? I'd like that as a feature personally in order to archive meetings at a higher resoultion while still broadcasting the live feed.

I've gone through the manuals and I believe 1) to be possible, but is 3) ?

Thanks,

Liam McGintny

This should work by setting the HV10 firewire output to "DV Locked", which should then appear to the OS to act just like a regular DV camera, even for HDV-recorded tape (it downconverts to 16:9 SD DV in-camera.)

I've successfully captured to Ulead MSPro this way, and DV functions work (timestamp for scene detection, "scan dv tape", etc- although scene splits seemed to be 1-2 frames off sometimes).

I would assume other DV functions should work the same. I don't have any DV webcam software to test, sorry.

re #3, interestingly, appears the "DV Locked" feature only works for playback mode. During camera record mode, it's HDV format only (although if you switch the camera HD format to DV, it's probably OK.)
I started up VLC player and used its capture device (for preview), and it indeed showed the HDV picture capture during pause and actual tape recording. I also successfully captured into Ulead MSPro8 "live" this way.
If you need to capture DV format, you may have to switch the tape recording format to DV as well.

Thanks -- I appreciate the input; this should be workable for me as HD is not a requirement for the broadcast archives, but will be of use for offsite events.

I've been thinking of getting this camera too for high deffinition web usage, any chance you could update us on your useage of it? Personally I want to use it with www.snapstrip.com to get high resolution stills, any chance you could test it out for me?

Peace, Rolland