Keith, we didn't use a single VTR on this gig, but a general comparison article is definitely in order. I'll put that on the short list.

That would be great Chris. It would be nice to know what the issues are with them.

Kurth, all I know about it is what I read in Mike Curtis' blog here (see the Tuesday April 11 entry): http://www.hdforindies.com/

We never touched the firewire port on the Z1, or any of the other cameras for that matter, during the shootout. All 6 cameras were directly connected to 6 Mac capture stations via either component or SDI interfaces. We ran into one snag during the tests when Adam wanted the Z1 in 50i mode. After rebooting the camera in 50i we couldn't sync the image on the Mac, and after messing around Mike realized that the BOB for the Mac we were using was NTSC only. To avoid re-wiring everything we just rolled tape on those tests with no direct capture. But later in the afternoon Mike re-wired the Z1 to a different BOB/Mac and then we were able to capture both 50i and 60i.

However I don't think any of this could have affected the firewire port. My guess would be that the camera was damaged before we ever used it.

The firewire port on the FX-1 my office used to have was cantankerous. The plug had to be angled just so (pulled out from the body a 1/4") for the connection to work...it seemed likely there was a bad solder joint behind the jack.

More updates about the Shootout from Mike Curtis and his side of things:

http://www.hdforindies.com/2006/04/t...pdate-and-post

Thanks Chris :)


Ooops! I forgot you hate smileys...

Text smilies good... graphic smilies... baaad.