Page 11 in my manual has a section titled "Recording images from the camcorder to this unit". It's not intuitive that it would be in there but it gives a step by step.

I abbreviated it and added some more steps based on my experimentation that resulted in a reliable connection that worked with the A1.

The critical thing (in terms of getting the two devices talking) from my experiments was to power on the MRC1 BEFORE being a connected to a camera. It always came on and I could set the various modes I wanted. Then I connected the Firewire from the camera to the MRC1. Then I powered on the camera. It the camera power-on caused the MRC1 to go into computer mode, I went into the menu and selected HDV (if memory serves) and then it behaved itself.

Just change your setting to FOLLOW when using the HV-10 and you are in business. Works for me.

I tested my MRC1K with my friend's PD150 and it worked fine as long as Follow was selected.

Richard

Positive experiences with the MRC1k using the XH-A1
 

Hi there,
Reading so many negative posts about this combination I thought it would be nice to put my experiences here aswell, which are quite positive.

Received the MRC1K yesterday afternoon with 2 NP-F570 batteries and 2 Traxdata 32GB 233x cards (nice price, great performance).
Immediatly charged the two batteries and took everything with me (still in the box!) on a job to film a party that evening. After setting up the camera's I hooked the MRC1k on the XH-A1 (which we used on a tripod).

I took the known steps:
- XH-A1: turn DVControl ON
- Connect the MRC1K (with CF-card) and turn it on
- MRC1K: choose SYNCHRO

Everything worked immediately and for the whole evening (about 4 hours).
Things to whatch out for (at least for us). When the camera goes into standy mode and you start it again using the camera's rec button, the MRC1k will not start recording. So turn it back on using the standby button, wait, start recording using the camera's rec button again.

Performance of the Traxdata CF-cards are above expectation (considering the price, not the printed 233x speed). These cards are cheaper here in Europe than the Traxdata 32GB 133x, but write 1,5x till 2x as fast and read 3x till 4x as fast (benchmarking them).

Practical speed: 2 hours of m2t material took 15 minutes to transfer to my laptop.

Serialno. of my XH-A1: 574502300897 (bought in november 2007 in The Netherlands)

Another info from european Canon A1 models:

MRC1 works fine with serial 574452200223 (sold in Germany June 2007)
MRC1 doesn't work with serial 574432200656 (sold in Germany April 2007)

I once had success with switching the ...656 Cam in SD mode and then returning to HD mode: both resolutions worked with the MRC1. But next time it failed again (= Cam was recognized as PC)

Greetings
Burkhard

I purchased from Full Compass about a month ago. It was backordered, but it finally came in today.

I didn't even look at the manual, but remembered settings from this thread. After about 15 mins of playing with the unit, I got it working great in both normal and cache settings. Playback works great too! Tried different combination of turning the unit and the camera off/on and everything worked great!

My serial: 572322102997
Purchased...wow, um say March of 07. This is a US model.

I guess, now I can sell my Firestore FS-C! Also, there are some deals on SanDisk Extreme III 32gb cards if you don't mind waiting a month or two for a rebate.

I just ordered one from DABS for £101 a couple of days ago - now just waiting for them to actually receive stocks.

Anyone using this with CS4. I am loving the speed of capturing my clips, but they don't seem to keept the original time code from the camera. Is there a setting I am missing. Either in Premiere or on the recorder itself?

Thanks all
Chris

Sjoerd, can you tell me where you bought the MRC1 and at what price?

Are you recording on tape at the same time? If so, the timecode on the MRC clips should match the timecode on the tape. If you are using cache mode, that won't happen. If you are recording occasionally on just the MRC then again the timecode may go haywire. These are the only explanations I've managed to come up with so far.

My time code problem seems to be every clip starts it time code @ 0:00:00:00 so there is now way I reference back. I was hoping it would be able to keep going. Maybe it is a problem I have with CS4 will check it over the next couple of days. Cheers

MRC1 and lanc control
 

For the most part, I've used the MRC1 as a remote control in terms of switching recording on and off - recording just to the card and not to tape. If I mount the unit on the camera or tripod, I get camera movement when I switch the unit on - rather annoying when using the cache mode and it leaves a distinct wobble in the footage.

If I use a lanc controller, the camera records to both tape and the MRC1. The disadvantage of this is that I often get the noise of the tape motor - really noticeable now that I've been recording onto card without this background noise. I don't always have the time to set up an external mic - wildlife isn't always inclined to hang around waiting for the cameraman to get set up!

So, is there a way of being able to control the camera with the lanc, but not recording to tape? If there isn't a tape in the deck, it doesn't record at all.

The simple solution is to use a dedicated sound recorder, together with a decent microphone. There are many solid state recorders available from Tascam, Sony, Marantz, Edirol etc. Team it up with a Rode NTG2 and you will never look back.

ps I use the Sony PCM-D50 together with the Rode NTG 2 and the combination is superb

Sony PCM-D50

Ah, but you don't know the recording conditions!

1) I am out for a walk with the camera. I see some wildlife that I may be able to record.

2) I set up the camera on a tripod, and record something to tape because I don't know if the wildlife will hang around.

3) I connect the MRC1, set on cache mode, so that I can turn the tape off, and if the wildlife does something interesting, I can record what I've missed thanks to the cache. The clips on the card are also more easily managed once I get back to the computer, so I don't feel the need to keep recording on tape, unless I want to make sure I have a back-up.

4) Meanwhile I'm also looking to see if there is a better viewpoint, and if so I clip to MRC1 to the tripod, and move the whole unit.

5) whether or not 4 has happened, I then start to get an external microphone set up.

I prefer not to touch the camera while recording, so use the lanc for focussing and zooming - but zooming this way is noisy, and records on the tape/card, even with the external mic. Or perhaps it's just noisy because I've got used to not having any camera sound if I can avoid it.

I do have an edirol R-09 HR, which I use mainly for voice notes, and a budget sennheiser microphone which I attach to the camera when possible. And a hot shoe shock mount is on my list of things to buy.

But I'm still after an answer to the question of whether or not it's possible to record onto the MRC1 without recording to tape when using just the lanc.

Surely pressing the start button will only last for a matter of a few frames, that can be removed easily in any NLE application.

If sound is that important to your production, then a good off camera external shotgun microphone would be the ideal answer. Your Edirol recorder is an excellent unit which is capable of much higher quality recordings than the Canon built in mike.

Put the Rode NTG2 on your Christmas wish list.