Gadget for miniDV cam to record to Flash Drive?

will-3 wrote on 9/26/2009, 2:50 PM

I want to find a device that will allow a miniDV cam to record directly to some sort of inexpensive solid state memory... like a flash drive or whatever.

As I remember it there were devices for capturing video from your miniDV cam directly to a stand-alone hard drive... who made those?

Is there any device not that will connect to the firewire port of a miniDV cam and capture video directly to a Flash Drive or other inexpensive solid state memory?

Thanks for any help.

Comments

earthrisers wrote on 9/26/2009, 5:50 PM

The Sony MRC-1K is PERFECT for that purpose --- but it's expensive: something over $800.
We use that for all our shoots now, with our Sony PD170 camera feeding a Flash memory card thru the Firewire port.

rstrong wrote on 9/26/2009, 6:02 PM

I recently purchased a Citidisk Flash Memory card, 120gb, kinda pricey though......works great!

will-3 wrote on 9/27/2009, 5:36 AM

Thanks for the info guys. Wonder if there are any more options for doing this?

jrazz wrote on 9/27/2009, 6:43 AM

Here's an idea, although bulky... get a mini laptop or a netbook that has a firewire port and install Vegas (it must have a Windows Variant on it). Hook this up via firewire to your camera and capture straight into Vegas. You can attach the netbook to your tripod. Then when you are done shooting, take it home and transfer the footage over your network or via a compact flash card to your editing system.

This will probably run you under $300 USD.

j razz

will-3 wrote on 9/27/2009, 4:43 PM

J razz,
That would work... probably with out Vegas being on the Net Book... you could probably capture with Windows Movie Maker or whatever... if they will capture as avi... and not compress the video.

logiquem wrote on 9/28/2009, 6:32 AM

I would definitely use Scenalyser for that. It is zillion times more stable for that than anything i tried.

Just for the kick, I tried to capture directly on a SDHC card (Transcend 8 Go class 6) on my laptop (from firewire) this morning and it seems to work just well.

rs170a wrote on 9/28/2009, 6:38 AM

WinDV is a very small and free capture app.
Here's what the site says about it.

* small & handy <100kB one-file WinDV.exe
* input / output - capturing from DV device to AVI files (both type-1 and type-2 supported) and recording vice versa
* no dropped frames - memory buffering
* automatic AVI splitting according to the timestamps on DV recordings - every video sequence can be saved into unique file
* easy AVI joining - record multiple files joined to the DV device just using wildcards
* preview of transmitted video in the window
* free - you can download it and use it as you like at no cost

Mike

baysidebas wrote on 9/28/2009, 7:15 AM

Using Scenalyzer I capture 3 cameras to the laptop's hard drive simultaneously.

RalphM wrote on 9/28/2009, 8:20 AM

baysidebas:

Interesting -can you share the equipment descriptions please? Firewire hub, laptop specs, etc.

Thanks,
RalphM

plasmavideo wrote on 9/28/2009, 9:04 AM

A while back I had the dilemma of how to record a 90+ minute symphony concert without changing tapes or using LP setting on the main camera, and I recorded directly to the laptop as described using Vegas. It was a flawless process. For the other cameras I just changed tapes and synched in post. For the main audio, I used a DAT machine fed by my mixer and the mic array at the stage. I thought about feeding the audio to the same laptop via USB, but I was worried that the laptop might not be powerful enough to record via firewire and USB simultaneously. Why didn't I feed the main audio only into the main camera? 'cuz if that camera went down, I would have lost all of the audio I had spent quite a time setting up. At least with the DAT solution, I could have good audio to sync to the other camera's shots. Now of course I would try to use some type of solid state audio recorder rather than DAT.

Fun times . . . .

johnmeyer wrote on 9/28/2009, 9:42 AM

Interesting -can you share the equipment descriptions please? Firewire hub, laptop specs, etc.It really doesn't matter. Pretty much any laptop with Firewire will do, and if you don't have Firewire built-in, or if you want to capture from multiple cameras, get a multi-Firewire PCMCIA card.

See these other posts:

Is it possible to record directly to my notebook?

Is this possible???

There are many more. Just search on "Scenalyzer" and "multiple."

[Edit]

In answer to the original poster, I just stumbled across this product:

FS-H200 Portable Compact Flash DTE