OT: Shotput Express

craftech wrote on 7/13/2008, 8:16 AM
I know this question is directed to only a few members, but I would appreciate the help as always.

I am having difficulty with Shotput Express in conjunction with my laptop and EX1 camera. The laptop has an Express Card Slot.

1. It only seems to work in "manual offloading" and not "automatic offloading". When I click BEGIN in auto it doesn't seem to read and transfer the contents of the SxS card. It does work in Manual offloading. Can't seem to find an answer in the rather short manual.

2. "Formatting the card". When I check this option and insert the card back in the camera after a manual offload the camera wants to "restore media". How are you getting a contunuous workflow with this step required? I want to be able to offload and re-insert cards so I can shoot for two hours with only two 8GB cards. I understood this was possible before I bought the camera and that Shotput Express would do it.

3. "Renaming the card". I don't choose this option and quite frankly, I do not understand if it is even necessary or what it is for.

3. While not directly related to Shotput Express, is there any way to preview ALL Clips in Sony Clip Browser? The camera annoyingly creates a separate folder for each clip every time I start and stop the camera, then when I load them into Clip Browser, I can't play them all continuously in the preview window. I have to play each one separately even if they are only a few seconds and then double click the next one and so on. If I want to vew them fullscreen, the clip is often finished before the fullscreen opens. There has to be a way around this. It makes no sense.

John

Comments

craftech wrote on 7/14/2008, 3:37 AM
Bump
farss wrote on 7/14/2008, 4:20 AM
I've only used SPE for manually downloading cards and I've searched DVInfo to see if I can find an answer to your questions but nothing specific.
It appears that V2 of the software should be out soon however some replies indicate that it does work in Auto offload, the trick is how!

From what I can fathom you have to set it up correctly including renaming the card or it might not work. The concept seems to be that each card is offloaded into its own folder of the same name as the card. Now if you don't rename the card you can see the problemo.

So you set it up to autorename and sequence the cards such say you start with Card01 and card02. Card01 is full so you offload that and SPE puts that into Card01 and renames that card as Card03, depending on how you've told it to auto-increment numbers

Then Card02 fills and you offload that into folder Card02 and the card is renamed Card04 etc, etc. Hope this makes sense. Needless to say test this out as I haven't done it myself.

The problem regarding playing the clips in the browser is because the cards are FAT32 a continuous clipe can span files and cards. So each clip has to go into a folder and folders may split over cards if your shoot long takes. I think you can drag several folders into the preview window and then play them all, you can certainly do so in the camera.

I really do not like the clip browser, written by the Sony Mattel dept I think. The Shotput Express Destructions are exactly that. Yes it's cheap but it's also something that's for mission critical use, there's no excuse for leaving users to decode how they're meant to use it.

The card formatting thing is I think a bug in the code however it seems you can let the camera reformat the card while you continue shooting. Still a PIA.

Bob.
craftech wrote on 7/14/2008, 6:10 AM
So you set it up to autorename and sequence the cards such say you start with Card01 and card02. Card01 is full so you offload that and SPE puts that into Card01 and renames that card as Card03, depending on how you've told it to auto-increment numbers
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It seems to autorename the cards as 1, 2, 3 etc. I don't think I have to give it a specific name. Do you do that?
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The problem regarding playing the clips in the browser is because the cards are FAT32 a continuous clipe can span files and cards. So each clip has to go into a folder and folders may split over cards if your shoot long takes. I think you can drag several folders into the preview window and then play them all, you can certainly do so in the camera.
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I tried dragging the clips to the preview window. It doesn't appear that you can drag them at all, not even one clip let alone several.
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The card formatting thing is I think a bug in the code however it seems you can let the camera reformat the card while you continue shooting. Still a PIA.
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So yours doesn't format either using Shotput Express? At least I know that I can keep shooting if I must use the camera.

Thanks for the help Bob as always

John

farss wrote on 7/14/2008, 6:50 AM
It seems to autorename the cards as 1, 2, 3 etc. I don't think I have to give it a specific name. Do you do that?

I haven't tried that as yet. But (from memory) there's a place to define the autonumbering stratergy. I'd personally always give them some sort of meaningfull prefix.

I tried dragging the clips to the preview window. It doesn't appear that you can drag them at all, not even one clip let alone several.

I'll have to get back to you on that. Need to put some clips on a card and see if I can fathom it out. Pretty certain I got it to do what you want once but as I had no real need to do so I wasn't paying attention.

So yours doesn't format either using Shotput Express? At least I know that I can keep shooting if I must use the camera.

What I've been using SPE for is when clients bring cameras back and they've left footage on the cards, we treat it a bit like someone's left a tape in a camera. We use SPE as a quick way to dump the cards onto a drive and keep it for a few weeks then delete it. I've always just used the camera to format the cards, just to make certain they're clean for the next user.

It'll be at least a few days before I can try again for you, sorry.
I'd suggest you try DVInfo's EX1 forum. I did a search there and the trail goes cold. It seems some people have found a way to get SPE to do what you want but never detailed exactly how, frustrating. My only hope would be to nut it out for you myself. I know I'll need to do it for myself one day but for the moment for long shoots I've been running the EX1 into my VCR as I know that works, sigh.

What I believe SPE can be made to do is:
Insert card, SPE dumps, compares and reformats card, beeps, card ready to go back into camera. Minimal eye off camera. How to get it to do that I haven't needed to figure out as yet, sorry.

Bob.




craftech wrote on 7/14/2008, 2:44 PM
Thanks again Bob.

And yes, I did research the DvInfo forum before I posted this. As you said, there are a lot of loose ends there in terms of answers to some perplexing problems, but it is none the less a valuable forum for the EX1.

John