Need sagely advice

[Rhonda Halden]

Here’s the dilemma.

I’ve got an emac with 80 Gb internal drive (2mb cache)

Up until recently I fancied the Optura40(Mvx25i pal) but have been scared off by posts about canon’s not capturing to external hard drives - I had planned to use a large external firewire drive for capture.

Capturing to the internal system drive I imagine might be problematic - apart from having hassle of transfering stuff to external drive after capture - I thought that 2mb cache might cause problems with read/write of large video files - dropped frames for instance. And of course I imagine it could mean my system drive will likely be fragmented a lot of the time.

I could go with Sony HC85 which i also like look of - though it’s a bit dearer and I miss out on all that great manual control.

Would anyone like to give an opinion about whether it is really practical for me to go with the Canon given my setup? I live in hope but otherwise would like to finally knock the idea on the head if it’s likely to be a problem.

with thanks

[Tommy Haupfear]

Rhonda, this is the first I've heard of Canon cams having difficulty capturing to external hard drives. Was it a particular external HD? What connection was used USB 1.1, USB 2.0, or Firewire (IEEE1394)? To me that would seem to be more of an individual setup problem and not related to Canon cams in particular.

As for your hard drive, a 80GB 7200RPM with a 2MB cache will be plenty for capturing although it is better to have both a primary hard drive and secondary hard drive for capturing/editing (better but not required).

[Rhonda Halden]

Thanks for response

I've picked up posts involving problems with XL1 (Simon Plissi - Non-Linear DV Editing on Mac forum) on this site - and optura20 over at SimplyDv (author Phil Tanny). There is at least one reply suggesting Canon ZR-50.

There's a note over at apple support(though admitedly in relation to iMovie2)- so it could be irrelant now.

Can't import or export to FireWire disks with Canon camcorder

"If you are using a Canon DV camcorder, you will not be able to import or export directly to a FireWire disk. Instead, import or export to your internal disk and copy to the FireWire disk later".

Maybe this is not an issue with latest generation Canons - I dont know - would be nice from my pov to hear from optura40 owners who do capture to a firewire disk with their macs.

R

[Kevin A. Sturges]

Since my dedicated video editing computer fried on me a few months ago, I have been using my Toshiba notebook in it's place. I use a plugin card on the side that gives me two firewire ports. I picked up a firewire box kit at CompUSA (ADA brand?) that I can swap different full sized hardrives with.

In Vegas Video's Capture utility, you just have to designate which drive it is capturing your DV files to. I have also used the same setup to write my files back into the camera.

Works perfect everytime. No dropouts.

[Dave Perry]

Rhonda,

Your eMac will be a great setup with a Canon. I have a G3 iBook that I edit with and have used 3 different Canons and 2 different external HDs with only a minor problem. The problem occured when I added an external DVD burner to the mix. All I had to do was experiment with the order in which they are connected to the FW port and I fixed it.

The current line of Opturas are great cameras. I have and prefer the XI and have gotten great results with it and my Mac at home and the G5 Mac at work.

"If you are using a Canon DV camcorder, you will not be able to import or export directly to a FireWire disk. Instead, import or export to your internal disk and copy to the FireWire disk later". -- This statement is just flat out incorrect.

[Kevin A. Sturges]

I forgot to say with my notebook setup, I am using the Canon Optura Xi camcorder.