Suggestions on "in the field" Transfer HDV tapes from HD110 to ext firewire hardrive?
 

I am leaving next week to shoot a documentary in Eastern Europe. I want to off load the tapes to an external firewire hard drive after each day of shooting as a backup. We are doing this for security reasons. What would be the easiest way of doing this? Could I use a laptop with a simple capture program? I plan to hand carry the HD back to the states and FEDEX the tapes back to the USA. This is being done because where we are going is still a little like the wild west. Our tapes could possibly be confiscated by customs officials. We are planning for all scenarios concerning 3 weeks of footage. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

I'd have to go with the laptop capture because that's least expensive. There are a few solutions like the Datavideo hard drive recorders, but that would be more expensive than simply using a laptop you'd probably already have with you anyway.

I think you are right Chris. We are going to take the laptop route with an external 1.5TB USB drive attached. That should give us enough storage. I am still deciding what to use to capture the video. I do have Adobe on location and will try that first. We just want to use a simple capture program, because we will be sharing daily capture duties with some non editing type people on our crew.

I have used hdvsplit. Works well with 30p, I have had issues with 24p.

HDVSplit utility for HDV capturing with scene split - HDV capture utility

For PC based systems very lightweight and saves files as .m2t

Tom. The DR-HD100 or MR-HD100 are the best solutions for what you are describing. Why risk dropouts on the tape in harsh conditions when you can be running the instant hard drive backup while you shoot. The hard drive can also record from the camera during playback of the tape without the need for a laptop.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. HDV split looks interesting. I'll download it and take a look Tup. I am using 24P. What issues did you have?

Tim your suggestion is the proper way to go. Unfortunately the budget won't allow to buy the HD solution right now. So am trying to come up with the next best solution with equipment that we already own. We have a laptop and a USB 1.5TB external drive. I hope this works out for us. It makes me a bit nervous...

I had issues with how it records the 24p (cadence). It thinks it's 60i and premiere and After Effects CS2 had issues with it. You should test it out with your system or go 30p as it works well.

Scene splitting doesn't work in HDVsplit for JVC and the file naming prior to capture is quirky, but you'll figure that out.

Also, I found manually capturing in 10 minute intervals works the best as the file sizes get huge when capturing full 63 minute tapes.