Contents of the SD card
 

I bought a small SD card reader today so I could read the contents of the SD card from the HD100.

The card mounts as a hard drive on my Mac with the name "NO NAME" and says there is 13.9Mb of space available, 224KB used. The format is "Macintosh PC Exchange (MS-DOS)," and there are only the 4 very very small scene files on the card:

EXT1.SCN
EXT2.SCN
EXT3.SCN
EXT4.SCN

I duplicated the scene files and renamed the 4 new ones EXT5.SCN, EXT6.SCN, etc., hoping I might unlock the "possible 8 scene files" someone mentioned in another post. It didn't work. After I put the card back in the camera I still only had the option to open the 4 external scene files.

I tried opening the scene files as text files in MS Word, but I just got a couple lines of garbage. I've zipped my 4 scene files, so maybe someone else can open them and decipher the contents.

http://homepage.mac.com/timdashwood/.../SCN_files.zip

Thanks Tim -- most interesting! Much appreciated,

Tim, I attempted to open up the files with notepad, no dice. It's not a text file. Instead is is a control language. If we could figure out what language their using we could download a parser and take a look at it. I don't think that is as important (to me) as if the scene files themselves can be placed on the card and exchanged between users and if the naming convention you've described is 'set in stone' for the camera to be able to recoginize the files.

What if you delete 3 of the 4 on the card. When you place the SD card in the camera does it show just the one left on the card? What if you rename the file to a friendly name. Does the camera recognize the scn file?

It seems that the sise of the card is not important, you can only use 4 scene files. Never thought about that, we can exchange the files... cool!!! By the way, Tim are those files the color adjustments you have been posting?

You think? I would just guess that after a few bytes of padding, it's a matter this byte at this offset is this parameter, the byte next to it is this parameter, etc etc. Not hard to reverse-engineer...just VERY time consuming given it's trial and error.

Hex Editor
 

Opened the files with a hex editor.
Since I don't have the camera, let alone the card, I couldn't try messing with the file, then saving and trying to open it in the camera.
Jon

Wouldn't it be cool if JVC could provide a little software tool to create and edit scene files with. You could have an unlimited number of scenefiles on your PC you can manage with it, you could enable any 4 at a time of course. SD card reader required of course.

You can always create them and store on your PC. Creating or editing on computer would be nice only if you could see the results, and for that you'll always need the camera. It would be cool, but not very usefull... i think!

I guess it's deliberate "crippleware" to limit the HD100 to 4 scene files. The card can hold 100's more. Perhaps if JVC perceive it as a sought after enough feature they could enable more scene files in a firmware update.

It really depends on what other products in their line they are "protecting".

I really don't see the feature as being that valuable in the buying decision or for that matter that impossible to work around (use multiple cards) that JVC might enable multiple scene files. Perhaps they thought 4 scene files was more than most DOP's could handle!

What if you delete 3 of the 4 on the card. When you place the SD card in the camera does it show just the one left on the card? What if you rename the file to a friendly name. Does the camera recognize the scn file?

It would be cool, and I'm guessing, no I'm certain it exists. Just don't see it coming to consumers of the product. Just for development....