Miscellaneous questions...
 

I have a couple of questions. Hope someone can help me.

1. Where can I buy an additional battery for the HD1? How much should it cost?

2. With DV recorders, footage can be captured through a firewire connection and the camera can be controlled through other software. So other programs can interact with the camera through the firewire connection, starting and stopping the play/capture. How is this accomplised with the HD1?

Thanks,

Kenny Frank

Amazon will be selling batteries in about two weeks. You can also buy them now on eBay, shipped from Hong Kong. I bought one of those and ordered another from Amazon. For what it's worth, I shot almost an entire 4gb card worth of footage today on just one battery.

One of the beauties of shooting on SD cards is that you don't have to capture the footage. You can connect the dock to the computer by USB 2.0 and just copy the files over, or take the card out and put it in a card reader.

Thanks, Peter. What did you search for on eBay to find the batteries?

Fortunately, my computer has a built-in SD card reader slot, so I can just stick it in the computer. Also one of the formats my digital still camera uses is SD so they will be useful for both. I just ordered 2 A-Data 150X 4gb cards from ZipZoomFly at $109 each.

Let me ask one more question. With DV cameras, the camera could be controlled by a computer via firewire, e.g. start, stop, etc., enabling footage to be played or captured through other software programs. Since the HD1 doesn't have a firewire connection, is the same thing possible via USB?

Thanks,

Kenny

You can search on "Sanyo Battery HD1". The camera has USB and a remote control -- more I can't tell you.

I order a pair of batteries from Ebay/Hong Kong too. They took 2-3 weeks to arrive, but seem to work okay. They claim to have a slightly higher capacity than the Sanyo battery, but I haven't tried a comparison test.

Peter, Good to hear you can get nearly 4GB out of a battery. I always spend way to much time playing with configuration menus and doing a little playback between recordings to get that kind of mileage. I should've ordered four extra batteries instead of only the pair to match my 10 GB total SD flash capacity. One battery / 2 GB is about right for me--at least until I learn the camera better!

Sanyo and Firewire
 

Hi Kenny-

in DV cameras, the Firewire interface also serves to control the tape mechanism in order to rewind, stop or play back footage.

The Sanyo, using SD cards, does not need this feature. You can switch the camera into Card-Reader mode, connect it via the special USB cable and the SD card inside the camera will show up as a removable drive on your computer...so you can just copy it to your hard drive. Those files cna then be imported into your preferred video editor. A selective capturing as with DV is not possible.

By the way and for what it's worth - Sanyo HK has a promotion right now:

Buy the HD1 and get a spare battery and a Sandisk 2GB Ultra SD card free.
Have to claim the freebies in person, though.

Thanks, Daniel.

The reason I asked about the firewire control is because some programs, like athletic analysis programs, interact with the camera to display footage, etc. It is a little bit of a hassle to constantly take the card out of the camera or copy the clip each time before you can do that.... Can you use the remote to switch to card reader mode?

Kenny

Rebate problems with Transcend.
 

On 3/17/2006 I ordered 2 Transcend 150X 4gb cards from ZipZoomFly. So far, everything has worked except my promised $60 Mail-In Rebate from Transcend.

I received an email today saying that my rebate was rejected because they "did not receive a sales receipt with my request."

Buyers should beware of Transcends rebate offers!