recording to a laptop?
 

i know of DV RACK and the FIRESTORE but is there anyway i can hook up my canon xl1s to record directly to my laptop?
thanks,
mike

Michael,

if your laptop has a firewire connector and if you have a capturing software installed, there should be no problem to capture directly from your XL1 to the harddrive of the laptop. Having said that, the harddrive should be sufficiently fast to avoid dropped frames.

My laptop has a 7200 rpm harddrive and I've never had any problems capturing footage from my XL2.

adobe premiere?? will it capture when i press the record button on the camera? any other suggestions for software?

also i hate to add more, but what is the suggested length for a firewire cable from a camera to a laptop for recording purposes?

Michael,

Adobe Premiere or any other capture software (DV Rack is very nice) will do. However, you have to click on the record button in the preview window of Premiere. I don't think the hard disk recording will start simply by pressing the record button on the camera, but I never tried that.

Usually the longest firewire cable you'll get is 5m (about 15 feet). If you want more than that you will probably need some sort of repeater so you can connect two or more cables.

Without a tape?

i.e., you want to press the record button on the camcorder even if there isn't a tape and have it trigger the computer to start capturing?

no i will most likely always have a tape as backup so yes there will be a tape in the camera as well.

The camera will not trigger record on the computer whether there is a tape in the cam, or not. The only software that I'm aware of that will do that is DV Rack. But you can capture with your laptop by starting record in the preview window as another poster mentioned.

We are adding that capability to our DV processor. i.e., start capture when you press the camcorder's record button. Should be available in the next release (within a couple of weeks).

so I would just press record on camera then on the computer??

would that mess up the timecode?

if I were to delete the files premiere leaves them as an offline file in the project....if I went to re capture these would it not have the same timecode as the tape where I would be recapturing it from.

No. You would just press record on the camera. It will signal the software to start capturing. (It will also do the reverse - i.e., use the software to start the capture and have the camera go into record mode).

This is independent of Premiere, though.

John,

Do you have any idea on pricing when you get to the final release?
Also, when you implement the ability to start recording from the camera, will it be able to autoname files upon pause and restart?

well I tried it in premiere but when I press record on the camera it does not start recording on the computer...when I press record on the computer is does not record on the camera...i have to press the record on the computer and then on the camera to record to both laptop and tape. when I do this it is a few seconds apart so my question is about that and how the timecodes will be out of sync if I were to capture the footage from the tape, the actuall clips would be off because it was the time code of the laptop....

I hope that makes sense.

I really just want something that will record to my laptop when I press the record button on my camera...but I can't fork out $300 for dv rack

You and a lot of people (including me) want the same thing! Unfortunately, DV Rack is currently hte only software that does that. John's DV Processor sounds promising, depending on the price.

Not yet. We haven't decided on the licensing model and whether or not to offer different versions. Definitely less than DV Rack, though.

I will certainly add it to the list of features to consider - if you have specific recommendations/requirements, now is the time to be heard!

I'm a bit confused by that. Does that mean that you will capture once while recording to tape, do some editing with the captured version, delete the captured files and, at some later date, re-capture them for use in the same project?

I'd have to test it with Premiere (I have Pro 1.5). It should be able to re-capture and select the right portions of the tape based on the timecode from the first time around. It's really no different than a typical Premiere workflow - capture, create project, delete files to free up space, re-capture later when needed.