No analog-digital passthrough on HC-1?
 

Why, Sony, why? It's the perfect camcorder except for that one little thing. Am I missing something? I'm pretty sure the manual said something about it not being possible, but maybe I read something wrong. I tried hooking everything up but it looks like the AV port is an output only. Can somebody confirm that this has been left out?

You are correct. It's an output only.

That $1400 pricetag for the HC1 is the minimum entrance fee for HDV resolution period. If you want anything else useful beyond that, then the price more than doubles to an FX1. Thus we come to realize the true consumerish nature of these little cams. Therefore, it's not something that has been "left out", but rather something that was never designed to be "in" the first place.

What I am saying is that just because a comparable miniDV product may have all these bells and whistles, doesn't give license for those features to be included on the HC1. What makes the HC1 better than those feature packed miniDV cams is the resolution. That's it, nothing else. It's a first generation HDV camera of it's kind.

Ok so it's an extra $200, but easily solved:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...ist&sku=349146

Cheaper still:

http://www.videoguys.com/pyroAVlink.html

Well, there's the HC3 which is same 1080i HDV res, and it's less than $1200 at B&H:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...=423689&is=REG

I know. However, I was referring to the HC1 itself.

Do you just want to use the pass-thru to get analog video to your PC or is the camcorder/firewire an integral part of what you're trying to do?

I just wanted the passthrough. Looks like I'll have to pick up the Pyro then.

re
 

What kind of "video" you want to convert to analogog to digital?, because there are many cards in the market, many of them ver cheap, taht can make this kind of work.

Alex, I was thinking of the same thing. Most of the cheaper units use USB or a proprietary card like my Studio Plus 700-PCI version 10.5.

Is firewire a must for the transfer?

Firewire is a must for I/O and this is true of essentially anyone. I'd be surprised if the HC1 is different than the HC3 and A1 in that regard, and the A1 does allow analog monitoring of a Firewire input.

Douglas, we were talking about a 3rd party device without using a camcorder at all to transfer analog video to your PC. Definitely firewire is the preferred method of transfer with digital video.

I understand. But in reading the thread, I didn't understand you were looking for analog input for pass-thru-only, I thought the discussion was also including preview/capture. Apologies.

Canon now has a HDV cam with analog-digital passthru.

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/co...4059&pageno=11

That's a month away, but it looks very interesting. It also has optical image stabilization. And a full one year warranty.