As a brand new XHA1 user and beginning videographer. I got a lot from the VASST video and feel it was worth the price.

The Berube brothers segment was pretty useless unless you haven't even looked at the manual. They seem to just be winging it.

Doug's section was structured much better. His explanations were more coherent and very understandable. I wish he had gone a little more in depth, but he did cover a wide range of topics.

A workshop might have been better, but they just had one here last month, so the next will be a few months off.

Mine was yesterday.

My daughter's theater class was having their finals yesterday. I told the teacher last week that I would love to record all the performances and she said she would love that too.

I ordered a ZR-1000 remote and played with it a couple of days ago. I was a little disappointed that all the buttons don't work on the A-1, but I thought it was good enough. Note: I did not try it in the actual way I would use it on the tripod, but just by plugging into the camera.

I get to the theater classroom 20 minutes early to set up: I set up my tripod and camera and started to attach the ZR-1000. The screws are too short, way to short so I cannot mount it to my 501HDV's arm. The cable is way to short to do anything else with it. I put it away.

I put my Rode NTG-2 on a mic stand and run 20 feet of XLR cable to my camera. Plugged in my B&O headphones. Set everything on the camera to manual including the audio. During the rehearsals I was able to set a good level looking the meters and monitoring.

I was all set. The teacher called 4 minutes to show and I turned around and stepped on the very long cable to my headset and it yanked it out of the camera. I said "Oh S..t".

I plugged them back in and nothing, no sound at all. I giggled them a little and a piece of green plastic fell out. The teacher yelled "1 minute" and I panicked. Since I could not monitor it anymore, I set the audio to auto and hoped.

Everything else worked out and when I checked the video at home the sound seems fine and the video is beautiful.

So my camera is at Canon. I called them right away and got a repair number, packed it up and shipped it. Irvine is 60 miles away, 1 day UPS ground service. I told Canon the truth and the guy thinks they will fix it for free. We will see.

I also sent the ZR-1000 back to Amazon and am thinking about the ZR-2000 which has controls that really work with the A1, but it is $400.

BTW - I've signed up for a 3 day hands on Final Cut Pro 6 class in late July. I hope to learn a lot from that.

All in all my first real experience shooting manual (except for focus) went pretty well.

I guess cable management is something to think about too.

That's a great (but sad) story Howard. Sorry to hear about the luck. You should submit it to one of the magazines like VideoMaker magazine or something. VideoMaker has a column just for such nightmare stories. I am sure they would print that.

Stacy