Gy-hd251

[Derek Heeps]

I wrote a reply to this the other night , but it doesn't seem to have uploaded .

Anyway , I connected the DR-HD100 up to my GY-HD251 .

On my camera I have a V-Lok to PAG-Lok adaptor plate so that I can use my PAG L95 and L96 batteries to power it , one of these batteries will run the camera for several hours ; the plate also has a D-Tap and a power tap from which I can run either my Paglight or another device ; I used the concentric power tap to power originally my Firestore FS4-HD , and now the DR-HD100 . The power plate came with a bracket to hold the FS-4 on one side and I made up a bracket to hold a radio receiver on the other side .

With the DR-HD100 now connected up , both camera and recorder powered from the same plate , I use an Apple thin Firewire 6p-6p cable which does not put any mechanical strain on the connectors , and by connecting up before I attach the battery , there should be no risk of electrical damage when connecting .

I powered the recorder on first before powering on the camera and both devices came on as expected .

I intitially tried recording tapeless ( selecting JVC in the options ) and with file type selected as Quicktime ; alas whenever I pressed the trigger the recorder would flash red for a moment and then drop back to standby . I recalled using m2T previously with the FS4 , so I tried that and while I needed two presses of the button , it then started recording , with timecode readings moving , and after stopping , getting the 'wait' message while it saved to disc ; much as I remember with the FS4 , and indeed as the FS4 works with my Sony cameras in QT mode .

I still need to experiment further with the sync and file type settings ; I'd ideally like to record natively into Quicktime as that is native and drops straight into Final Cut , but I can use Edit Ready to convert m2T files to QT if needed , it doesn't take long .

Once recording is done , it is easy enough to turn both devices off and remove the battery before carefully disconnecting - so risk to the Firewire connector and board should be minimal .

With the recorder working , there will never be any need to connect the camcorder to my computer , so little risk of damaging the Firewire output , and even when I recorded to tape , I have my BR-HD50 deck to play tapes into the computer , although , as acquired , the Firewire output of the deck never worked and I use either the HDMI output or the component outputs into my Matrox MXO2 box to capture from it - just not as seamless as capturing from Firewire .

I will report back once I have determined the optimal settings ; one thing I'm keen to experiment with is whether the recorder is capable of recording 1080i output when the camera is set to that mode ; I know the tape side of the camcorder can only record 720p , but not sure if the Firewire port can output 1080 ? I know that with my Sony cameras the Firestores can record 1080 , so it is just a question of whether the JVC can output this when the camera is set to 1080 .

[Derek Heeps]

I know there hasn't been much activity here for a while , but I have a few updates .

First of all , I retired at the end of August , so going forward will have much more time to potter about with things and looking to rationalise my collection of 'stuff' . The last year leading up to my retirement was just a blur trying to finish off so many projects , document and hand stuff over to others before I went - so I hardly had time to think about my own things .

A year or more back , I picked up a second GY-HD251 body in very nice and fully functional condition , and since I still had the Fujinon lens from my other one ( after buying the Canon lens ) I fitted that . Alas I got only the camera body , so still watching out for a viewfinder , but in the meantime I can use the LCD screen , or my small SWIT LCD monitor which is somewhere around a six or seven inch screen .

Because I now have the two JVC's which are nice and portable compared to my larger PDW-F350s , of which I just bought a third , which has landed in the UK but not yet been delivered , mainly because it came with the same Canon wide angle HD lens as my ex work one has , I now have two 'proper' ENG cameras with 4 track audio and slot in Sennheiser 3000 series receivers for the two of them , the two JVCs which are lighter and more portable , the two Sony Z7s , my Sony V1e and an A1e ; I plan to keep the two Sony PDW-F350 cameras ( plus one for spare parts ) and the two JVCs , give the two Z7s away to the daughter of a friend , and keep the V1e and the little A1e because it is still a handy thing to have a couple of compact cameras , both of which happen to still work with the Firestore FS4 HDs . I also have quite a few sets of the basic Evolution Wireless sets , some of which I will keep and most of which I will get rid , most are on the old UK licence exempt frequencies , which are still legal but close to mobile phone frequencies so not so good for use in city centres etc , but you can often get away with using them in rural locations . The ones I'm keeping for myself are all on the 'new' licence exempt frequencies .

Also , just within the last few weeks , I picked up a second Canon 1/3" lens for my second GY-HD 251 and a second BR-HD100 hard disc recorder , so other than the VF , I have two complete GY-HG251s with Canon lenses and external recorders . There is another body for sale just now , with viewfinder but no lens , at a low price and I'm tempted to buy it just to get the VF , then put my Fuji lens on it and flip it back onto eBay without the finder as there seem to be at least a couple of others for sale minus viewfinders and I'd likely get , with the Fuji lens included lens at least what I paid for just the the body plus finder ...

While I have had the BR-HD50 deck for a while , the firewire on that deck never worked since I got it , and I also just picked up another one this week , but made a point of ensuring the FW was working before I bought it . I also picked up a 3 way FW400 PCIe card for my older Mac Pro which I capture into and now have my two HDV decks ( Sony and JVC ) plugged in along with my XDCAM deck with no need to disturb any of the connections going forward and I can either capture straight in to FCP , or transfer files from the XDCAM in FAM mode all onto that machine . I will still make sure to only have one deck powered up at any given time .

Because that older Mac Pro was from 2008 , it was getting a bit long in the tooth , and I'd fancied getting one of the newer Mac Pro towers , but when I went along to the Apple Store I found the most recent ones were discontinued back in March . Phoned round most resellers in the UK , no one had any unsold ones left , and the Mac Studio models which are the best ones currently on offer don't have much room for expansion cards , nor do you seem to be able to add RAM if you don't order it with the machines .

Looking for a used Mac Pro with the 'silicon' chips there just don't seem to be any for sale anywhere , so after a bit of shopping around I picked up one of the last Intel Mac Pro towers , of the range which came out in 2019 , and got a top of range 28 core machine , with 768Gb of RAM and , for now , only 4Tb internal storage , but there is some scope to add additional storage later ; that was about as future proof as I could go , still with plenty of room for expansion cards , and it runs OS 26 Tahoe , so a lot more up to date than my older machine on El Capitan .

While I can still edit on the old Mac Pro , or my 2009 MBP using FCP7 , I downloaded the trial version of FCP12 onto my 'new' Mac Pro and really need to sit down and get my head round it . While I currently have to capture onto the 'old' Mac Pro as the new one no longer supports Firewire , nor does the new machine seem to talk to the Matrox , although I initially installed the PCIe card but it just didn't work , that may be a software issue which I still need to look further into . I also upstairs have two more 'cheesegrater' Mac Pro machines from around 2006-2008 which are basically worthless , but I will need to erase the discs and see if anyone wants the machines - both probably do still have an old , perpetual Adobe CS on them plus an old FCP or FCE on them , so even if I can wipe all personal data off them and create a new admin account on each , they might do a student as a free computer .

I've not even had the 2019 machine a month yet , and busy with so many things , all my machines are networked via Gigabit ethernet , so it isn't a huge issue to capture onto one machine then pull everything across the network onto the other one .

I'm not upgrading storage devices just now as the cost is currently ridiculous - I have ordered a Thunderbolt 3 to TB2 adaptor , and already have a TB2 - FW800 adaptor to see if I can connect my FW-800 G-RAID devices to the new computer , but I'm led to believe it is no longer supported by recent OS and FW support was dropped somewhere back around OS15 , but the adaptor was less than £5 so worth trying . The G-Drive and G-RAID devices all have USB , so I could just buy a couple of big USB hubs and connect them that way , but there are around 25 of them and these old enclosures , at best will only support USB2 , plus they are all old spinning disc drives and while I have redundancy in everything they won't last forever !

Hopefully I will get all of this tech sorted out over the winter and then come spring can get out with my son to start filming some motorsport , steam trains and airshows etc , which both of us like to go to , and if I get the time I will get back into some of my photography as well - but that is a whole other story !

If I wasn't messing around with all this stuff , and cars when it isn't too cold outside , I'd just be drinking too much whisky !