reread
 

michaels post, ok it is battery operated but will you need a p2 card? Im hoping to skip this alltogether. Somehow the option of shooting only 8 minute clips doesnt appeal to me

Charles,

A few things you should keep in mind about whether not to use P2:

- You cannot do any over/under crank shooting out Firewire, regardless of which device you're using.
- Although there is an intermediate step to use a USB 2.0 interface to things like the Wolverine (something I have not tested) there are reasons why all the external drives like nNovia and Firestore are using the Firewire connection for capture, one of them being data stability.
- You cannot shoot directly to an external "dumb" drive, you can only transfer clips from P2 to it. Only devices that have controller software built-in such as the Firestore have the ability to act as a direct capture device.
- You do not need any P2 cards to send footage out through Firewire; the data is always flowing from that port.

Not strictly true though -- if you capture the live firewire stream on a Mac, it will store it exactly as it would have been stored on the P2 card if you'd shot in 720/24pN mode. So it will capture and record the overcrank/undercrank, at least on a Mac. It remains to be seen if the Firestore or other devices will have the onboard processing to handle that.

A bit of clarification though -- just remember that when shooting 720pN modes, no data flows through the firewire port (including timecode). This is just a clarification for those who may at some point try it and scratch their heads wondering "why isn't it streaming?" You use 720/24P mode, or 720/30P mode, if you need firewire streaming; the 720/24pN mode and the 720/30pN mode don't offer streaming.

Thanks for clearing that up Barry. I don't think we tested all the FW output modes before we got P2 cards in hand.

iPod 60GB not working now
 

I'm having trouble working the iPod 60GB with HVX and iPod not being able to initialize back to factory default. Without my iPod working, it is very hard to justify HVX with only two 4GB P2 cards.

If I read the one message correctly, one suggests that with the iPod config (using the Bella Catapult?) that you can't overcrank or undercrank? I think perhaps that they might or might not be available, but as for the rest...

I read through Bella's website: "Time Lapse Recording
The completely configurable Time Lapse feature allows the recording of frames of video at specific intervals. For example, recording only a few frames per minute would show a flower blooming, while a longer duration could be used to document building at a construction site.

"Remote Trigger Allows More Freedom
The Catapult offers Remote Trigger Recording, which allows either a remote switch or a motion detector to trigger recording on the Catapult. This can be particularly useful in recording nature and wildlife events, and also for surveillance operations.

"Pre & Post Record
Pre-record and Post-record settings are two of the most exciting features of Catapult. With the Pre-record setting, users can set Catapult to begin recording for a preset amount of time prior to actually hitting the “record” button on the camera. This is feature is great for use with live action, such as sporting events allowing you to capture that winning point every time.

"The Post-record setting is useful when used in conjunction with a remote trigger, such as a motion detector. For example, to record hummingbirds visiting a feeder, the motion sensor would prompt the Catapult to begin recording, and the Post-record feature would allow recording to continue for a pre-determined amount of time."

They're at bella-usa.com. I'd actually be interested in trying something like this. I have a 30gb 3rd gen iPod, the one thing one might consider is swapping units out as one iPod fills or gets tired, then try recharging (as long as you aren\'t SOL on the AC plug.

What\'s up with the fear factor? Who says that either of these other hard drive companies won\'t be crap with support, especially as time goes on? Any piece of equipment will some day crap out on you, I know this. But for me, and I work for a corp that depends on not losing stuff... I would still take a chance on this Bella unit and see what its limits are before shooting live work in the field. If it works, great. If not, sell it "as-is" with full disclosure on eBay and you still have an iPod to fill with music or video.