My input
 

I purchased two of the units to go along with both of my XH-A1 cameras. One camera, no problems, love it, works as expected. Other camera... the device saw the camera as a computer.

So.. I sent the camera into Canon for repair (for a couple other things as well). They replaced the "D/V Terminal". Upon receiving the camera back I still experience the problem but less often. BUT..... after some testing, if I turn the power dial to "Off" and then back to "M" mode, the unit and the camera sync up. I have been doing this test for a week now maybe 4-5 times a day. It has NOT only worked once.

So in conclusion, I have no idea what is causing the problem but I like the tapeless work flow to much to give up on the units.

Camera age (approx from date of purchase): March 2008
Camera serial number (to see if they all group together, etc): 572522300049
Have you tested your mrc1k with another xha1? results? serial of that unit?: Yes - works flawlessly - damn close 572522300078
How often in your experience does the mrc1k work?: before repair 10% - after repair 50% - with "power dial fix" 99%
Is your issue that it intermittently sees the camera as a computer? : yes

Miguel & Brian, thanks for your replies! Brian, your "fix" definitely sounds hopeful for the small subset of people who are having problems with this unit... I'd love to see if it "fixes" the problem for anybody else. Also, what _exactly_ did you tell Canon, in order to force them to replace the DV port? Cheers,

-joe

Camera age (approx from date of purchase): December 2008 from B&H
Camera serial number (to see if they all group together, etc): 572512300988 VK
Have you tested your mrc1k with another xha1? No results? It works fine with my XL1s
How often in your experience does the mrc1k work?: 0% of the time
Is your issue that it intermittently sees the camera as a computer? : Hard failure. Happens every time.

After changing the Firewire cable from the wimpy but convenient retractable one to a hefty 3ft one, the Sony unit works fine reliably when DV Control on the A1 was off.

I think there's value in following the Sony process of:
Power on MRC1
Connect Firewire
Power on Camera
Followed by the DVInfo process of turning the A1 dial to off and then M if needed

Also, not having System Setup -> DV Control On means the only mode I could get to work was Normal/Follow. Cache would not work.

With DV Control turned on on both my A1 and XL1s, I can move the device seamlessly between them using Cache/Synchro and retractable FW cable.

does this unit require an external power source? Do i need to purchase an additional battery or something?

Hi Scott. You need to buy a Sony camcorder battery for it. One of the big ones will last for ages, but you will feel the weight on your wrist if you are shooting hand-held.

Richard

I use an NP-570 which is small and light but my shoots are only a couple hours. YMMV

From the manual:
Battery pack Operating time (Operating time from full charge from normal charge)
NP-F570 Approx. 420 minutes (Approx. 380 minutes)
NP-F770 Approx. 870 minutes (Approx. 780 minutes)
NP-F970 Approx. 1,320 minutes (Approx. 1,180 minutes)

Notes:
•This unit can be used with an “InfoLITHIUM” battery pack (L-series), but does not support the battery info function.
•This unit cannot be used to charge the battery pack installed.


Oh, and when you have it connected to your computer, it is powered from the computer.

Just a followup to say I used this in a 2 hour shoot today with about 20 minutes of shooting time but was powered on all the time. Plus it had probably at least another 30 minutes of use doing trial and error settings experiments. WHen I put the battery in a camcorder, it showed half full. FYI

thanks for the info

also how much footage will a 16gb card hold in hdv? I am planning on purchasing 2 of these units with 16gb cards for wedding shoots

Hi Scott,

I use the Sony with my XH A1 and XL H1a. I've got three NP-F570 equivalent batteries (Lenmar's). I'd really recommend going with a couple of 570's for each camera and getting a quick charger. You'll be able to change batteries when one runs low, and keep shooting while the other one is charging. I've gotten about 8 hours of "on" time for the unit with my 570.

A 16GB card will give you 74 minutes of recording. I've got 4 16GB cards and when I shoot I take my laptop that has a PC Express CF reader. I can download 16GB from a CF card in about 5 minutes. It would be nice to have a 32 GB card as some of the acts in the shows I video go over 1 1/2 hours.

You've probably already gone through all the posts and read all of the different things about the unit but just in case a couple of things to touch on:

Always format the CF using the Sony Unit
Download and use the free Sony software to rebuild long scenes (if your scene goes over about 20minutes it will be broken into 4GB files as the unit is FAT32 limited)


Garrett

I told them the symptoms and that I had done all of the trouble shooting steps necessary to narrow it down to the camera (different cable, different units, both units on another camera which work perfectly). They actually called during the repair and said, "The FW port seems to be functioning properly." I explained all of the above again and insisted "It has to be this camera, if not the FW port something else internally." They replaced it but as stated in my previous post, I am still having the problem intermittently. I had a shoot this weekend and the "turning the dial to off and back to M" trick worked everything.

I told them the symptoms and that I had done all of the trouble shooting steps necessary to narrow it down to the camera (different cable, different units, both units on another camera which work perfectly). They actually called during the repair and said, "The FW port seems to be functioning properly." I explained all of the above again and insisted "It has to be this camera, if not the FW port something else internally." They replaced it but as stated in my previous post, I am still having the problem intermittently. I had a shoot this weekend and the "turning the dial to off and back to M" trick worked everything.

Does anyone know in what particular order you need to turn on the camera or the HVR-MRC1K? I guess that the principle is more or less the same as attaching the camera to the computer? I"m just a bit worried about frying my firewireport on the camera
So, first plugin the firewire into the HVR-MRC1K
then connect the firewire cable to the camera
turn on the camera
turn on the HVR-MRC1K
Does it make any difference to first turn on the HVR-MRC1K or the camera?

No. You have the wrong order. It's in the manual. Look up. Post 363.
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/1030815-post363.html

Normally I leave the firewire cable connected to the MRC1 all the time, even when I pack it away. Apart from that, I use the same sequence as suggested by Noa. So far no problems (OK, I don't have much experience, only used it for 5 shoots).

Richard

The only thing I could find back in the manual was that when you attach it to a computer you first need to insert the firwirecable in the computer but I couldn't find any connection procedure for the camera, on which page in the manual did you see this?

I wonder if the power output from the HVR-MRC1K could damage the firewire port from the camera? when connected to a pc I could understand as it's has a 220v connection.

Page 11 in my manual has a section titled "Recording images from the camcorder to this unit". It's not intuitive that it would be in there but it gives a step by step.

I abbreviated it and added some more steps based on my experimentation that resulted in a reliable connection that worked with the A1.

The critical thing (in terms of getting the two devices talking) from my experiments was to power on the MRC1 BEFORE being a connected to a camera. It always came on and I could set the various modes I wanted. Then I connected the Firewire from the camera to the MRC1. Then I powered on the camera. It the camera power-on caused the MRC1 to go into computer mode, I went into the menu and selected HDV (if memory serves) and then it behaved itself.

Just change your setting to FOLLOW when using the HV-10 and you are in business. Works for me.

I tested my MRC1K with my friend's PD150 and it worked fine as long as Follow was selected.

Richard

Positive experiences with the MRC1k using the XH-A1
 

Hi there,
Reading so many negative posts about this combination I thought it would be nice to put my experiences here aswell, which are quite positive.

Received the MRC1K yesterday afternoon with 2 NP-F570 batteries and 2 Traxdata 32GB 233x cards (nice price, great performance).
Immediatly charged the two batteries and took everything with me (still in the box!) on a job to film a party that evening. After setting up the camera's I hooked the MRC1k on the XH-A1 (which we used on a tripod).

I took the known steps:
- XH-A1: turn DVControl ON
- Connect the MRC1K (with CF-card) and turn it on
- MRC1K: choose SYNCHRO

Everything worked immediately and for the whole evening (about 4 hours).
Things to whatch out for (at least for us). When the camera goes into standy mode and you start it again using the camera's rec button, the MRC1k will not start recording. So turn it back on using the standby button, wait, start recording using the camera's rec button again.

Performance of the Traxdata CF-cards are above expectation (considering the price, not the printed 233x speed). These cards are cheaper here in Europe than the Traxdata 32GB 133x, but write 1,5x till 2x as fast and read 3x till 4x as fast (benchmarking them).

Practical speed: 2 hours of m2t material took 15 minutes to transfer to my laptop.

Serialno. of my XH-A1: 574502300897 (bought in november 2007 in The Netherlands)

Another info from european Canon A1 models:

MRC1 works fine with serial 574452200223 (sold in Germany June 2007)
MRC1 doesn't work with serial 574432200656 (sold in Germany April 2007)

I once had success with switching the ...656 Cam in SD mode and then returning to HD mode: both resolutions worked with the MRC1. But next time it failed again (= Cam was recognized as PC)

Greetings
Burkhard

I purchased from Full Compass about a month ago. It was backordered, but it finally came in today.

I didn't even look at the manual, but remembered settings from this thread. After about 15 mins of playing with the unit, I got it working great in both normal and cache settings. Playback works great too! Tried different combination of turning the unit and the camera off/on and everything worked great!

My serial: 572322102997
Purchased...wow, um say March of 07. This is a US model.

I guess, now I can sell my Firestore FS-C! Also, there are some deals on SanDisk Extreme III 32gb cards if you don't mind waiting a month or two for a rebate.

I just ordered one from DABS for £101 a couple of days ago - now just waiting for them to actually receive stocks.

Anyone using this with CS4. I am loving the speed of capturing my clips, but they don't seem to keept the original time code from the camera. Is there a setting I am missing. Either in Premiere or on the recorder itself?

Thanks all
Chris

Sjoerd, can you tell me where you bought the MRC1 and at what price?

Are you recording on tape at the same time? If so, the timecode on the MRC clips should match the timecode on the tape. If you are using cache mode, that won't happen. If you are recording occasionally on just the MRC then again the timecode may go haywire. These are the only explanations I've managed to come up with so far.

My time code problem seems to be every clip starts it time code @ 0:00:00:00 so there is now way I reference back. I was hoping it would be able to keep going. Maybe it is a problem I have with CS4 will check it over the next couple of days. Cheers

MRC1 and lanc control
 

For the most part, I've used the MRC1 as a remote control in terms of switching recording on and off - recording just to the card and not to tape. If I mount the unit on the camera or tripod, I get camera movement when I switch the unit on - rather annoying when using the cache mode and it leaves a distinct wobble in the footage.

If I use a lanc controller, the camera records to both tape and the MRC1. The disadvantage of this is that I often get the noise of the tape motor - really noticeable now that I've been recording onto card without this background noise. I don't always have the time to set up an external mic - wildlife isn't always inclined to hang around waiting for the cameraman to get set up!

So, is there a way of being able to control the camera with the lanc, but not recording to tape? If there isn't a tape in the deck, it doesn't record at all.

The simple solution is to use a dedicated sound recorder, together with a decent microphone. There are many solid state recorders available from Tascam, Sony, Marantz, Edirol etc. Team it up with a Rode NTG2 and you will never look back.

ps I use the Sony PCM-D50 together with the Rode NTG 2 and the combination is superb

Sony PCM-D50

Ah, but you don't know the recording conditions!

1) I am out for a walk with the camera. I see some wildlife that I may be able to record.

2) I set up the camera on a tripod, and record something to tape because I don't know if the wildlife will hang around.

3) I connect the MRC1, set on cache mode, so that I can turn the tape off, and if the wildlife does something interesting, I can record what I've missed thanks to the cache. The clips on the card are also more easily managed once I get back to the computer, so I don't feel the need to keep recording on tape, unless I want to make sure I have a back-up.

4) Meanwhile I'm also looking to see if there is a better viewpoint, and if so I clip to MRC1 to the tripod, and move the whole unit.

5) whether or not 4 has happened, I then start to get an external microphone set up.

I prefer not to touch the camera while recording, so use the lanc for focussing and zooming - but zooming this way is noisy, and records on the tape/card, even with the external mic. Or perhaps it's just noisy because I've got used to not having any camera sound if I can avoid it.

I do have an edirol R-09 HR, which I use mainly for voice notes, and a budget sennheiser microphone which I attach to the camera when possible. And a hot shoe shock mount is on my list of things to buy.

But I'm still after an answer to the question of whether or not it's possible to record onto the MRC1 without recording to tape when using just the lanc.

Surely pressing the start button will only last for a matter of a few frames, that can be removed easily in any NLE application.

If sound is that important to your production, then a good off camera external shotgun microphone would be the ideal answer. Your Edirol recorder is an excellent unit which is capable of much higher quality recordings than the Canon built in mike.

Put the Rode NTG2 on your Christmas wish list.

If the wobble is at the start of the shot, it should be easy enough to trim it off. The problem is that in cache mode, the wobble could happen after the shot has become interesting, and it would look strange to chop out a section at an important moment.

Richard

Yep, that sums it up nicely.

How to check your firmware
 

I just got this from Sony on how to check the firmware on your HVR MRC1K. Im going to post it up here just incase someone need it

1. Turn the Recorder off
2. Turn the Recorder on
3. wait untill the "welcome" show up in black
4. Untill you see a "welcome backlight" turned on hold the "stop" and the 2 "rec" button you will see your firmware. My firmware is 01. According to Sony tech this is not the latest. So i'm goint to send it in to update mine and will let you know what going on. My recorder freez a couple time that why i need to send it in and also update the firmware.

Thanh
You are not very clear here. Do you mean to press the "stop" and the "rec" button together before the "welcome backlight" is turned on?

Stelios

I think he means press stop and record when the welcome message appears. (i.e. wait until welcome appears, then press stop and record).

Richard

It doesn't work for me. I can't get it to see the firmware

Stelios

Got it to work. Older version. Now what?

Do you press stop and record together (at the same time)? Maybe it doesn't work with the new version.

Stelios

Hi Stelios. I just tested this for myself and it works, but the procedure wasn't so clear. This is how to do it:

1. Set the power switch to ON.
2. You will see Welcome without backlight. Just wait.
3. When the Welcome text backlight turns on, press and hold Stop and the 2 Rec buttons (Red and Black).
4. You should see the firmware version.

Richard

Richard
Thanks for clarifying this. Now I got it to work. My firmware version is 01. According to Thanh Nguyen (Sony told him) this is not the latest firmware but my unit works 100% with my Sony Z5. So, as the saying goes,"If it's not broken don't fix it".

Stelios