SONY HVR-MRC1K CF Recorder

[Mark Bonnlander]

I purchased MRC1K last week from B&H. I will be doing some tests in the next week to see how it matches up with the Sony FX1000. I bought some $70 32GB Qmemory cards to go with it. I balked at paying $225 for the Extreme III cards and they were impossible to find on the internet last week anyway. B&H just sent me a note saying they are in stock, FYI.

I will be traveling to India to film and I needed the ability to shoot HDV continuously for 2-3 hours between tape changes. I determined from the MRC1K manual that I can record indepedent from the tape with the Stop-Record buttons on the unit. What I am still curious about is what happens when you switch CF cards. Does the data store to the cache while the cover is open and then write to the card after it is installed?

If all looks good, I might stop shooting the tapes for backup and just go with the Flash recorder.

I'll publish my results. Thank you everyone for your contributions.

[Bryan Daugherty]

Mark i can't wait to hear your results! Please let us know how it goes.

[Derran Rootring]

Hi, I just received the MRC1K and it seems like a wonderful device! It mounts perfectly on top of the Z1 and looks great. I use it in combination with two SanDisk 8GB ExtremeIV cards. This gives me 37 minutes of recording on each card in DV mode.
But I have a few questions. Does anyone know if it's possible to use the record button on the Z1 (without a tape in it) to start recording on the device itself. I haven't had luck trying to establish this yet and I'm not sure if it's even possible. Also, if I playback files on the recorder unit, can I stay in camera mode on the camera or do I need to switch the camera to playback to watch the footage on the LCD of the Z1? I didn't get it to playback on camera in camera mode, but perhaps this will be possible if I change any settings.
Thanks!

[Derran Rootring]

When I put the camera in VTR mode I can watch back the footage on the camera's LCD screen. This works very nice and you can delete clips immediately if you don't like them.

But I think the i.LINK CRADLE is broken. The recorder doesn't want to record any footage of my camera anymore. Also in the menu, the i.LINK MODE option is greyed out. So it seems like the footage doesn't come in to the memory unit at all. You can playback footage on the unit itself, but it isn't showing up on the camera anymore. This problem showed up after trying to attach the unit to my computer yesterday. It didn't go into computer mode and was not recognized by my computer. Luckily I found another way of fast importing the footage, so I could start playing with the footage on Avid Media Composer (great workflow BTW, within seconds the footage can be used in the editing application). When I was done on the computer I justed mounted the unit back on the camera and switched it on this morning. And that's when I noticed it had stopped working.

I'm not sure if this has anything got to do with it, but yesterday the recorder stopped recording after about 13 / 15 second. It happened twice in a row so I started checking the settings. I thought that perhaps It was in some sort of cache mode. But everything seemed to be correct in the menu. And when I started recording again, the problem was gone. Very strange.

I will contact Sony soon and see if they can do anything about it.

[Mark Job]

Hi friends. Has anyone used this device for any timelapse shots ? If so, can you post a clip or share some feedback on what you thought of the results. BTW, does the Interval Recording feature function in all modes, including HDV ?

[Glenn Fisher]

Originally Posted by Mark Andrew Job

Hi friends. Has anyone used this device for any timelapse shots ? If so, can you post a clip or share some feedback on what you thought of the results. BTW, does the Interval Recording feature function in all modes, including HDV ?

I don't have any sources to back this up, but I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that this device only supports interval recording when using DV. My guess is that this is because HDV uses a GOP in order to get roughly the same amount of recording time on a DV tape.

[Glenn Fisher]

Originally Posted by Clint Martin

I thought I read somewhere that you need to convert the file when you load it to your comp. If so what software are you guys using?
Also I was wondering if anyone new how to get it to record from the cam controls with out using a tape too?
thanks

You shouldn't have to transcode the file at all, but depending on what application you use to edit, you may need to rewrap it.

From what I've been reading, Final Cut Pro seems to be the only application that cannot import .m2t files (the files that the recorder saves to CF) natively. There are two solutions if you're going to be working with .m2t files in Final Cut.

1. Use the Sony plugin. Sony has written a plugin for Final Cut that will rewrap the files when you import them using Final Cut's Log and Capture window.

2. Use ClipWrap. ClipWrap is a third-party application made by DivergentMedia (same guys who made ScopeBox) that also does the same purpose as the Sony plugin, but handles it in a third-party app.

I believe that both solutions will join together sequentially recorded files (i.e. after the recorder reaches the FAT32 file size limitation, it has to start writing a second file, but both solutions will recognize those files and join them together into one).

I don't own an HVR-MRC1K recorder, nor have I used either the Sony plugin or ClipWrap.

[Mark Job]

Originally Posted by Glenn Fisher

I don't have any sources to back this up, but I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that this device only supports interval recording when using DV. My guess is that this is because HDV uses a GOP in order to get roughly the same amount of recording time on a DV tape.

...I also have contacted some local Sony reps to try and confirm if the Interval recording feature works in HDV mode. It *may* well function in HDV as well, because the shortest interval you can set on the device is 0.5 second. I think 1/2 second would corrispond to at least one set of Long GOP's in an HDV file. (??) The best thing to do is to get one of you who actually own one of these Sony CF recorders to shoot a test for me and confirm if they can shoot in the HDV mode. I hope one of you folks could help me out ? :-)

[Garrett Low]

Unfortunately thought the .5 second min record time would lead you to think it can record on HDV GOP, it won't allow you to set the record mode to interval when recording HDV. I just tried to set this up on both a Canon HV20 and XL H1A. So, even thought this should be able to be done the Sony won't do it. I wonder if Sony could let the unit do it with a firmware update???

Garrett

[Mark Job]

Originally Posted by Garrett Low

Unfortunately thought the .5 second min record time would lead you to think it can record on HDV GOP, it won't allow you to set the record mode to interval when recording HDV. I just tried to set this up on both a Canon HV20 and XL H1A. So, even thought this should be able to be done the Sony won't do it. I wonder if Sony could let the unit do it with a firmware update???

Garrett

.....Oh that's sad news Garrett :-( Thanks for the confirmation :-) I wish there was an affordable solution for for a SSD which can shoot timelapse in HD resolution which isn't 5K or more Dollars !

[Garrett Low]

I did see a post the other day that was for a LANC controller that seemed like it may be promising. I can't remember which thread it was under but there were two different units the person mentioned. One seemed like it would be more for digital SLR's but the other specifically had a LANC controller function. If I run across it again I'll post the link.

Garrett

[Mark Job]

Originally Posted by Garrett Low

I did see a post the other day that was for a LANC controller that seemed like it may be promising. I can't remember which thread it was under but there were two different units the person mentioned. One seemed like it would be more for digital SLR's but the other specifically had a LANC controller function. If I run across it again I'll post the link.

Garrett

..Thanks man :-) I so need to shoot timelapses all around the city of Montreal at Night, during the day, a sunrise sequence over the city, in order to finish a Tv episode I've been shooting this past Summer. I heard there is an nNovia deck which can shoot timelapse in HDV. I also heard there was an nNovia CF recorder, but I have not, as of yet, come across any information on the nNovia website which offers such a model. (???)
.

[Bill Koehler]

It is highly unlikely that these devices will provide the HDV timelapse function you are looking for. The reason is as follows.

Remember that these devices are designed first and foremost to take the FireWire streaming audio+video datastream and record it to flash or a hard drive. Consequently they do not have any sort of audio+video compression engine built into them. Zip, zero, nada. That is all being done by the camcorder.

Now in DV, each frame is its own little distinct entity. So all the recorder has to do is every so often pull out a frame and record it. Job done. Still no need to understand what is within that audio+video data block, just where it starts and ends in the ongoing stream.

In HDV, on the other hand, to do the same thing you are going to have to
1. Every so often pull out a GOP and decompress it into its individual frames.
2. Pick out the individual frame you want/need.
3. Over time accumulate those frames until you have enough to make up a GOP.
4. Compress that GOP and record it.
5. Repeat.

At this point you should start to see the difficulty. How does the above happen in a device that has no audio+video compression engine of its own?
And the equally obvious answer is: It doesn't.

[Steve Sobodos]

The user manual for the MRC1K states that it does interval recording only on DV/DVCAM.

[Mark Job]

Originally Posted by Bill Koehler

It is highly unlikely that these devices will provide the HDV timelapse function you are looking for. The reason is as follows.

Remember that these devices are designed first and foremost to take the FireWire streaming audio+video datastream and record it to flash or a hard drive. Consequently they do not have any sort of audio+video compression engine built into them. Zip, zero, nada. That is all being done by the camcorder.

Now in DV, each frame is its own little distinct entity. So all the recorder has to do is every so often pull out a frame and record it. Job done. Still no need to understand what is within that audio+video data block, just where it starts and ends in the ongoing stream.

In HDV, on the other hand, to do the same thing you are going to have to
1. Every so often pull out a GOP and decompress it into its individual frames.
2. Pick out the individual frame you want/need.
3. Over time accumulate those frames until you have enough to make up a GOP.
4. Compress that GOP and record it.
5. Repeat.

At this point you should start to see the difficulty. How does the above happen in a device that has no audio+video compression engine of its own?
And the equally obvious answer is: It doesn't.

...Hi Bill. I already proposed an engine of my own concept on another thread. I think there is an easy and viable way to do just what I wrote -Timelapse into an HDV file. I don't want to go into a great deal of specific detail until I have spoken to an electrical engineer and a lawyer buddy of mine to make sure I'm not stepping on someone else's patent, or someone reading my concept having more resources than I will simply rip it off and do it themselves ! (I've probably wrote too many specifics of my own design already). My unit would be quite small and retail for a price point around $950.00 US. If I was able to produce a prototype unit myself, then I would post a picture for you to see and some video of the results. For now, I think this work would be a hobby project, since I'm in production and I must make money. I do believe it would be a worthy pursuit to try and create such a recording solution at an affordable price.