Firewire

[Michael Palmer]

Well if On Location worked for HDV then it should work with the EX1’s firewire port as it outputs the same signal as HDV. The firewire port is even labeled HDV. I’m sure you could record from this port too. I believe this port has a constantly feed. At some point today I will test my EX1 to make sure.

Good Luck
Michael Palmer

[Ron Shook]

Michael,

[Michael Palmer] “it outputs the same signal as HDV.”

A further clarification would be nice. I’m sure I read that you can only output the 25mbps HDV via firewire, but can you be outputting that while recording 35mbps to the SxS cards? I’d guess not, which means you would need be recording to cards in HDV if you needed to record to the cards. Can anyone say precisely the perameters?

Ron Shook

[Don Greening]

[Ron Shook] “but can you be outputting that while recording 35mbps to the SxS cards?”

The EX manual says that only HDV compatible recording formats can be used for HDV output to the iLINK port. These are:

SP 1080/60i
SP 1080/50i
SP 1080/24p

This must mean that you can’t record HQ 1080/60i to the SxS Pro cards if you want to output an HDV stream via the iLINK port. But you can record to both the card and the external recorder at the same time.

Bummer.

– Don

[Michael Palmer]

Don
I will need to confirm the bummer, I was also wondering if I shot/recorded HQ to the card then wanted to dig HDV to match a second camera later playing the clip, what ifanything would come out of this ilink port while doing so? I will do some futsing later tonight
MP

Sent from my iPhone

[Ron Shook]

Don,

[Don Greening] “Bummer.”

You’d need two encoding chips to do this, I’d think, and thus didn’t really expect it in this little camera.

Ron Shook

[Randy Strome]

On when hand that sounds correct, I mean could this little camera be packed with simultaneous output formats? On the other hand it seems like a very odd feature to have I link out only outputting for certain formats. If, ostensibly firewire would be used primarily for a monitor, then you would not be able to monitor most of the available formats (all of the HD formats).

[Michael Palmer]

Don is correct, bummer
I also foundthat HQ recordings won’t play out of the FW port.

[Don Greening]

But the HQ settings can be directed to the Composite, Component and SDI ports. I’m also pretty sure that the EX will do a real-time down convert to SD from the SDI port while it’s recording HQ to the SxS Pro card. The Sony manual does state clearly that the iLINK port is for HDV only.

Where is Juan Martinez when we need him to clarify all this?

– Don

[Michael Palmer]

Don,
I connected my EX1 to my V1U (firewire) in VTR mode with a fresh tape loaded and then I started recording from the EX1, the V1U then started recording on its own as well EX1 controls the HDV deck), making a dub of what was being recorded to the SxS card. There is a small visual delay to the HDV recording (in my case the V1U) device. I was hoping I could record HQ and then if needed convert to HDV from the firewire port to either an HDV tape device or capture directly to FC. I haven’t mixed these formats as yet, I was just thinking this may be a solution in an earlier post.

Don I would really like to connect with you off line if you can send me a email.

Thanks
Michael Palmer

[Randy Strome]

Thanks for the valuable feedback guys,

So many things I want to test (slated for hipment on Monday-yeah!).

Is there a technical reason that you can think of that would limit pushing the long GOP HD (that is already being written for SxS) through firwire on the EX? I am wondering about the possibilty of a firmware update. Should I be anticipating the Vaio EX1 laptop that enables this feature? 🙂

As it stands, what is the required additional hardware/software for recording the same format HD that will end up on the SxS card to a Lappy?