Adding hard drive or solid state to my XL-H1 camera?

I won't recommend any particular one, Bohus... but of the ones that you mentioned (and another I will add) I'll give you some things to think about.

The Firestore recorders (unless they have newer/different/better ones than the last time I looked at them) record the HDV signal via Firewire. That might be fine and all you need... unless you're wanting to bypass the HDV compression and use an external recorder to record the "real" HD signal... which is entirely possible. Sony also makes a recorder which is very similar to the Firestore.

The Blackmagic Hyberdeck will do that pre-compression recording, via the camera's HD-SDI output before it is compressed into HDV. Pristine image. But here's the monkey wrench... part of it depends on which exact XLH1 model you have. The earliest first batches of the H1 do not embed the camera's audio in the HD-SDI signal. I don't know why Canon chose to do it that way, but they did. Later versions of the H1 do embed the audio, so it's important to know what your camera will do. If your camera is one of the earlier ones that don't embed the audio, then if you use a separate recorder you have to get video from the HD-SDI port and analog audio via the analog jacks. The problem is, the Hyperdeck does not have analog audio inputs, it only takes in embedded audio via HD-SDI. So... with that device you won't get any camera audio. That might be fine if you only shoot MOS (silent) footage, but for most of us, that's not how we work.

I was about to suggest as a problem solver the Nano Flash recorder from Convergent Design... but I just looked at it and I don't readily see where the recorder will take analog audio in... although I swear in the past it did. It'd be worth checking with them. If so, though, the downside to them is that they are a lot more expensive than the other devices.

Although... you might have one of the H1 cameras that do embed audio, and then it's not such a big deal... any of the devices will work.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[bohus blahut] " fan club I should be joining?"

Yes, yes there is. But so far my mom is the only member, and she's way late with her dues. Rarely comes to meetings.

Glad to give meager advice, such that I have. There's is always a mental juggling act when deciding whether to pour money into an aging camera system. This is exactly the same quandary we've had recently with our H1 as well. In fact, we used to do exactly what you did as well, which is use an HV20 as a capture deck... and our HV20 crapped out at exactly the same time as we were having the troubles with the H1. When it rains it pours.

Between the two different repair shops and the expensive cross-country overnight shipping, it was indeed a bit mentally painful to pour about a thousand bucks into the camera... especially since we are anticipating moving to the Canon C300PL as our primary camera shortly. In our case the C300 is a good replacement for the type of shooting I do, since we really only use the H1 body (with a P+S Technik converter and 35mm cine primes). BUT... we'd still want a decent camera to use in "video mode" on occasion with a video zoom lens, so we need to keep it for that use so I was ok with pouring a few bucks into it.

All said, the H1 as been my favorite camera that I've ever used or owned. Since I started using it (with the lens converter) I haven't even cracked the cases on my 35mm cameras... and I used to shoot tons of film. It's just a great camera, great images, and very intuitive to use.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

Ha... no thanks necessary, Bohus... hope some of that rambling was helpful.

Actually, I shoot almost everything (or at least the vast majority) on location. I probably only shoot in studio maybe, oh, once every couple of weeks. Our soundstage isn't nearly as impressive as you might think. It's actually way too small... put, say, a vehicle in it for a shoot and it suddenly gets very crowded, although for most small setups with a couple of people it's more than fine.

Let us all know if/what recorder you choose, I'd be interested to hear how it all works out.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[bohus blahut] "I seem to have the perfect storm of incompatibility."

You got it. We're in the same boat here.

I'm not sure what I would do if I were in your shoes. Except probably change back to my own shoes.

If you were planning on retiring the H1 before too long it would be a tough decision to spend a lot of money on a recorder. Yep there are cheap recorders, but yes they are incompatible connection and in-and-out-wise.

If it is a short-term thing, you might consider just renting a camera on an as-needed basis. There should be a place or two in Chicago that would have what you need. Also, last time I checked you can get a pretty low-mileage H1 on eBay for about two grand, if you want to stick with tape for a while. I looked recently because I was briefly thinking that after we move to the C300PL that I might just sell our H1 so I was checking to see what it was worth... and was saddened to see it had lost 80% of its value, I was thinking it wouldn't be quite that much.

By the way, you're a funny guy.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com