Dear Guy's

Have just purchased a sony HDR-CX550VE HD video camera.

For an up coming RSA trip.

What is best method of storing HD video of the hard drive for a back up system.

Was not looking at taking a lap top.

Also if any one has tips on the camera and use would be great.

Thanks in advance.

Cam

Isn't that one a Flash drive storage?
I think you can insert a Flash card for backing it up.

I am using the same camera right now, and it is great.

Take a few hicapacity batteries, and a few hicapacity SD cards - my suggestion is to get Class 10 cards, otherwise you will spend hours copying from the internal memory to these cards.

You can get 32 GB SDHC cards.

Here is your options.

You can put one of these 32GB cards in the camera, and set it to put the video you take onto this card, rather than the internal memory.
Keep an eye on it, and as it gets near to being full, take it out and put another one in.

Another way is to see when the internal memory is coming to almost half full, the copy that footage to an SD card, delete iot from the internal memory, and start again.

You just have to repeat this each time the memory gets to half full.

My suggestion of setting the camera to store the video onto the SD card eliminate this copying, as it can take quite a bit of time.

Dear Seed

Thanks for the tips.

Will get some cards and batteries tomorrow.

Looking forward to giving the camera a good run.
The anti shake works well.

My 11 year old son had it figured out in no time.

Regards Cam

You might need a pen and paper when copying the video from the internal memory to the SD card.

As I have found there is no way you can copy all the footage in one go. You get an option of copying by clip or by date.

By date is ar the easier method.
You will need to jot down each date as you copy it if you have more than a handful of dates.
I found this to be very helpfull.

i have the same camera in the 500 version. unless you shoOt a TREMENDOUS amount of video, you will not need much in the way of high capacity card. mine stores 4 hours of the highest definition video on its internal hard drive and it has half the capacity of yours. i use the card memory to take still pics only.i don't know about you, but 4 hours of video on a single trip is about all i can stand to watch!

quote:

Originally posted by jdollar:
i have the same camera in the 500 version. unless you shoOt a TREMENDOUS amount of video, you will not need much in the way of high capacity card. mine stores 4 hours of the highest definition video on its internal hard drive and it has half the capacity of yours. i use the card memory to take still pics only.i don't know about you, but 4 hours of video on a single trip is about all i can stand to watch!

I recommend you take a seperate pocket camera for stills - the one I use right now is the Panasonic TZ10. It is small top fit in the pocket, has a 12X optical zoom, and takes great photos.

Much better than still from a video camera.

You like the photos from the video camera, but I can assure you when you compare them with photos taken with a dedicated camera you will immediadtely see the difference.

i understand where you are coming from, Saeed, and i fully agree that the best stills come from a dedicated still camera. however, the only thing i do with my stills is download to my computer and watch as a slide show. occasionally i will print out a few 4x6 pics to show friends but that is about it. for "my" purposes, the still pics in the CX500 work fine. i still carry a 10 megapixel Sony pocket camera as a backup( and i always take a lot of trophy shots) in case my video camera decides to pack it in. since they both use the same Memory Sticks, it works out OK. but the bulk of my stills and obviously all my video is done the the CX500.

quote:

Originally posted by jdollar:
i understand where you are coming from, Saeed, and i fully agree that the best stills come from a dedicated still camera. however, the only thing i do with my stills is download to my computer and watch as a slide show. occasionally i will print out a few 4x6 pics to show friends but that is about it. for "my" purposes, the still pics in the CX500 work fine. i still carry a 10 megapixel Sony pocket camera as a backup( and i always take a lot of trophy shots) in case my video camera decides to pack it in. since they both use the same Memory Sticks, it works out OK. but the bulk of my stills and obviously all my video is done the the CX500.

Earlier this year, we went to Kenya on a photo safari, and I did just what you are doing.
At the same time, I had a Panasonic TZ7 pocket camera, with which I took some photos as I was videoing the kids and animals.

When I looked the pctures taken from both the video camera and the stills camera on my laptop in the camp, I could hardly tell the difference.

However, when I got back home, and transferred them to my desktop computer, and watched them on a 30 inch pro monitor with a resolution of 2560x1600. There was quite a lot of difference between them.

My suggestion that you should take the photos with the dedicated still camera, is that in the future you might wish you had.

I have been taking digital photos since 1999. And looking at those photos and the photos we have now with modern cameras, one sees the incredible improvements in the technology.

You might wish to have a look at the following video.

Trail cam video

http://www.tigerdirect.com/app...VRqCjC7BBTkwCjCECjCE

This device is what I came up with that will allow you to plug your chip into and burn it directly to a disk, then you can delete the chip.

The sony HDR-CX500V takes 12 megapixel still shots (even while recording) so how would you be able to tell the difference between that and a dedicated still camera?

quote:

Originally posted by Rub Line:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/app...VRqCjC7BBTkwCjCECjCE

This device is what I came up with that will allow you to plug your chip into and burn it directly to a disk, then you can delete the chip.

The sony HDR-CX500V takes 12 megapixel still shots (even while recording) so how would you be able to tell the difference between that and a dedicated still camera?

I have no idea what this is the case.
I have seen the same thing with both Canon and Panasonic video cameras stills too.

I am looking at the Sony 550 model which supercedes that one. If you set this one up to record video at the highest level, then you cannot record stills while recording.

The photos look very soft compared with photos taken with a dedicated stills camera.