Any Sony hackers? Camcorder question..

[Matt Tottle]

I scored a Sony Handycam (DCR-SR82) with a 60 gig hard drive the other day.. Yeah it's SD, but I picked it up for $100 at a pawn shop and it looks pretty much brand new, so I'm not complaining. I just really needed something to replace my MiniDV cam because transferring those tapes to the computer sucks. I'll get to HD eventually, but I want to buy a DSLR first.

Aside from the SD, it's a nice little cam. It records to HDD, and you can take still photos on the HDD and transfer them to a Memorystick.. However, I've noticed it has a couple flaws. There is NO USB port on the camera itself. You have to use the dock to get USB. It also will not allow you to transfer video files from HDD to MS, or record video to the MS. This means I have to carry the dock with me to transfer clips to the computer which is a bit on the lame side.

I've been looking around and there are certain features that can be enabled on older cams by dumping the firmware through a LANC interface cable, modifying it, and uploading it back to the camera, and I was wondering if anyone has ever played around with this on a newer cam. I want to enable copying video to MS because my computers have card readers built in. I can build the cable no problem, but I don't want to waste the money if it can't be done.

 

[cedwards]

I don't know about your model. I have a newer Sony HD camera. To upgrade the firmware you install it on the MS then put it in the camera. You would have to find firmware for your particular model. I would think this would be a more viable method of getting it to you camera.

 

[Matt Tottle]

The problem isn't getting it to the camera, it's getting the original firmware OFF the camera. The LANC method is bidirectional, so you can pull the current firmware off the camera to edit. The memory stick method is one way - you can't make the camera write its current firmware to the MS. Also, the editor software is made to modify the raw dump of the firmware, not the Sony MS installer of an upgrade (which AFAIK there isn't even one for this camera) so I couldn't even download an upgrade to play with.

Google says the most common use for it was to enable DV in on older cameras to use them as a MiniDV/Digital8 recording deck, but there were other features that could be enabled as well (extra long/extra short play modes, test patterns, etc). "Memorystick record mode" is also mentioned in one article, which is what caught my interest.