• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

Any Sony hackers? Camcorder question..

Joined
Jan 27, 2011
Messages
421
Location
Russell, KS
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.
 
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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.
 
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.
 
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