February 4th, 2009 
admin While phoning Canon technical support the other day to fix my broken power adapter I was invited into the world of call waiting music. I’d forgotten how great/dire the hits are but when this one came up I couldn’t help remembering it from the legendary film Top Gun. It even made me get in the mood….
Coincidentally Canon support were useless so I’ve sent it off to a repair facility.
January 8th, 2009 admin 
Those annoying camcorder files can be a pain to convert if you have a large project or multiple videos from a holiday. That’s why batch conversions make it so much easier, recommended by Patrick off my website is the easy batch option in my chosen choice of software MPEG Streamclip..
Original Guide to convert .mod files:
http://daz4590.co.uk/wordpress/2008/08/22/converting-mod-files-to-something-a-bit-better/
January 1st, 2009 admin 
Now this may seem strange but for some reason my Canon FS100 camcorder which I’ve only had since August has ceased charging through the supplied cable. After some testing with a complicated multimeter no power seems to be getting to the camcorder so the charger box must be broken. Now I’ve had it static on my desk for nearly all this time so I was a bit surprised when it just stopped. I’ve tried to contact Canon as it is under the initial 12 month warranty but I got an automatic fob off to some repair centre over 150 miles away. I’ll have to try again sometime but surely they could give me an address to send it to?? I would have expected Canon to be better, for once I praise Sony for their customer service early in 2008.
So I turned to the world of eBay and bought an external battery wall charger for £15 which arrived a week later. It even comes with an extra battery so what a benefit. Extra battery life! Can never have enough of that! One thing though is as the extra battery is not official Canon merchandise it does not have the ability to tell the camcorder how long is left which is a bit confusing. So it may be all well and good when I have that extra time to shoot but not knowing how long is left!? I don’t blame the battery but Canon’s decision and method to implement time remaining features in the camcorder.
But it does work, and ever since I have charged my battery through that means, now it is more hassle as I have to take it out of the camcorder itself but it’s the best option I have. Another advantage is I can charge one battery up while I’m using the other one in the camcorder if I’m unable to use the power cable with the camcorder at the shoot location. So if you’re out there looking for another way to charge your BP-808 camcorder battery then here is another way, there are plenty on eBay so why not get one.
p.s Don’t you love getting packages from China with misspellings on them? Bad English brightens my day when it is badly translated. On the back of the pack there were a couple of interesting statements…
September 8th, 2008 admin 
With all these flash based card devices around nowadays most home consumer level computers are coming with multi-card readers built in. Some new laptops are gaining this luxury, although it is something Apple has chosen to omit from it’s Macbook notebook range, and not knowing when I’ll be upgrading in the future I thought I’d get a USB reader as I bide my time. Now I didn’t want a fully fledged, steel cased, multi-card, indestructible one as some seem to be but just an SD HC reader for my camcorder specifically. After seeing the wide range on the internet I turned to my old friend eBay. Now I thought the days of bargains were over on the auction site with a saturated user base however I managed to pick up exactly what I wanted for just 3p – Yes that includes postage from Hong Kong. Bargain – job done.
The downside is I’ve had to wait 9 days to receive it but it has eventually got here, true to the word of the eBay seller. It supports SD HC cards, which was my key requirement, and also matches the silver scheme of my Powerbook and other office equipment. Theres not much too say really about it’s process but the first time I plugged it in I did hit a bit of a hiccup. From my experience you have to have the SD card plugged into the USB device before you plug it into your computer. Not only does it work perfectly but it can also help not to corrupt the card although I am not too sure on the latter. Surely it is safer and recommended to do this and obviously to eject the USB device before you unplug your SD card.
Well I’m chuffed with a device that works at such a low low price and I’ll be using it quite often because it saves all the trouble with power cables and USB cables on my camcorder. All I have to do now is take out the removable storage and plug it into this little reader. Simple…It makes me wish all life was.
August 27th, 2008 admin Most camcorders come with a countless number of confusing settings for consumers to fiddle with, one of these is the video quality. My Canon FS100 has three variations -- SP,LP and XP. These each use different bit rates with SP at 3mbps, LP at 6mbps and XP at 9mpbs. Obviously the bigger the bit rate the better quality video. Ever since I had it I have stuck it at XP because I am a firm believer in good quality video but I have wondered how much of a difference it really makes.
To test this I have shot the same footage with the camcorder simply changing the quality setting each time, I have labelled each video so you can compare them like by like and see the difference. After I looked at the footage, which must be seen in High Quality on Youtube otherwise it’s not that good, I struggled to see any massive difference between each one. You can just make out the slightly sharper image of the XP compared to the rest but I’ll leave you to decide. I’ll still carry on using the XP setting because it will make me feel better but whether it really makes a difference -- at least on a small screen it doesn’t. It may make a bigger impact on a 40″ LCD TV but for my needs that is not important.
Does your camcorder have different settings? Do you ever change between them? Let us know by commenting below and helping the community.
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