Connecting Sony PMW EX1R to a Computer or Laptop

The main reason why you might want to connect your Sony EX1R church video camera to a computer would be to stream the output onto the internet, as it is more efficient to record onto the solid state memory cards than a laptop's hard drive.

The best way to connect the EX1R to a computer is using a firewire cable attached to the HDV/DV output port as shown in the picture to the left. This is a 4 pin socket, and the other end will depend on the type of firewire interface available on the computer, it could be firewire 400 or 800. My Apple MacBook has a 6 pin connection. The newer type of Apple computers use a different type of connector.

If you are connecting your camera to a microsoft OS based PC, you might need to buy a firewire i/o board as most don't have firewire installed as standard.

Once you have the correct connecting cables plugged in, you need to change some menu settings on the Sony EX1R camera in order to send the video output via the HDV/DV port.

1. Press the Menu button scroll down the options.
2. Select Others by pressing the button used to scroll up and down.
3. Scroll till you get to the i-LINK I/O option, press Select and I use the DVCAM option as I haven't been able to get HDV to work on our Church Apple MacBook Pro.

With these steps completed, I can now stream video from the EX1 via ustream or record straight into quicktime.


More Reading
Editing Church Video.
Streaming Church Video on the Internet.