Canon Vixia HF R400 - USB Mass Storage?

[Len]

I recently purchased a Canon Vixia HF R400 and was wondering if there is a way to make the camera appear as a USB mass storage device (like an external hard drive or flash drive).

When I plugged in the camera using the provided USB cable to a Debian (Squeeze) system, Shotwell Photo Manager appears as an option but it never successfully gets any data.

I've looked through the manual but found no reference to USB mass storage.  Am I limited to Windows/Mac for accessing the files via USB?  That would sad, as I have neither available to me at home.

Thanks in advance!

[VanillaMozilla]

One other thing. Just check your file manager. It may show up, even though the camera may not pop up on a window. That's the way my cards work, although I have not plugged in a camera recently. In worst case, check the /mnt/ and /media/ directories. It may be there.

[Len]

Thanks for the suggestions VanillaMozilla,

The reason my wife and I bought a camcorder in the first place was at the request of our families now that we have a daughter.  Since our families are spread out, they all want to see videos as often as possible.

So in order to meet OUR needs and the families needs we were placing "ease of transfering to our online photo/video album" as top priority.  Our thought was that we'd take a video, take it over to our computer, transfer over USB, unplug the camcorder and be done with it.

I'd like to not have to search for an SD Card reader, remove the card, plug it in, transfer, then move the card back to the camcorder if at all possible.  Now that I'm writing this out, it sounds lame that I want to skip these steps, but our thought is to minimize the burden on our part (this is what technology is for, right?) in order to maximize the chances that we will post videos for the family and, therefore, maximize our investment in the camcorder.

Since my last posting, I was able to speak with a VERY nice and helpful tech support person that confirmed for me that this camcorder does not support USB Mass Storage.

However, we're starting to like the camcorder so I decided to look a bit more under the hood on my Linux system.  I did not see anything resembling my camcorder in my File Manager, nor in the usual suspects (/mnt, /media).  I opened a terminal and via the command line, I saw this:

len@jaina:~$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 04a9:326a Canon, Inc.
len@jaina:~$

So the device seems to have been identified by my desktop... just no entry for USB Mass Storage as I would expect or, rather, hope.

I then did a bit more poking around the web and found some mention about ptpusb.dll driver for Windows for some camcorders.  Found out that was for "Picture Transfer Protocol" ... this seemed promising.  Then I found the Linux parallel called gphoto2 and libgphoto2 at www.gphoto.org

Long story short, though the Vixia HF R400 is not on the supported list for gphoto2, it appears the utility works fine with it.  I'm now able to transfer the videos from the camcorder via command line.  All I need to do is write a couple of scripts to make it wife-friendly and I think we're good to go.

Thanks, all, for you help... and thanks, Canon, for friendly tech support personnel!

[fyigmo63]

For forum members at large I wanted to thank you for that update.  So few people update issues like this, and it can be so dang helpful to other when they do.  You get a Kudos for that.

[VanillaMozilla]

"Since my last posting, I was able to speak with a VERY nice and helpful tech support person that confirmed for me that this camcorder does not support USB Mass Storage." Which, of course, is baloney, as you proved. 🙂 I'm not sure why finding a card reader is any harder than finding a USB cord, or whether writing and running some script is any harder than dragging and dropping files, but whatever makes you happy. I'm not sure whether you have to put the camera in any particular mode to transfer files, but you might keep it in mind. And don't forget, copying files is a simple skill that always works with all digital cameras, whereas this method will keep your wife dependent. But I do understand the appeal of automatically finding and copying the right files. Good luck and enjoy the camera.

[Len]

fyigmo: I hope what I find is useful to others that might be searching for the same info...

VanillaMozilla: the output from lsusb doesn't necessarily mean that the usb device supports Mass Storage protocol... it looks like I missed showing my dmesg output in my previous post so here it is again when I plug in the Canon camcorder:

len@jaina:~$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 04a9:326a Canon, Inc. 
len@jaina:~$ dmesg
<--- I cut some stuff out to save space --->
usb 1-5: new high speed USB device number 6 using ehci_hcd
len@jaina:~$

...and for comparison, plugging in a thumbdrive:

len@jaina:~$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0951:162d Kingston Technology 
len@jaina:~$ dmesg
<--- I cut some stuff out to save space --->
usb 1-4: new high speed USB device number 6 using ehci_hcd
scsi7 : usb-storage 1-4:1.0
scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Kingston DataTraveler 102 PMAP PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] 7774208 512-byte logical blocks: (3.98 GB/3.70 GiB)
sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] No Caching mode page present
sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] No Caching mode page present
sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sda: sda1
sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] No Caching mode page present
sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 7:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk
len@jaina:~$ 

For our setup, I think that looking for a USB cable will be easier than looking for a card reader... I guess it's arguable either way... I just would rather we not go through the additional hassle (again, I know it seems petty to think that this is a "hassle") of dealing with the SD card.

You do raise a point about drag and drop of the files (via the card reader) being an easier task...hmmm... but then I'd have to go buy an external card reader... the only one I've got doesn't support SDHC nor SDXC.  I think I'd rather save the money since we just spent some big bucks on the camcorder.

What would've been real neat is if the WiFi feature on the R40 was able to push the videos to a Samba share.  From what I read through the manuals (and confirmed with sales folks at BestBuy) this was not possible.  It would be a lot easier to just capture video, transfer it via WiFi from the camcorder to our fileserver.... no cables, card readers!

Anyway, thanks, again for your input and our families are enjoying the improved video and audio quality of the recent videos we've posted.  Mission, mostly, accomplished!

[VanillaMozilla]

According to the specs., it has a mini-AB connection and supports "high-speed USB".  Let's see, it's a storage device and has a high-speed connection.  Hmm, I wonder what that could be for.

[Len]

VanillaMozilla:  I must not have been clear in my previous posts.  I was hoping that the camcorder supported the USB Mass Storage protocol.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_mass_storage_device_class

yes, the camcorder has a physical USB port, and it's a device which stores data.  But, as I found through my lsusb and dmesg outputs (and confirmed by Canon's support staff), the camcorder does not support the protocol I was hoping for.   Instead, it appears that the camcorder supports USB PTP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_Transfer_Protocol

I would love to be wrong on this so if you know something that I am missing, I would appreciate any suggestions.

[VanillaMozilla]

I didn't realize that there was a special name/protocol for that pain-in-the-neck camera behavior.  However the camera must support one or the other or both protocols, don't you think?  If in doubt, just plug it into a Windows computer, and you'll strait away exactly what it can do.

Linux libraries support both, and I would expect your Linux to do so also.  That's my experience with other cameras on Linux, although I haven't actually tried a Canon video camera yet.  I'm probably telling you the obvious, but if you're having trouble mounting and viewing, you should probably also consult your Linux forum.

Although PTP is a pain in the neck from my point of view and you're asking for mass storage protocol, it sounds like you're trying to reimplement PTP from scratch.  I realize now that you know much more than I do about this, and you also have the camera in front of you.  For what it's worth, I also note that card readers start at around $2, although that's probably not for USB 3.  Among the cheap ones, the ones that work are probably the ones without cables.

[Baconmon]

I know this thread is a few years old, but it is one of the first results for "canon mass-storage" and lot of these cameras still work great even if they are 3 years old..

I figured out how to make it work with mine.. I am a Linux user my self also using Debian.. Not sure if it will work for other canon models or not, but you can try it and see if it works for you..

For some reason, you have to put it in AVCHD mode before it will connect as a USB mass-storage device.. What I tried was turning on the camera, pushing that physical "Play" button on the camera to switch to the view-pictures/videos mode, and in that mode you can switch between viewing mp4 content and viewing AVCHD content.. For some reason if you are viewing the mp4 content and you plug in the USB cord, the camera will NOT enable mass-storage mode and you have to access it through PTP or whatever other methods.. However, if you switch the viewing mode to AVCHD first, and THEN connect the USB cable, the camera will ask you to pick one of three options: "Internal memory, SD-card, or Both", and which ever one you choose, the camera will then enable USB access to its self and you can browse it just like any other hard-drive that was hot-plugged in to your computer..

[TechCrew6]

Yes, yes. A life saver. I manage a small group of young students who are fledgling photographers/videographers. We hire out for cheap so they can get experience. Recenly we worked a wedding.  All went well. Then I accidently deleted all the wedding footage from my Canon Vixia internal memory. Panic you say? Anyway after hours of trying and searching I changed the format as you suggested which finally assigned the Canon a drive letter and i am relieved to say the least that the bride and groom's memories have been recovered.  If you are ever in the Gary IN area I would LOVE to buy you lunch.

Most sincerely

VCD