VIXIA HF G70 Questions on connecting to iOS devices, downloading videos, etc.

[jeri0818]

I have a video recorder, #Canon Vixia HF G70... It's too new to find much help on the internet, is there a customer service source or some other way to get help on this recorder? I'm brand new to this type of thing.

I make YT videos

I have questions: can you connect a computer (Mac) or an iPad (preferred) even a phone, (iPhone) to the camera so you can see a bigger screen? I did buy a special cord, but there must be an app or something in addition? 

I was told you could insert a wifi flash card to pick up wifi to load your videos to your computer. Is this true?

How would you update your firmware without wifi?

How long does it normally take to upload a video from your camera to your computer using a flash card drive? for every 30 minutes on a video for example it should take... ?

The manual says it can be used as a web cam, but how? And I thought I read it's for video only, not audio? That's weird.

These are just a few of my Q.... 

Thanks,

Jeri

[rs-eos]

Firware is typically installed by first copying the firmware file onto an SD card, inserted that into the camcorder, and accessing the appropriate menus.  Each firmware update would have corresponding instructions, so read through that.

For using as a webcam, audio is not output as you've found (page 76 of the User Manual).  I believe the premise here is that you'd need to use a microphone to handle the audio.  e.g. if I wanted to ever use such a setup with my Mac Studio, I could set up the camcorder to supply the video, but then say use AirPods to pick up my audio.

Regarding how long it will take to copy footage onto your computer, that will depend upon the following variables:

• The read speed of your SD card.
• The destination write speed of your hard drive or SSD drive.
• Speed of various ports you'd be connecting cables to.
• Codec you're using for the footage.

e.g. if your SD card has a maximum read speed of 200 MB/s, your SSD drive has 3000 MB/s writes, but you're connecting the card reader to a USB 2.0 port, then the USB port will be the weakest/slowest point in the chain.  USB 2.0 has a theoretical max of 480 Mb/s (bits) or 60 MB/s (bytes).  Of the three MB/s values, 60 is the lowest.

Once you work out the slowest link (bottleneck), you'd then have to look up the bit rate that would be used for your footage in the User Manual (see page 131).

For example, say you're recording UHD at 150 Mb/s (18.75 MB/s).  30 minutes would take up around 33,750 MB.  Using the above bottleneck example, it would take around 562 seconds or a bit over 9 minutes to copy.

[jeri0818]

Thank you for this information. It's a little greek but I think I follow most of it. When I bought my sd cards I didn't even realize there was read speed. Mine card is 100. 

I wish there were some get started videos on Canons site, unless there are and I haven't seen them yet?

If you have an answer to how to connect the camera to an iPad, I would love to hear it. I tried using the Canon Connect app but I got stuck not knowing how to connect the two. I do have the correct cord for it. 

Thank you so much for answering!