Hi I tried via using the IP address and just wondered if this was the preferred way to do this ?
Thanks
What do you mean "using the IP address", and what do you mean "preferred"?
There are lots of ways to transport a recording, the best way will depend on your circumstances - including whether you have custom firmware installed.
The primary limitation is data rate - anything which uses the HDR-FOX's networking runs at about 10MB/s maximum, but the USB interface maxes out at about 3MB/s (a PC USB2 interface goes maybe 5x as fast). On the other hand, transporting via a USB drive (although transfers are slow), you just set up the copy and go away while it gets on with it, and doesn't require a PC to be turned on at the time. So, as a rule of thumb, a 1GB recording will take a couple of minutes to copy over a network but maybe 8 minutes by USB. USB transfers run a bit faster if there is no decryption in the process.
But USB drives themselves also have limitations: FAT32 has a 4GiB size limit for files (easily exceeded for a HiDef recording); NTFS requires custom firmware and the
ntfs3g package; Ext3 is not directly compatible with Windows.
Transferring by network without CF means using the FTP server or tapping into the DLNA server. Recordings transferred using FTP remain encrypted (unless already decrypted); recordings "grabbed" by saving the stream from the DLNA server are decrypted, but only StDef recordings are available (HiDef recordings have to be "unprotected" before they are available by DLNA).
With CF installed: recordings can be downloaded to PC (via network) directly from
WebIF >> Browse Media Files >> (navigate to desired recording) >> OPT+ >> Download; or with the
samba (for Windows) or
nfs-utils (for Linux/Mac) package installed the HDR-FOX file system becomes accessible as Network Attached Storage directly accessible from the PC's file manager (with all the usual copy, cut, paste, drag GUI operations available). However, the
samba CF package only confers SMB version 1 protocols, whereas Win10 defaults to SMB v3 and you would have to find the admin setting to enable SMBv1/v2. WebIF download will decrypt if necessary; the other methods require decryption separately (which can be done on the PC if required).
A big problem I have with network transfers is the reliability of my network. I find my HomePlug links bomb out during large transfers, and frequently I can't access my WiFi-connected HDR-FOX at all, so it is not unusual for me to resort to USB (one day I'll put in Ethernet cables for glorious reliable networking)! Having said that, assuming everything is working,
my go-to (most convenient, ie preferred) method is
samba and the direct access that gets me in my Win7 file manager.
There is no "preferred" method from a technical point of view, each method is available to use as needed.
I say again: what do you mean "using the IP address" (because the IP address is implicated in all the network methods listed above)?