To save wear on my XL1s heads, which player would you advise?
Thank you.

Hi Allan, its been proved you'll probably update your XL1s cam long before you wear out its heads.

And with average use, after about 2 years it's good to get a Canon service, where they'll check everything including parts that wear
like the pinch roller in the tape transport. This'll (hopefully) catch anything that'll give you trouble down the track.

But it is handy to have and use another cam for basic upload to your PC. I use a Canon HV20.
You could snag a HV20, HV30 or HV40.

A good tip with those, (and your XL1s), is to use its remote control to shuttle the tape back and forwards while you cue it.
This saves wear on its buttons and you can position the cam further away on your post editing desk, saves reaching over,
that is if you don't use your NLE buttons.

You have a Canon backup cam as well.

Cheers.

I use a HV40 - works well, although tape movement (FF and RW) are a bit slower than a dedicated HDV-capable tape deck. Before that I used a HV20, but it died (probably caused by a issue with the IEEE 1394 port)

Best to carefully observe the recommended connection sequence and not try to hot-connect/hot-swap the firewire port. Have the camcorder powered down when you make a conenction to reduce risk.

As noted above, this gives you a back-up machine for doing capture/transfer as well as shoots which can be important if you are running a business or haev frequent efforts with deadlines. That is arguably at least as important as head wear.

Thank you Allan & Don much appreciated.
Regards
Allan

A good tip with those, (and your XL1s), is to use its remote control to shuttle the tape back and forwards while you cue it.
This saves wear on its buttons and you can position the cam further away on your post editing desk, saves reaching over,
that is if you don't use your NLE buttons.

You have a Canon backup cam as well.

Cheers.

Great tip Allan. I have a HV40 bought partly for capturing footage, I'd not considered benefits of using the remote for control at a desk.

Yep it is Jeff. I was a bit slow using the remote for that at first, then you get faster and know how far away to position your HV40 on your editing desk, how far back to rewind your tape to cue it .. you can power it with AC, saving battery wear.

And you can leave it set up when you go shooting with your XH/XL cam.

Cheers.

And you can leave it set up when you go shooting with your XH/XL cam.
I usually toss mine in a corner of a bag to have at the shoot as a spare just in case.

And using my HV20, or my new HV40 as an upload camera, I use its LCD to monitor and cue the footage, noting its timecode.

That's great memory training, remembering each timecode reading 00:00:00:00, to re-cue the tape each time to upload the required scenes.
Helps me to focus in the mornings :))

Cheers.