Age Old Question: Canon ZR40 suitable capture device for XL1s?
 

Here's the deal:

I just filmed 34 hours of footage on my XL1s with Panasonic 63PQs (from Zotz Digital, woohoo!) for the "Making of" a major motion picture I just worked on.

I know better than to use my XL1s to capture all those tapes (or portions thereof) and while I'd like to buy a deck, it may be cost prohibitive right now. Reading the threads, it occurred to me I could probably cannibalize my mom's camera for my purposes. It is a Canon ZR40.

Everything you guys have said so far seems to say, "Yes" but to make sure: Is that camera a suitable alternative to capturing all these tapes on a mini-dv deck? Are there any drawbacks?

Do a search and read some of the users thoughts. It will work fine because digital is digital i.e. no loss of quality. It will not be as fast as a deck in cueing, FF and REW.

Thanks - was only asking re: the specific model of camera.
 

Thanks Jeff,

I didn't mean to harp on something that's been discussed - it was my paranoia that maybe that particular model (the Canon ZR40) may have some defect/issue I wasn't aware of.

But it seems that any mini-dv playing camcorder can do the trick.


Much thanks again,


Joshua

I use a ZR 50 for the footage I shoot on a GL1. Works Fine.

I use my ZR-45 for my GL-2 footage. Well until the ZR-45 stopped powering up. Hopefully it is cheap to fix.

I still use an Elura 2MC as a general purpose "deck" both for capturing XL1 & GL1 footage, and for outputting final jobs to a digital master.

I also use it to make a digital dub off of analog sources instead of a Hollywood Bridge or other such analog-to-digital converter. Yes, it takes twice as long: once to dub, once to capture...but the clips are usually no more than 5 minutes long (and I get paid by the hour, hee hee).

Not stylish for sure, but it gets the job done. If it blows up, it owes me nothing, and then maybe I'll get a "proper" DV deck.

I use a ZR40 for capturing tapes from my XL1. It works great!
You should have no problems.