Most efficient way to capture from DVX cam to save heads?
 

Hey all. Well my dvx100a is in the mail right now and I had some concerns regarding the most efficient capture method for importing footage via firewire to my PC. Previously on short films that contained an extensive amount of shots, I would stop and pause continuously on my DV852 while capturing in Premiere to get each shot its own file. It seems that this constant stopping etc. to get 10 - 20 second long files for each shot or couple of shots puts a little wear on the cam.

For those who use their dvx for playback and capture, is there any technique you use to avoid excessive wear?

Finally, I've considered the option of getting the cheapest DV cam I could find for capturing purposes (as opposed to the very expensive dedicated DV deck). Is there anything to be weary of here? Does every DV cam output via firewire the same quality digital signal?

Thanks for all insights!

1) Capture direct to a laptop via firewire while filming. The tape is then just a backup.

2) or Capture the whole tape and render each shot as a separate avi file from your software. (I haven't used Premier, but I know it would be possible to do it this way in Vegas)

Patrick

Vegas has capture settings which capture each clip as a separate file. Filenames are "tape name - clip ###.avi".

Not sure about Premier or any others.

Hi Bryan,

The way I handle that is simple:

1) Film with the DVX100 in progressive mode.
2) Playback the tape on my old Sony handycam (TRV30) camcorder that's connected to the pc. It's just digital info via firewire, and I haven't found any differences in the captured quality compared with playback from the DVX.

I'm not sure if the fact that I'm PAL user that doesn't need any special pulldown tricks to get the 24P video into the timeline.

Peter

kind of unrelated but it was brought up...
Is it possible to record directly to a firewire hard drive... with out a PC at all. Just a wire from the camera to the harddrive. (and maybe another cable to power the hard drive although I thought that it's possible to get power through firewire.)

yes, I saw this new technology in another post. I'm intruiged but not by the price. I think it's a sigh of relief that the DVX is able to accept an accessory like this because it ensures that its minidv tape format wont become completely obsolete in 3-4 years and if hard drive based digital camcorders come into full bloom with a rush, we dvxer's can purchase an item such as this. I gotta wait until the price for a large unit hits $400 or so...

I guess for now, I might end up not selling my dv852 after all and just use it as a slave dv drive for capturing... Man, all those accessories like wide angle lenses and filters are really going to go to waste...

Your old camcorder is a good B-roll camcorder, to shoot behind the scenes-videos for the dvd releases of all your upcoming block-buster big budget DVX100 movies ;-)

I gave up on using Premiere for capture a long time ago. Setting in and out points by hand was a real pain. Try Scenalyzer (www.scenalyzer.com). It will capture at tape and put each scene into a seperate file. Simple. Cheap. Works well.