Using the JVC deck or not?
 

i'm curious how many of you JVCHD100 users picked up the JVC deck as well for playback/capture...or are you just using the camera to play back and capture in to your NLE?

Firestore
 

Have you considered just getting the firestore? 80gb is roughly $1700. there's no need for a deck. saves wear and tear on the camera. just a thought.

It's a good deck (so far). It interfaces well with FCP and it downconverts HD to SD via the analog outputs. The menu is controlled by buttons on the deck not via a remote.

Drhd 100
 

is definatly the way to go as its cheaper option than the player recorder.
I got mine for 1535.00.

well that's the thing, i guess i'm curious about how realistic that is as an option, to just record to the firestore and dump from that into my NLE.....so far sounds VERY realistic.

you guys are'nt having any issues with dropped frames or anything weird like that?

I cannot get fcp to see my jvc deck at all. Any ideas?

on the other note.

I support it mostly because even with a fire store I still want somthing on tape, plus I don't like to edit with my camera, little old fashion I know.

Not at all! Anyone who can afford a deck should get one. It will save the wear and tear on the camera. Cameras are designed to record to tape and at a crunch to review what was shot. Decks are designed to withstand the tape shuffling back and forth that is typical of logging and editing. Bottom line.

Thanks. The whole reason I went with jvc besides I feel the 720 is more robust but the deck is a real deck unlike the sony, in my opinon.

I like it alot I just wish I wasn't having so may problems getting fcp to see it.

I tired lumiere and still nothing.
Although I get the impression you cannot log in luminere, is that true?

I also work in avid too, if anyone has this deck working with the mac version of avid I would love any feedback.

Kinda figures, avid pc supports the brhd50 and I just switched to apple with both avid and final cut and neither of them claim to support it. 8P

Hi Jon - Yes we bought the deck, partly because we needed another Mini DV deck to replace ageing equipment - so we need the ability to play mini dv tapes from other sources anyway. The deck really is very well laid out and is a pleasure to use - to second what Jiri said - if you can afford one it is worth the purchase. Although we will also use the DR100 (on order) when it arrives, we will also continue to back up onto tape for the more important jobs.

Jeff... What Version FCP? How are you connecting the deck to your Mac?

Stu...
www.studioscotland.co.uk

The Firestores certainly do sound like they are a simple workflow, faster and easier than a deck. BUT- it is a hard drive, and hard drives will fail at one point or another... usually when you need it the most, and have nothing backed up. Damn you Murphy!

Anyways, just having a tape in your cam as a backup, can save the day. And, if you need to capture that tape's footage, you either need a deck, or your cam. So, I can't see any reason to not have a deck, aside from not being able to afford one.

I do and it works fine for ingest. Just about any deck template will do, even SONY DSR11. I use it controlled by RS422 through a Keyspan adaptor. It doesn't, however, work for recording back to tape -- yet. So I have to use my DSR-11 for that. I believe that the problem is an Avid issue that has to do with the deck template and my hope is that after NAB there is going to be an upgrade that will solve this. FYI: my Avid version is AXP 4.8 (Mac). So, of course, we are talking about using the deck in SD or downconvert mode.

What deck are we talking about?

I'm sure he's talking about the... what is it? BR-50?

Yes Br50 JVC. It's connected via firewire and I have final cut 5 (not 5.1 upgrade) apple said the new upgrade would not support it. ALso 10.4.6 is the os.

For budget minded shooters, this is the big plus with the new Firestores. In my experience, while always a concern on any project, hard drive failure has, thankfully never cost us a minute of work over the years.
Now obviously a field operated hard drive is a thing unto itself, but I'm assuming that by its nature it has been designed robustly.

So, of course, you drop a $5 mini dv tape into your drive while capturing to hard drive and in that hopefully rare instance that you have a drive failure you can use your HD100 as capture device for your backup without the cost of a deck.

yeah Jim that's kind'a what i was thinking also, that record your footage to your firestore and have a tape in there recording at the same time (your back up to the hard drive) i think you HAVE to have a tape in there anyway? is that correct? could be wrong

when you finish a project in FC can you take the saved file/footage and back it up on tape? that can be done with the deck? yes the BR-HD50 Deck.

Is there a way to control it with a serial cable maybe with a usb connector...could that be a problem. I'm under the impression time code is a little "funny" with hdv. Most of my footage is 30p so I'm not dealing with the 24 issue.

Although I'm surprised I cannot even pull up a picture on the computer.

External monitor looks good....man I live hdv. It may not be real HD but for the price and size it looks fine to me.

I also have some dv footage which still won't show up when run throught he deck. My dsr 11 looks fine.

I know the upgrade to the jvc prohd camera has something to do with editing. Could the deck need upgrading too? Are they offering it?

I bouth the stuff back in dec.

Does the deck play the mini-Dv and full DV casettes OK? No drop outs on DV on Sony tapes?
I wanna know in case I replace my current Sony DV deck

So far as the deck by itself, not including the nle issues. I love it. It's a real deck, component out, serial out, fire out etc. The only thing missing is a jog shuttle. Dv is fine.

But like i said so far, it is still new to me. I really like the fact it plays full cassettes too.

I have the deck and edit to Premiere 2.0. It works great with dv and dvcam.
But I still cannot get Adobe to see it while it is in HDV Mode. After I totally uninstalled and re instlled the program and after 1 hour on the phone with Adobe I am still unable to see it. Adobe told me that JVC is not on the list of "tested" equipment. But the deck is great with standard DV.

Humm, I can't see it in dv mode either. Maybe it is the cable. It's usually the last thing you think of right.

Ok got DV picture but still not deck control.

I also have the deck, but if I had a choice between a DTE disk system or the deck (it was not an option for me at the time) I would go with the DTE disk. More so if you do not need to deliver finished on the mini DV tape format. I look at all the time I spend shooting AND digitizing... ACK! 4 hours of shoot time followed by 3-4 hours of EDL / digitizing. DTE disk here I come.

Jeff... have you got the Remote/Local switch set correctly?... just a thought...

Stu...
www.studioscotland.co.uk

yep. cable is fine too.

grunt.

I may have to suck it up and get a pc for now.

ugh the thought.
at least I don't mind avid.

Thanks everyone.

Hopefully the intel g5's come out by the end of the week.
I hate to spend the money twice.

I'll give tech support one last call.

Jeff,

I tried the deck out for a day with Final Cut Pro and it worked beautifully. I even worked out an offline/online workflow for 720P24 using TC via the RS-422 and Decklink with automated pulldown removal.

I was also able to make the deck work as expected in full firewire HDV mode as well as DV mode. I just had to switch the remote switch to the right setting. The REM SEL HDV/DV just needs to be turned ON in the REMOTE menu.

However, for the best pre-roll accuracy when using RS-422, I had to set the CONTROLLER SEL in REMOTE menu to TYPE7. You may want to try the same thing.

Nothing. I just found out I'm missing some stuff on the camera too. I wonder if somehow I got a demo unit. I'll call JVC tomorrow. thanks guys.

I'll let you know what happens. I was hoping I was being an idiot. 8P

Ok, don't know what happened but today everything worked. Luminere and the deck in dv mode. finally something.

The next question is, since lumiere doesnt' carry time code, ugh.

Is there a way to have the firewire output dv from a hdv tape on the jvc deck?

If not can I clone hdv through firewire to a dsr 11 and carry timecode?

or is it just easier to run it through a y.u.v. converter to firewire and control the deck serial-ly. A messier option but one I'm sure would work.

Basically I want to log in avid or final cut and will worry about finish later.

If you want an offline/online with timecode scenario for standard def, then you should get the DecklinkSP. I tested mine with the deck the other day and worked out a 720P24 downconverted to NTSC TIMECODE workflow using RS-422.
If you want to offline at low-rez and then re-capture at HD rez, you will want one of the higher end Decklink cards or Kona cards.

THanks, I know kona but not too familar with decklink. I'll check it out.

We've been very unhappy with our BR-HD50 VTR's. We own two. We've had two replacements, and one sent in for factory servicing. Problems mainly occur with RS-422 usage. These include shut downs during remote control that result in "playback inhibit" errors, "overheat" errors. Not only that, the units switch into PAL mode when these crashes occur. If we try to capture about 20 clips its almost guaranteed.

The factory serviced unit no longer crashes with the overheat error but continues to crash with the playback inhibit one. They set the temp senor to a higher preset trigger value. JVC support has been good, but it seems they really don't know what Japan JVC is doing to fix these issues. It's sort of a, well lets hope they fix your problem in the next firmware, kind of thing. At least that's how I read the response.

To compound things, we just got an RMA brand new unit from our dealer to test. It immediately ate and destroyed a tape from a doc on Guatemala we are producing! The first tape put in the unit. Oh for the good ol' days of BetaSP. I know, it's like "oh! you put in a very valuable tape in a brand new unit without testing it first and making a copy?" ...Com'on!

I really don't know the answer to pro- production in JVC HDV. The camera's rock but the editor's and VTRs are left really in the lurch.

Dave Beaty
Dreamtime

Do you think that gop issues are causing that. I been kinda wondering how one can batch catpure from a deck that is reading muliple frames together.

Someone mentioned a couple weeks ago that the BR-50 was also being accepted by JVC for "A" updating. Has anyone confirmed this?

My Deck Too
 

We're in the process of editing our first HD project with the 50 deck. We are using the Kona LH card and capturing the 24P via analouge component HD. The sound and picture are fantastic.

The Kona card is controlling the deck during batch capture using RS-422. So far, the deck has reset itself two times with an "overheat" error. When I called JVC the rep seemed to be aware of the issue. The deck has to go back to JVC for an update and this takes at least 72 hours in their shop. I am dissappointed to hear that the problem might not be completely solved after the servicing.

It seems the deck error occurs if the tape shuttles into an area where there is no recording. Avoiding the "capture now" function, which could prevent this is the way to go, in theory.

With regard to using a Firestore as an alternative to the deck, I would be very cautious about this. Last year we shot a reality TV show in 24P with three FS-4's and DVX-100's. Overall they worked great. But every time that we have used these units, they always end up recording one or two corrupt files. This is not predictable. We recently shot a large project in SD mode on the HD-100. On that job the FS-4's recorded five or six corrupt files out of six hours of recorded media. Always, always roll a tape back-up. This way you get the best of out the DTE without the worries of this volatile approach.

-Dave Dessel

David,

It's good to see someone using the same setup as us. I've been communicating with JVC southeast about any newer firmware updates to our units. The one we had serviced wasn't with an official update, but one the engineers did to reduce the overheat errors.

Have you had any problems capturing 480i downconversions via FCPro? There seems to be a genlock-sync type issue that log and capture doesn't always lock too?

I'd love to hear about an official upgrade. All in all, the decks work fine, aside from the RS-422 probs and the one that ate our tape, out of the box.

JVC has been very upfront and helpful about these problems. I've found that if you make the effort to communicate, they will help out.

I wish they would make a more "pro" version of the BR-50.

Heck, we'd even beta test it, which is what I feel like I'm doing right now.

Dave Beaty

Oh one more thing...

We've had a real issue with operators capturing correct audio levels. Almost all of the sound we've been capturing is too low.

I've done some testing on the units and it seems the LED displays are misleading compared to other cameras. Audio is coming in around 50% norm. Auto limiters also seem pretty useless as they really breath to much for professional use. Our operators are being very conservative with the LED VU meters, yet the headroom between too low and clipping is almost a hair on the faders.

Anyone else?

Dave