dv walkman: necessity or extravagance?
 

I was wondering just how necessary a dv walkman (about 1500 dollars, right?) really is. I've been using my camera (XL1s) for all my capturing, rewinding, and dv playback. How bad is this for the tape mechanism? I've noticed the whirring sounds different now when I eject tapes and such.

A DV deck is necessary if you want to keep the wear down on your XL1's heads.

As for the DV Walkman, especially the one with the LCD screen, is a great tool if you do a lot of mobile shooting and want to preview on something bigger than your viewfinder. They are priced in the middle of the DV deck range of products, and are well worth the investment.

There is quite a range of DV decks available from Sony, JVC and Panasonic to suit most budgets. So like anything, shop around for what suits your budget and your needs.

Really? I've only seen the 1500 dollar walkmen (?), and they just go up in price from there. Other than that, there's the forty dollar dv tape rewinder that probably isn't much good for anything. Am I missing something?

Why not just buy a cheap minidv camera with a flipout LCD. Its not gonna be as big as the walkman screen, but you can also use it to shoot stuff in an emergency. keeps the wear on the heads down to a minimum, and its not $1500.

In my opinion $1500 is outrageous. You could buy a little elura and a big external LCD screen for the same price.

Mark

Not a bad idea. I'll keep it in mind. Thanks.

Smaller cameras like the Elura are not a bad option if you're on a tight budget. However they are not designed for the rigours of capture, neither is the XL1 for that matter. The transport on a deck is designed for constant back and forth and high speed search and therefore is built to take it. A camera transport is not.

While a cheap DV camera may be a short term solution, in the long run you'd be better off spending the extra on a deck. You can pick up a Panasonic or JVC DV deck for around a grand, and they also feature VHS/SVHS decks for direct dubbing.

To you sir, I say "ouch." I'm not going to spend that much until I start doing a great deal of home editing. I've only done three or so projects with all my own stuff, and short ones at that.

If you're on a tight budget and you're only doing a few projects, just go ahead and use the XL1 as a deck. You're not going to ruin it. You would have to be running the thing ten hours per day every day of the week before it becomes a problem. For what you're doing it just isn't a big deal. Hope this helps,

ten hours a day every day? Hah! Maybe some day, certainly not right now. Thanks for the tip.

Hi,
I did the exact thing Mark Percival(NYC) said . Last summer they were dicontinueing the Canon ZR-10, mini-dv, $399.00 .
I use it 95% as a deck and the other 5% a just to have with me if I see something newsworthy or extrodinary.

Bruce

I use the digital 8 version (D800) via firewire and have so far used it for all but 5 tapes with my xl1 (three times because I forgot either a tape or the firewire cable, thankfully the miniDV tapes are so small you can pack 'em in, just in case..). It's about $700 and uses a straight 8 tape just fine. It helps with framing and the like.

My 2 cents....

My friend has one of these Sony decks. It's very useful. You can even do some great editing with it. If I had the money, I'd probably buy one. But I don't have the money, so I use my cams and VCRs as editing decks.

Regarding the sony walkman. I use the version without the screen, which I think can be had for under $1000 now. I love it. I've used it for about 2 years with no problems, and it is significantly quicker than any camera I've used as far a shuttling back and forth during logging and capture. I pretty much use mine tethered to my desktop so I haven't had need for the builtin monitor, and it's great when I want to show the client something off site. I hate showing a crappy vhs copy, and this way I don't have to lug around the xl1s.

Barry Goyette

Juz chippin in

Have always refused to use the cams for NLEs but always look forward to the walkman. Its a damm good player and lasting too xcept that always have to activate the timecode display to know where am I. Its tougher and truly reliable than most would think. In comparison to another large deck, the Pansonic AG2700 paid with blood just cant play all makes of mini-dv tapes w/o glitches, esp those captured on Sony DV Cams. Initially suspected that Sony only complement another sony....Nah not true...AG2700 sometimes too sucks on tapes captured by XL1.

Its a blessing to have it, not having to wait for the cage door to eject to accept or spit out the tape, juz press the lid and it goes. However, it sucks the juice of the batts real fast. Can be very dissapointing when fully charged batts drained within 10 mins of playback. Thats why its now permanently hooked for life to my PC.

Cheers!