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-   -   How bad is it to use my V1U as the recorder and also for playback? (https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/sony-hvr-v1-hdr-fx7/91105-how-bad-use-my-v1u-recorder-also-playback.html)

Trey Dillen April 9th, 2007 04:33 PM

How bad is it to use my V1U as the recorder and also for playback?
 
The v1u is my first piece of professional equipment. I used to use consumer sony camcorders and use them for recording and also for the playback. Can i continue to do this with my V1u without damaging the camera, or do i need to save up and invest in the DR60 or an HDV deck? Sorry if this sounds like an amateur question, but the truth is...i am an amateur.

Don Bloom April 9th, 2007 05:30 PM

well the worst thing you'll do by using the cam as a playback and/or recording deck is to put lots more hours on the heads BUT if that's the only option you have right now then I guess you don't have much choice. Personally I would want to try to get a deck as soon as I could BUT it depends on your finances AND how much you actually shoot.

Just my $.03 worth (adjusted for inflation)

Don

Lee Berger April 9th, 2007 05:34 PM

It's always better to have a separate deck to capture from. This saves wear and tear on your camera. Having said that, you can minimize the wear by capturing a full tape or large segments. Shuttling back and forth to select individual scenes for capture will certainly put the strain on your camera. Playing through is not so stressful. This works best in documentary where you may want a lot of footage on line to choose from. Editing software such as Adobe Premiere has the option of creating new files upon camera start and stop. After you capture a full tape you can toss the bad takes (files) to free up hard drive space. I use the Media Manager in Final Cut Studio to copy trimmed subclips (without recompression) and then toss the original files. It's a lot easier to scrub through captured media than to scrub through a tape. In the HDV mode FCP adds the create new files upon stop and start option.

Marco Wagner April 9th, 2007 06:14 PM

That's kind of the way I do it as well. Capture the whole tape, sometimes while watching with a excel spreadsheet open to notate certain sections. Then later I go back in Premiere and use the razor like a serial killer. THEN output the saved scenes to the same format without recompression. The result is a few 100MB or couple GB vs 13GB or going through the tape over and over again...

Trey Dillen April 9th, 2007 07:18 PM

sooo
 
so basically what you guys are saying is that it is best to have a deck, but if i cannot afford the deck or external HD (DR60) at the moment, i should capture the whole tape at once and delete things on the computer rather than fast forwarding and rewinding to capture only the good footage. ( less strain on the recording heads).....am i correct?

Chris Medico April 9th, 2007 07:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trey Dillen (Post 657077)
so basically what you guys are saying is that it is best to have a deck, but if i cannot afford the deck or external HD (DR60) at the moment, i should capture the whole tape at once and delete things on the computer rather than fast forwarding and rewinding to capture only the good footage. ( less strain on the recording heads).....am i correct?

One thing to consider is buying a HC5 for a playback deck. This will also give you a cam for shooting insert footage. I do that now with my HC3 and it works great. Its a much lower cost option than buying one of the dedicated decks.

Chris

Marcus Marchesseault April 9th, 2007 07:30 PM

Buying a $3000 deck to save wear on a $4000 camera that could probably have the mechanism replaced for about $500 doesn't seem to make sense. I like the cheap HDV cam as a deck/backup and capture entire tape ideas. Also, put your camera back in it's case after capturing. Sitting out on a desk for days at a time between shoots will cause more dust problems than going outside for a couple of hours. The little things can add up over time to be worse than periodic moderate contamination.

Marco Wagner April 9th, 2007 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marcus Marchesseault (Post 657082)
Also, put your camera back in it's case after capturing. Sitting out on a desk for days at a time between shoots will cause more dust problems than going outside for a couple of hours. The little things can add up over time to be worse than periodic moderate contamination.

YES! I also make sure the transport door never stays open longer than it takes to take the tape out or put it in. I never let the tape cage "snap" out like it does on VX2100, A1U, and Canon's XLs -I hate that! I simply put my fingers loosely on it to let it gently thud against my fingers rather than the huge "pop". I try to do the same with tapes, never exposing them to anything but the inside of the camera or the jewl case. I bought an air compressor and lightly blow dust from every crack on my cams as well.

Unless you shoot for a living, buying a deck or another multi-thousand dollar camera isn't rational. imho Just capture it all on the first once through and chop out the bits you don't want on the computer.

Trey Dillen April 9th, 2007 08:56 PM

Thanks a lot
 
Thanks a lot for the replies. I really appreciate the quick feedback and the different opinions from each of you. Thanks again.

Piotr Wozniacki April 9th, 2007 09:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lee Berger (Post 657018)
After you capture a full tape you can toss the bad takes (files) to free up hard drive space. I use the Media Manager in Final Cut Studio to copy trimmed subclips (without recompression) and then toss the original files.

Lee, do you know how to copy (save) trimmed subclips without recompression in Vegas?

Steve Mullen April 9th, 2007 10:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marcus Marchesseault (Post 657082)
Buying a $3000 deck to save wear on a $4000 camera that could probably have the mechanism replaced for about $500 doesn't seem to make sense.

A great point! By the time the heads wear out, it's likely you will have already sold your FX7 on eBay because the new Blu-ray camcorder will be what you'll be using. :)

Marcus Marchesseault April 10th, 2007 01:35 AM

Add to that the facts that you can use a hard-drive system connected to the firewire or even a second HDV camcorder (done that with DV) and being crazy about the heads in your V1 isn't worthwhile. Don't get me wrong, reduce wear when possible, but the magic in this camera isn't the DV/HDV deck. It has firewire and HDMI output that can be used in place of the tape mechanism.

Glenn Davidson April 10th, 2007 02:07 AM

I have found some benefits to the addition of a Sony M15 deck, Like:

1) It's always connected. I don't have to power cycle to connect or risk blowing out the firewire.
2) Uses DVCAM tapes for long archive or exchange with other editors.
3) Sits neatly on desk, I don't have to worry about catching a wire and pulling it onto the floor.
4) My FX1 sits protected in it's case waiting for its next gig.
5) Composite, S-video, componet, FW ins and outs on one panel,makes a great pass through device or patch point for various video devices
6) Looks cool..Impresses that LADIES!

I think if you can afford it, get a deck.

Lee Berger April 10th, 2007 04:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Piotr Wozniacki (Post 657143)
Lee, do you know how to copy (save) trimmed subclips without recompression in Vegas?

Sorry Piotr, but I don't use Vegas. Perhaps Douglas Spotted Eagle can help.

Piotr Wozniacki April 10th, 2007 05:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lee Berger (Post 657305)
Sorry Piotr, but I don't use Vegas. Perhaps Douglas Spotted Eagle can help.

In fact, it doesn't need to be Vegas. In my DV days, I had a freeware utility to do just that: cut and trim, or merge clips and output them as a single clip in exactly the same format (AVI type I), without recompression. Fast and lossless! Does anyone knows how to do it with HDV .m2t clips? A standalone utility, or Premiere, Edius, Vegas - I just can't find the right tool! Am I missing something?

Lee Berger April 10th, 2007 05:47 AM

Quicktime Pro is a good option. It's not free, but at $30.00 US it's inexpensive. You can load a clip, mark in and out, then trim to selection and save without re compressing. Unfortunately you can't do it as a batch.

Seth Bloombaum April 10th, 2007 10:42 AM

I've heard about Womble for cutting MPEG2 without re-encoding on the pc, never used it myself.

$70 US, http://www.womble.com/products/mvw.html

They also have this product, http://www.womble.com/products/vcr.html, $35 US, which may do all you need.

Free trials available for both.

Piotr Wozniacki April 10th, 2007 10:58 AM

Lee, Seth;

Thanks a lot - I just downloaed and tried the MPEG-VCR; works as expected - superfast, no recode!

Paul Frederick April 10th, 2007 04:37 PM

Put me down as one who doesn't see the point in buying a dedicated deck. It would be nice, don't get me wrong, but instead I bought a V1 for nearly the same money. Now I have 2 HDV cameras, (FX-1 too) and can do everything the deck can AND shoot video too! Plus if one camera goes down, I have another to use. If I bought a deck and the camera goes down, I have...well...a deck. I've dubbed hundreds of hours of footage with my FX1 and it still works like a charm.

Just my .02!

Now if they would come out with a deck that can record HDV output of a KONA card in real time via HD-SDI (or component even)....then I'd buy one in a heartbeat! But no one wants to do that...they all make you record via firewire, and that takes HOURS and HOURS of render time. But that is another topic...

Bob Grant April 10th, 2007 05:22 PM

Don't know about anyone else but I'd be lost without my M15U, how else to handle D5 shell tapes and R50 and R60 tapes?
Sure I used to do the camera on the desk trick, what a PIA. Risk isn't the heads, think whole thing falling on the floor, power glitch frying the firewire ports etc. Plus the M15 rewinds SO much faster than a camera transport.

Marcus Marchesseault April 10th, 2007 07:25 PM

Bob, can HDV be recorded onto the larger DVCAM tapes using a deck? That might be the one benefit I could understand. The faster shuttle would be nice, but all I do is rewind once and capture the whole tape.

My 320Gig SATA Seagate with 16Meg buffer cost 90$. I'll let it take the abuse.

Marco Wagner April 10th, 2007 11:47 PM

Yeah I don't understand why a deck has to cost SO MUCH. It is essentially a friggin' VCR. I would buy one in a heartbeat if I could get it for less than $200 DV/HDV...

BTW my HVR-A1U rewinds faster than any camera I've owned or used so far, something new to me, I'm used to it being slow. If I could get that rewind speed, DV/HDV, and under $200 I'm sold this second.

John Cline April 11th, 2007 12:54 PM

VideoReDo will edit HDV files, but outputs them as .TS files. Womble's MPEG Video Wizard outputs .M2T files, but I've had minor issues with it not writing the PCR PID correctly.

Steven Davis April 11th, 2007 01:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marcus Marchesseault (Post 657082)
Buying a $3000 deck to save wear on a $4000 camera that could probably have the mechanism replaced for about $500 doesn't seem to make sense. I like the cheap HDV cam as a deck/backup and capture entire tape ideas. Also, put your camera back in it's case after capturing. Sitting out on a desk for days at a time between shoots will cause more dust problems than going outside for a couple of hours. The little things can add up over time to be worse than periodic moderate contamination.

I'll get on Marcus' bandwagon. This is IMO where Sony fails to understand the market (maybe the corner market I live in.) I'm not Fox Channel with a 100,000,000,000,000.02 dollar budget. If I had a choice between a deck and a camera, I'd choose the camera. If I had the above budget, well, I'd buy both.

Bob Grant April 11th, 2007 09:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marcus Marchesseault (Post 657845)
Bob, can HDV be recorded onto the larger DVCAM tapes using a deck? That might be the one benefit I could understand. The faster shuttle would be nice, but all I do is rewind once and capture the whole tape.

My 320Gig SATA Seagate with 16Meg buffer cost 90$. I'll let it take the abuse.

Yes, you can record HDV, upto 4.5 hours of it, onto those larger tapes.
Also all the HDV decks handle R50 and R60, that can come in handy too.

Steve Mullen April 11th, 2007 11:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob Grant (Post 658688)
Also all the HDV decks handle R50 and R60, that can come in handy too.

Not very likely the vast majority of V1U owners. And, this thread was started by a V1U owner. The cost of a VTR is so high that if this was a daily issue, one could buy both a V1U and a V1E.

The POTENTIAL VTR virture is for those who log clips and batch capture and possibly batch capture again. This requires accurate time code, the ability to reliably search and find a timecode, and high shuttle-speed.

This ALSO requires batch capture be supported perfectly by your NLE. Vegas doesn't do so at all, while others like FCP claim they do, but often fail. Which makes Vegas more honest.

Before I paid for a VTR to do this, I'd want to see agreement that my NLE really supported this function were I to buy a VTR. My first generation Sony VTR and FCP 5.1.4 seem to fail many times during HDV batch capture.

PS: with HDMI capture from VTR or camcorder, there needs to be a way of controlling the device. Moreover, the frame output via HDMI must match the TC. (Or, have a realiable offset.) This is a big question for the BM folks at NAB.


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