<<<-- Originally posted by Michael Struthers : The only thing that prevents me from buying a Z1 is that supposedly when you make DVD's of the footage it doesn't look so hot, because of compression upon compression...

Guess I could buy one to experiment... -->>>

Since no one has a Z1 yet how would anyone know?

"a drop in the tape means the whole GOP is dropped. And that's BAD."

That's correct. One single bad frame and you lose a bunch of them. It is horrible. Just awful. Looks really bad.

In the 5 hours of tape I have captured so far, it happened once.

Once.

I use the expensive, but recommended, tapes. No dropouts, no problems, and nobody can argue that I voided my warranty.

Once the various direct-to-disk options such as FireStore, etc. start to support HDV, you won't need to have a tape in the camera anyway.

Steven, so you got one dropped GOP in five hours... at SP tape speed. That's about 1/1080000, not bad at all, and should get better at DVCAM speed.

I don't think using other tapes would void the warranty... am I wrong? That would be the first time I have known of such a thing with tape.

When I bought the FX1, I bought 10 tapes. I didn't know what I could and could not get away with. If that is what Sony recommended, that is what I was going to buy. I was upgrading from a Canon ZR10 to a Sony HDR-FX1 without stopping along the way to buy a TRV-950 (for example). So I was going to pretty much trust Sony and do what they suggested. I don't have the deep background like many people do, so I just played along.

After having so little problem with these tapes, I will stick with them.

Besides, once you use one type of tape, the lubrication used makes a difference if you change. So I will stick with it. I suppose if I had the heads cleaned, which I believe is part of the Mack warranty once a year, that would be a good time to switch. But I doubt I will switch unless something even better comes along.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ignacio Rodriguez : not bad at all, and should get better at DVCAM speed. -->>>

Does the Z1 record HDV using DVCAM speed? I always assumed that DVCAM was an option you could only use when the camera was in SD mode.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ignacio Rodriguez: That's about 1/1080000, not bad at all, and should get better at DVCAM speed. -->>>

Does z1 really roll the tape in hdv mode with dvcam speed?
Or can you perhaps choose the speed?

Does anyone know if my PD-150 tapes (DVCAM and standard) will play my forthcoming Z1??

Thanks!

Yes the Z1 will play back miniDV and mini-DVCAM tapes.

Does z1 really roll the tape in hdv mode with dvcam speed?
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From what I've read, the Z1 will record(on a 60 min. mini-dv tape) 60 minutes in DV mode, 40 minutes in DVCAM mode, and 60 minutes in HDV. So it appears there's no speeding up the tape for HDV, and it will record in the normal DV bandwidth of 25MB/s.

By the way, Hi to everybody, I just found out about the Z1 after upgrading to Avid Xpress Pro HD last weekend and importing some HDV footage. This board has been a great resource in finding out the nitty-gritty on HDV and Sony's response to JVC.

Thanks Barry!

I'm sorry, but I've never owned a Sony Mini-DV camera (I do have an old Video 8 camera and the first Betamax Camera [which still works and could look great with some major heavy duty lighting]) so I don't know the difference between DVCAM and Mini-DV. I know the DVCAMs can record a lot more than Mini-DV, but what does this do for HDV that Mini-DV doesn't? Are there NO dropouts with DVCAM? Or, is there like a 70% reduction in possible dropout occurence?

You're thinking of the larger form factor DVCAM cassettes which none of these prosumer cameras use. When recording DVCAM on a miniDV cassette you only 40 minutes due to the faster tape speed. I don't know that there is any hard data on dropout reduction, but the faster tape speed should help. The binary data is the same as regular DV so there is no inherent quality improvement. Do a search on DVCAM and you will find a lot of discussion, mostly in the PD-170 forum.

Eh.... no thanks. I don't like deep sea message board searching ^_^. What you've said is enough, that's all I needed to know, thanks!

I'm sorry, but recently I saw some really bad footage taken with the FX1, so I think I'll wait for Panasonic (even if it is a 16:9 DVX100, I am on a GL1 after all so anything would be an upgrade).

<< recently I saw some really bad footage taken with the FX1 >>

Gee whiz. I've seen really bad footage from just about every camcorder ever made. Most often it's operator error -- the camera doesn't have that much to do with how bad it is.