Technical Limitations

[Darryl Spears]

Maybe an expert can assist me in my project. First, the Loooong story. I work for a Government agency and one of the things we do is film roads. We have used S-VHS tape since the early 90's. I know, nobody uses super much anymore, but I have been trying to find a digital solution (DV, DVC, DVD, Hard Disk) that will allow me to insert (LINEAR) or dub audio in the field. If there is such a product, I would love to know about it. To explain a little more, the audio component of this "Video-Logging" is just the operator calling out events as the road goes by them. I can post all these in the office afterwards theoretically, but that opens up a huge can of worms. We have held back from upgrading because we can't solve this issue. Any help on this will be greatly appreciated.

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Darryl Spears

Maybe an expert can assist me in my project. First, the Loooong story. I work for a Government agency and one of the things we do is film roads. We have used S-VHS tape since the early 90's. I know, nobody uses super much anymore, but I have been trying to find a digital solution (DV, DVC, DVD, Hard Disk) that will allow me to insert (LINEAR) or dub audio in the field. If there is such a product, I would love to know about it. To explain a little more, the audio component of this "Video-Logging" is just the operator calling out events as the road goes by them. I can post all these in the office afterwards theoretically, but that opens up a huge can of worms. We have held back from upgrading because we can't solve this issue. Any help on this will be greatly appreciated.

Dubbing usually refers to adding fresh audio later to the tape while viewing the image on playback. I think what you're talking about is recording audio as you shoot, right? Mount the camera on the vehicle and record commentary as you drive along recording pictures? Virtually all DV cameras do that, recording either 2 channels of 16 bit audio or 4 channels of 12 bit. When recording 12 bit, you can record 2 channels as you shoot and dub in the other 2 channels in parallel to the existing track later. With almost every DV camera on the market you can record audio to tape as the images are shot or dub it in later while viewing the images, even while playing them back in the camera's viewfinder, your call. Seems like all but the most basic of basic consumer cams would cover all the possibilities you might need. Am I missing something in your requirements?