i just bought a pd150p and i don't want to run out it's drum by using it as a player for viewing, editing, etc.

what dv players do you reccommend for minidv and dvcam cassettes?

on the b&h site, i came across players ranging from $800-$2500. i have no idea what the difference between them is.

all i really need is a player which won't break down on me and feed dv into my pc firewire card.

what do the more profecional systems provide that i might be missing?

would very much appreciate posts with models, price range and explaination why they are reccommended.

thanks.

Are you shooting DVCAM or just DV with that PD150?

A lot of people just use a cheap DV camera for a deck. That would definitely be the cheapest solution.

Using a "cheap" deck will no be a possibility if he's shooting DVCAM.

Personally, if he just captures a tape or so a week I'd just use the camera to grab it all in one pass then chop it up with the nle. It's not going to prematurely kill the cam, certainly not the PD150.

What NLE are you using? Not all decks and cameras play so nice with all NLE. Since the promary function of the "cheap" cameras or deck is to feed an NLE, get one that that is recommended or supported by the NLE manufacture.

Jeff

thanks for the replies.

i'll be using avid xpress dv 3.5 on a pc.

i think i read somewhere that a time code can only be recorded on DVCAM. is this true? otherwise i'd probably use miniDV 99% of the time. but if it is true, i might end up using DVCAM more than the normal miniDV SP tapes.

if you need any more information to help me out, please just say so.

thank you very much.

I picked up a JVC SR-V30U which is a Mini-DV/SVHS 4 head dual deck. It has come down a bit in price since I purchased it. You can get them around $825.00 now.

Overall I have been very happy with it. The dual deck feature is great for creating VHS tapes directly from my Mini-DV tapes. Plus it has a Firewire connection, so I can use it as a source deck instead of my camera.

If you are looking for a reasonably priced unit, you might want to give this one consideration.

(Bought my deck from Pro Tape, a DVinfo.net sponsor)

DVCam records SMPTE timecode. Mini DV records DV timecode. It works fine for its intended purpose (frame accurate editing), but lacks compatability with SMPTE timecode. There are devices that will translate DV timecode into SMPTE timecode.

Jeff