Canon HV20 (30?) vs. DVX-100 - What to buy?)

[C.S. Michael]

Originally Posted by Peter Moretti

Fine for some things, yes. But if serious post production work is going to be applied to the audio, then it's really not fine. The DVX's audio is far superior to the HV-20's. For many things it won't matter, but for some it will.

Fair enough. I probably should label the audio "sufficient" since it has been for my purposes, but would not be for everyone. Also, the HV20 does not supply phantom power, so that can be an issue. I picked up a 48V phantom power supply (which was cheap, like $40) to pair with it.

[Chris Barcellos]

My VX2000 gathers dust these days, as I shoot mostly with the HV20 and my FX1, even thought delivery still is in SD most times.

[Bruce Foreman]

Originally Posted by Colin McDonald

so $40 for that much recording and then what about archiving? Nobody's going to just leave the footage on the card at that price.

I"ve got a pair of HF100's and when I get back from a shoot, make sure I'm grounded well, take the cards out of the camera(s) and copy the original .MTS files over to 2 external 500GB drives as well as the internal 500GB drive. These files on the internal stay there until I finish the project and no longer need to maintain it on the internal.

One of the externals gets disconnected and stored until the next "new project" files need to be archived.

So far no problems with any media. I use only SanDisk, and PNY. One other practice I have is to not merely delete files from the card nor do a "quick initialization". Every time I "clean off" the card I do a complete initialization.

[Colin McDonald]

Originally Posted by Bruce Foreman

I"ve got a pair of HF100's and when I get back from a shoot, make sure I'm grounded well, take the cards out of the camera(s) and copy the original .MTS files over to 2 external 500GB drives as well as the internal 500GB drive. These files on the internal stay there until I finish the project and no longer need to maintain it on the internal.

One of the externals gets disconnected and stored until the next "new project" files need to be archived.

So far no problems with any media. I use only SanDisk, and PNY. One other practice I have is to not merely delete files from the card nor do a "quick initialization". Every time I "clean off" the card I do a complete initialization.

Thank you for explaining your workflow so clearly. When tapes finally bite the dust I will doubtless do something similar. Let me explain my apparent anti-card position.

I work in education, and have come across some difficulties in promoting the advantages of digital video as an educational tool. At present, a nervousness in certain quarters about the words "video" and "children" appearing in the same sentence required me to devise policy statements which are as robust as possible. Part of this involves keeping all original footage permanently so that it can be viewed if required. I presently have several hundred DV tapes going back to a time when hard drives were much more expensive.

I should realise that many (most?) people don't want/need to do this, and are happy to dump the original footage once the project is finished. In still photography, people tend to keep most of their photos after initial weeding out, and that is usually done on hard drive and/or DVD, so long term storage of data originally acquired on cards is not a new issue.

I still prefer the HV-30 because apart from the tapes bit, it takes cracking pictures, quite amazing for the price.

In fairness, I should state that I have never used a DVX-100.