How bad is it to use my V1U as the recorder and also for playback?

[Lee Berger]

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]

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]

Lee, Seth;

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

[Paul Frederick]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Originally Posted by Marcus Marchesseault

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]

Originally Posted by Marcus Marchesseault

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]

Originally Posted by Bob Grant

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.