videobear
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Oct 8, 2005, 2:38 PM
Post #10 of 21
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Re: [Beverly] External DV Decks
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If you do much video work I would not suggest using your camera as a play and record deck. You will wear the heads on your camera so fast. In the long run it is much cheaper to purchase a dedicated dv deck.
Well, I do have a deck, and I much prefer it to using a camcorder for the purpose. However, while the "it'll wear out your camera" concern used to be the conventional wisdom, I don't think it applies in today's world...as long as you are simply dumping entire tapes to your hard drive. If you're logging individual clips and capturing them from the tape, you can wind up putting quite a bit of wear on the tape transport, but one pass per tape for capture, and one more pass at the end to record the finished project, just isn't that significant.
Let's do a thought experiment: Say I buy a VX-2100. This camera is good for about 2000 hours on the heads, with a professional cleaning done, say, once per year. Now, I shoot 30 weddings a year with it, burning up about, let's say, four tapes per event. That's 120 hours of shooting, and another 120 hours of capturing. I also use the camera to record a DV master. Let's say that takes two 60 minute tapes, for another 60 hours of use. That comes to 120+120+60 = 300 hours per year. I can figure the camera will last, on average, 2000/300 = 6.7 years life expectancy. Since I plan on replacing my camera about once every 4 years, this give me plenty of safety margin.
But, as I said, I really do prefer the convenience of having a deck permanently installed in my equipment rack. It saves the time of hooking up the camcorder, saves stress on the camera's firewire port, has superior noise reduction electronics, a faster and more accurate tape transport...and it will also handle full size (2 or 3 hour) DV cassettes.
Regards,
Doug Graham
Panda Productions
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