HDV Deck -Why?

Dumb question perhaps, but all the makerting material assumes I knwo what the hell I am reading, or doing when it comes to buying a deck.

Why am I buying a deck then? I have a $5,000 donation towards this purpose.

What ( beyond capturing to FCP instead of the camera ) will a deck do for me.

I know. Seems basic. But such is my transformation to HD and HDV.


Any suggestions for seamless, easy, reliable HDV Decks for Final Cut pro 5.0

Thanks

Rookie

The most important reason why you want to buy a deck instead of loading tapes into FCP from your camera is to save the camera playheads and mechanism from dying prematurely due to the heavy stress you put on them when rewinding, searching, playing etc... during the logging and capturing. HDV camera heads and mechanism are meant to record conntinuous video and now and then do an End Search playback. If you also use them for logging and capturing you may expect them not to last as long as you would like.

Add to this that deck heads and mechanism allow faster search and manipulation of your tapes, and a deck becomes a must-have for serious work.

At home I have a Sony HVR-M25 for testing HDV workflows. It is a very decent little deck which has its own LCD screen, does down-conversion to SD and 720 and has hdmi, FiWi and component out. This deck is within your budget.

In the studio we don't do much HDV but we have a HVR-M35 deck for logging, which is about the sam as the 25 but also reads progressive scans ad has HD-SDI output. As a rule we get out of the HDV format as soon as possibe, always capturing to Pro Res via FiWi or HD-SDI. The HVR-M35 is around 6 or 7.000 dollar I think.

Best wishes,

Ronny

Hi Ronny,

I am going to be upgrading my computer from a G5 to a newer Intel mac probably the 8 core 2.8 model. Until now, I have shot the majority of my events in DV widescreen with a pair of Z1U's b/c of the hassle of editing/rendering HDV on an older G5. What do you think of the GV-HD700 Sony clamshell deck. It retails for about $1250 has HDMI and will play back HDV/DV, but only record to DV tape. I plan to use this as my capture deck and buy a Black Magic Intensity Pro Card which has HDMI in and out. I thought about the MXO (as Ken just reviewed it as well) but I need to budget for a lot of other things like RAM, internal hard drives, a blu ray burner, PS3 to use as a playback machine (and maybe play a video game or two) another Apple 23 inch Cinema Display, an external LCD TV monitor, etc.

I plan to buy the internal drives and RAM from OWC. Also do I need to raid my drives for HDV footage or can I just use them as they are?

Thanks,

Scott

I agree with everything Ronny says....but if you want that $5000 donation to also be spent on other things...there is a "workaround" to the traditional play/edit deck.

For about a thousand dollars you can buy a small consumer HDV camera that can also act as a play/edit deck. It obviously won't give you all the bells and whistles of a traditional deck but it gets your video into your FCP and saves the heads of your shooting camera. Also, it can act as a "back up" if --heaven forbid--your shooting camera goes down or if you need a "second camera"

I have used this workflow and it's great..

I entirely agree with Ken. If you only need a separate capturing device, getting a small HDV camera will give you the same possibilities + an extra backup cam + some money left for other things. Great thinking.

Best wishes,

Ronny

Hi Ronny..

That was actually me, Sharon, who posted (and who you have helped many times on this board) However, I'm sure Ken would have the same idea with multiple cool other ideas.

Cheers,

Sharon

Oops, sorry, Sharon. I think a need a strong cup of coffee - or a good pair of glasses ! (LOL)

Best wishes,

Ronny