Importing Mini-DV and DV-Cam

Have a question for anyone who imports Mini-DV and DV-Cam into their computers for editing.

We have used the Sony DSR-11 for years. WHEN they work, they do a great job with the ability to handle either the Mini-DV or the larger DV-Cam tapes.

Problem is the damn things keep breaking down! We have 3 of them and I know that all three have been sent back to Sony at least twice for repairs. And, the repairs at Sony are NOT inexpensive, nor is the original cost of a DSR-11 and it ALWAYS takes Sony at least a month to get it back.

I was using one today and the damn thing didn't want to give me back my tape, and, of course, it is raw footage. I had to take it apart to get the tape back and fortunately had no damage to the tape, but it just isn't worth the risk. I'm either going to throw the damn thing away or find another brand that is more reliable and less sensitive.

I hate having to import with a camera because of the constant use on the heads.

I'm just wondering what others are using and how they work. Any suggestions and experiences you may had would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Bill

Sony used to make a portable DVCam recorder/player with a built in LCD monitor that made a nice editing playback deck. I saw it on the B&H site a couple months ago but don't see it now. It was around $1,000 I think. You could move up to a dedicated Sony DVCam player but that will cost you several thousand bucks.

If you can stay in the Mini DV format I'd suggest getting any low cost Mini DV camcorder from Best Buy that has a Firewire port and use that as your playback deck. But hurry... it's getting harder to find Mini DV camcorders with Firewire jacks.

Sorry to hear about your problems. I've never had an issue with Sony products. I know others who have had problems with Panasonic, JVC and Canon so I guess nothing is perfect.

I hope this help... I used to use this one in my last job, never had any problem with it... but if U are using it a lot I recommend to send it to service every 3 to 6 months...

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...rToReadReviews

We buy the absolute cheapest DV camcorder that Wal-Mart sells that has a firewire out. I think it was $175.

The first one lasted a bit over a year and then the heads crapped out. The second one is still going strong at over 2 years. I think it's a JVC. Our editor said that when he was in film school, they had a bunch of capture stations set up with the same camcorder and that's how they did all their capture as well.

Since the data being captured is digital, there's no difference whatsoever in capturing from a $175 piece of crap or a $5000 high end DV camcorder. From my perspective, it's cheaper to throw away a crappy camcorder every couple years than to pay to have a quality deck repaired every couple years, and as of yet, I haven't found any downside to our workflow :)

Of course... for dvcam, this won't work, and I don't really have any suggestions, except maybe to buy a very used machine and then pay to have the head assembly replaced with a brand new one.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mymenlistcom

I hope this help... I used to use this one in my last job, never had any problem with it... but if U are using it a lot I recommend to send it to service every 3 to 6 months...

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...rToReadReviews

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Thanks for the link. I've looked at it and will check in to it more.

Bill

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gaybucks_chip

We buy the absolute cheapest DV camcorder that Wal-Mart sells that has a firewire out. I think it was $175.

The first one lasted a bit over a year and then the heads crapped out. The second one is still going strong at over 2 years. I think it's a JVC. Our editor said that when he was in film school, they had a bunch of capture stations set up with the same camcorder and that's how they did all their capture as well.

Since the data being captured is digital, there's no difference whatsoever in capturing from a $175 piece of crap or a $5000 high end DV camcorder. From my perspective, it's cheaper to throw away a crappy camcorder every couple years than to pay to have a quality deck repaired every couple years, and as of yet, I haven't found any downside to our workflow :)

Of course... for dvcam, this won't work, and I don't really have any suggestions, except maybe to buy a very used machine and then pay to have the head assembly replaced with a brand new one.

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Thanks Chip,

Buying a cheapie would work I guess but the problem is I have several hundred DV-CAMS and I have to be able to work with them. I've got a Sony 250 that is seldom used. I suppose I could use it but hell, replacing those heads ain't cheap.

Bill

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sc32803

Sony used to make a portable DVCam recorder/player with a built in LCD monitor that made a nice editing playback deck. I saw it on the B&H site a couple months ago but don't see it now. It was around $1,000 I think. You could move up to a dedicated Sony DVCam player but that will cost you several thousand bucks.

If you can stay in the Mini DV format I'd suggest getting any low cost Mini DV camcorder from Best Buy that has a Firewire port and use that as your playback deck. But hurry... it's getting harder to find Mini DV camcorders with Firewire jacks.

Sorry to hear about your problems. I've never had an issue with Sony products. I know others who have had problems with Panasonic, JVC and Canon so I guess nothing is perfect.

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I love Sony. We use Sony for everything and all of it is excellent EXCEPT the DSR-11. It just sucks.

I wish I could stay with Mini-DV but we output on DV-Cam since it is a better format for storage and durability, so I have several hundred that I need to access every now and then.

Guess I'll keep looking or run down to Best Buy and buy a few cheap Mini-DV cams with a firewired. Oh well.

Thanks,

Bill

We have a couple of DSR-11's and haven't had any bad luck with them at all, except for one time when I messed up the heads by trying to play a very old MiniDV tape that had deteriorated. But one thing I learned from using the DSR-11 over the years is how careful you have to be when inserting tape cassettes. I do think the loading mechanism is a little fragile.

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Originally Posted by citiboyz

We have a couple of DSR-11's and haven't had any bad luck with them at all, except for one time when I messed up the heads by trying to play a very old MiniDV tape that had deteriorated. But one thing I learned from using the DSR-11 over the years is how careful you have to be when inserting tape cassettes. I do think the loading mechanism is a little fragile.

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Absolutely, the loading mechanism is VERY fragile. We haven't really had problems with that as much as we have getting them to eject. We have four and all have been in for repair at least twice. The most frustrating thing is we bought a new one in May and the first time we used it the damn thing ate the tape. Not only did it chew the tape up pretty good but sending it back in for repairs always seems to take a month or longer to get it back..

Messing up the heads on a DSR-11 due to an old deteriorated Mini-DV tape is exactly the reason we output everything in a DV-CAM format. The DV-CAM tape is much thicker and less succeptible to deterioration.

We are almost completed place the films onto 1 Terrabyte external hardrives so we'll have less use on the DSR-11's but still, being an old fart, I'm not comfortable unless I have 2 or 3 back up's of all raw footage and edited films on DV-CAM and stored in multiple location.

Hard drives fail and the Department of Justice can walk in and seize everything in the office if they ever want to. In such a case, I always have a back up or two elsewhere in and out of this country.

Just sign me off as "Nervous Nellie"

Thanks for your input!

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Originally Posted by hdkbill

Messing up the heads on a DSR-11 due to an old deteriorated Mini-DV tape is exactly the reason we output everything in a DV-CAM format. The DV-CAM tape is much thicker and less succeptible to deterioration. We are almost completed place the films onto 1 Terrabyte external hardrives so we'll have less use on the DSR-11's but still, being an old fart, I'm not comfortable unless I have 2 or 3 back up's of all raw footage and edited films on DV-CAM and stored in multiple location.

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We master to DV-CAM as well. And keep multiple backups. I can't imagine anything worse than losing the master edited copies of 10 years worth of videos. Also, I never had good luck using the LP speed on MiniDV, and I love the over 3 hours time you can get on DV-CAM.

Actually, the first year or two in the business I was shooting on rented broadcast Betacam SP camcorders. First thing I did when I bought a DSR-11 was rent a broadcast Betacam SP deck and transfer all my old raw footage to DV-CAM.

Bill,

I'm totally with you about being a "nervous nelly." And in the interest of conservative content management, I should warn you that we used to use a large number of external drives, but we had repeated drive failures (like 10+ drives over a couple years). Sometimes they were hardware problems -- generally attributed to a lack of adequate cooling in the external drive cases -- but more often, the drive file directory would simply get trashed. It turns out there is apparently a known weakness in all Windows operating systems through XP (don't know if the problem applies to Vista) where under some circumstances, Windows will trash the directory of USB or Firewire drives. The problem doesn't happen with Macs, but the external Mac drives would still be prone to the thermal-related problems.

We spent the bucks to buy a high capacity hardware RAID file server. Our current system, which is 2 years old, runs 8 - 750gig drives, and that allows us to keep most of our content, including DVD authoring assets, online. (I don't recommend the inexpensive Buffalo Terastations if you're going to be editing directly to and from the array; they are software RAID and too slow to keep up with video throughput for real-time editing, though they are great for online storage if you copy the files you're using to a local machine.)

We also purchased an SDLT-320 tape backup which stores 160 gigs (roughly 13 hours of standard DV video) and is considered, along with LTO, to be the most robust and reliable tape backup technology (used by banks and financial instititutions, among others.)

This gives us the best of both worlds... all our content online, redundantly stored in a RAID-5 array, plus a robust tape backup system to backup the already-redundant RAID array. And we can (and have) made multiple SDLT backups so that sets can be stored off site in case of catastrophes, whether caused by the Justice Department or by a mudslide or wildfire :)

Just this week, one of the drives crapped out in one of the RAID arrays. I powered down the system, replaced the drive, powered it back up, told the RAID controller to rebuild the array, and went back to work. The speed of the array is degraded while it's rebuilding, but we actually were able to use it immediately with no data loss at all.

Dealing with all the technology is a pain in the ass, but personally, like Steve, I'd rather take extreme precautions to protect our assets than risk loss of a large amount of data.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by citiboyz

We master to DV-CAM as well. And keep multiple backups. I can't imagine anything worse than losing the master edited copies of 10 years worth of videos. Also, I never had good luck using the LP speed on MiniDV, and I love the over 3 hours time you can get on DV-CAM.

Actually, the first year or two in the business I was shooting on rented broadcast Betacam SP camcorders. First thing I did when I bought a DSR-11 was rent a broadcast Betacam SP deck and transfer all my old raw footage to DV-CAM.

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Steve,

Smart putting everything on DV-CAM. I tried one time to shoot Mini-DV on LP and it was lousy so we just shoot on SP and then make sure it all gets to DV-CAM as quickly as possible. Really the only way to go and obviously having 180 minutes on a DV-CAM is great and makes things a lot easier when out putting the entire video and behind the scenes all on one tape.

Bill

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gaybucks_chip

Bill,

I'm totally with you about being a "nervous nelly." And in the interest of conservative content management, I should warn you that we used to use a large number of external drives, but we had repeated drive failures (like 10+ drives over a couple years). Sometimes they were hardware problems -- generally attributed to a lack of adequate cooling in the external drive cases -- but more often, the drive file directory would simply get trashed. It turns out there is apparently a known weakness in all Windows operating systems through XP (don't know if the problem applies to Vista) where under some circumstances, Windows will trash the directory of USB or Firewire drives. The problem doesn't happen with Macs, but the external Mac drives would still be prone to the thermal-related problems.

We spent the bucks to buy a high capacity hardware RAID file server. Our current system, which is 2 years old, runs 8 - 750gig drives, and that allows us to keep most of our content, including DVD authoring assets, online. (I don't recommend the inexpensive Buffalo Terastations if you're going to be editing directly to and from the array; they are software RAID and too slow to keep up with video throughput for real-time editing, though they are great for online storage if you copy the files you're using to a local machine.)

We also purchased an SDLT-320 tape backup which stores 160 gigs (roughly 13 hours of standard DV video) and is considered, along with LTO, to be the most robust and reliable tape backup technology (used by banks and financial instititutions, among others.)

This gives us the best of both worlds... all our content online, redundantly stored in a RAID-5 array, plus a robust tape backup system to backup the already-redundant RAID array. And we can (and have) made multiple SDLT backups so that sets can be stored off site in case of catastrophes, whether caused by the Justice Department or by a mudslide or wildfire :)

Just this week, one of the drives crapped out in one of the RAID arrays. I powered down the system, replaced the drive, powered it back up, told the RAID controller to rebuild the array, and went back to work. The speed of the array is degraded while it's rebuilding, but we actually were able to use it immediately with no data loss at all.

Dealing with all the technology is a pain in the ass, but personally, like Steve, I'd rather take extreme precautions to protect our assets than risk loss of a large amount of data.

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Gee Chip, and I thought I was the "Nervous Nellie".:goof: I hadn't heard about their being a problem with externals and the XP operating system. That's going to make me think a bit about perhaps doing it similar to the way you are doing it. Of course, we have numerous copies of each film stored on DV-CAM but damn, have to put some of them back into the computer individually if one of the externals failed would be a time consuming bitch.

Thanks for the info. I'll be checking it out.

Bill

Hey Bill we are using a Panasonic AG-DV2000 although this is an older model and we have been using it for years (still works good so far) but the thing that I like about it, is it will play both the Mini-DV and DV CAM tapes. Not sure if this helps, good luck.

I've been using Mini DV and DVCam for years and have noticed no difference in image quality. I suppose if you put them both on scopes you may see a difference, but I think the only advantage to DVCam is the longer recording time and more durable tape.

Having said that, if you record on Mini DV, capture it into your PC or Mac and then throw the tape up on a shelf, I don't think you'll have a problem if you need to go back to the tape in the future once or twice. I guess if you're constantly re-capturing off the same tape over and over there might be a duarbility problem, but I have hundreds of Mini DV tapes on the shelf I haven't gone back to since I first shot and captured them.

I think the main issue is tape degradation over time. The miniDVs aren't classed as archival media, so the lubricants, tape backing, etc. aren't as robust over time as DVCam. Also, we haven't done so, but I'm told you're supposed to rewind and forward wind all of your stored miniDV tapes once a year, presumably to prevent sticking and so forth. (That would probably be a couple day job for us.)

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Originally Posted by PornTeam

Hey Bill we are using a Panasonic AG-DV2000 although this is an older model and we have been using it for years (still works good so far) but the thing that I like about it, is it will play both the Mini-DV and DV CAM tapes. Not sure if this helps, good luck.

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Thanks but actually that is not the issue. I have a Sony 250 that plays and records both Mini-DV and DV-Cam. I don't like using it or any camera for the purposes of getting the film into or out of the computer because of the wear and tear on the heads.

I'm currently using a Sony DSR-11 for that purpose, and we have several of them. The problem is that they are so damn sensitive that it just seems we are constantly having problems with them and when sent it for repairs not only is it expensive but very time consuming and we then have to shift around the remaining DSR'11's to keep the product flow going. And, everytime we move one from one location to another you can just about count on the damn thing breaking down shortly thereafter. It's just very frustrating.

I did just buy a couple of cheap Mini-DV cams from Best Buy for $199 and then got an extended 2 year warranty. So, I'll use those for our Min-DV's and I guess I'll use the Sony 250 when exporting to DV-Cam.

Thanks,

Bill

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Originally Posted by sc32803

I've been using Mini DV and DVCam for years and have noticed no difference in image quality. I suppose if you put them both on scopes you may see a difference, but I think the only advantage to DVCam is the longer recording time and more durable tape.

Having said that, if you record on Mini DV, capture it into your PC or Mac and then throw the tape up on a shelf, I don't think you'll have a problem if you need to go back to the tape in the future once or twice. I guess if you're constantly re-capturing off the same tape over and over there might be a duarbility problem, but I have hundreds of Mini DV tapes on the shelf I haven't gone back to since I first shot and captured them.

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The issue is one of quality. Mini-DV and DV-CAM both have equal quality. The issue, as Chip pointed out, and what I am concerned about is that a Mini-DV cam is a thinner tape, non-metallic and NOT designed for archival purposes. Over time the Mini-DV will degrade and the tape itself will become brittle, especially is not stored properly. So, we prefer to make sure that once we film on Mini-DV with our Sony 2000's and 2100's, we then input into the raw footage into the computer, save it, and then output the raw footage back out onto DV-CAM. Then, of course, once edited, the finished film is also output onto several DV-CAMS. Like I said before, just call me a "Nervous Nellie", but I we spend too much money to shoot a scene and produce a movie NOT to try to back it up and save it the best way possible.

Bill