First Docu and questions re: reviewing material?

[Ralph nixon]

1) Is Mini DV tape too delicate for me to view my material that I just shot. In other words should I wait until I load it into my editing system so there is the least of amount of wear and tear and therefore risks of dropouts? Or is it just fine to play it back for viewing once before I go out and do more shooting tommorrow? I'd like to know what I should improve upon.

2) I have the tape out of my camera right now so what is the best way to pick up the timecode when I put it back in my camera and continue shooting. Would record check work? Or end search? Or do I do it manually somehow. I hope I'm making sense.

Thanks.

 

[fu-pow]

1) Is Mini DV tape too delicate for me to view my material that I just shot. In other words should I wait until I load it into my editing system so there is the least of amount of wear and tear and therefore risks of dropouts? Or is it just fine to play it back for viewing once before I go out and do more shooting tommorrow? I'd like to know what I should improve upon.

2) I have the tape out of my camera right now so what is the best way to pick up the timecode when I put it back in my camera and continue shooting. Would record check work? Or end search? Or do I do it manually somehow. I hope I'm making sense.

Thanks.

Personally, I try to treat my DVX like film camera. The tape goes in and I pretty much only use the heads to record. That way you minimize the wear and tear. I use a relatively cheap GS model panasonic to ingest my footage.

In my documentary class we outputed to VHS to do logging. However, if you are only going to view the tape once its probably not a problem. In general, just minimize the amount of passes on the tape and try to use something cheaper than your DVX for viewing/ingesting if that is an option.

Ingesting to view your footage would be a possible option but a waste of time if your not sure if you're going to use the footage.

Hope that makes sense.

As for time code breaks, I'm not sure that you can pick up with the same time code once you moved the position of the tape. If there is a way I'd like to know.

FP

 

[Bus No. 8]

I second Fu-pow's suggestions for saving your DVX heads. For interviews I always make a VHS copy that I use for transcription (there's just way too much back and forth and stop and start to subject your precious original tape to). For cover footage I'll often scrub through and log and capture as I go, using a cheape DV camcorder as my capture deck.

Re: timecode - I think either of the options you mentioned would work, or you could just rewind to a point before the recording stops and start again from there. It doesn't really matter where you start as long as it's a point on the tape that has time code. Timecode will continue uninterrupted from the frame that you start on.

It's important to end each shoot with at least 10 seconds of something you don't need so that you have that space to back into if you stop and take your tape out of the camera. One of our instructors always told us to "shoot our shoes" meaning, point the camera down at your shoes at the end of each shoot and shoot a few seconds of your shoes so you don't have to back into something important to maintain time code. Works pretty well and then, like him, you could end up some day with a fascinating collage of your shoes in various locations all over the world - for what that's worth.