Capture Cameras

J

JoeDonaldson

Member
Today I will be getting my dvx100b and I am upgrading from a Sony Vx1000. Of course with a Vx1k you need to use a capture cam. due to the age of the camera etc. But with a DVX is it really all that crucial? I mean yes anything that will help take time and wear off the heads would be amazing, but is it really a must have. The camera I am getting has 187 hrs on the heads and I have read that DVX heads last to around 2000hrs...

Like I said in an earlier post I'm new to all of this as well as the DVX in general, any comments or help will b e very appreciated.

-Joe
 
In my opinion, no, it is not all that crucial. The DVX100 series is actually built to do it all. It's just that many of us have sacrificed to be able to buy a $2500 camcorder and the thought of head wear kind of spooks us.

But let's break it down into dollars and cents.

Camcorder heads are consumables, like the tires on your car. The manual says that, with proper care, the heads will last about two thousand hours before they need replacement. Replacement costs $1000 (from what I've been told). If you use your camera a total of five hours per day, every day, the heads will need replacement in one year, one month and five days. Then comes the repair bill.

A capture camera costs about $200. By using the capture camera for all the non-recording work, the head wear on the DVX is cut approximately in half. That means that, at the same five hours per day of use, the DVX heads will last two years, two months and ten days before the heads need replacing.

Without a capture camera, two years of use costs $1000, plus another thousand for the second head replacement. With a capture camera, two years of use costs $200 plus a thousand for head replacement.

So, is it absolutely necessary to use a capture camera? No. It's just economical.

If you really want to save your DVX heads, there is a cheap way to avoid using them at all. That same, cheap camcorder can be used as a slave unit to record everything a DVX sees without a tape even being in the DVX tape drive. That way, no head wear at all on the DVX. Check out pages 100 and 101 in Barry Green's DVX book.
 
Thanks for the reply and yeah your have an amazing point. Ill just have to make sure and get another cap.cam. as soon as possible.
 
Thrift stores usually have decent cams to capture from, and look for sales on cheap dv cams
 
If I shot 24pA in a DVX100B but used a cheap MiniDV camera for capture... will it work?

I already have a MiniDV camera and I'm thinking of getting a DVX, and planning on just leaving my old camera hooked to my computer for capture.
 
MScrip said:
If I shot 24pA in a DVX100B but used a cheap MiniDV camera for capture... will it work?

I already have a MiniDV camera and I'm thinking of getting a DVX, and planning on just leaving my old camera hooked to my computer for capture.
Click to expand...

It works just fine. I've never used anything but my cheap Sony to capture my 24p DVX footage.
 
You captured it onto a tape from the DVX so the quailty is going to be the same on any camera you play back on. All another camera is doing is playing the footage from the tape.
 
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