Digitizing Footage Using Another Camera

F

Forever_Fossilized

Member
Hi,
We recently purchased two DVX100B cameras from Ebay, both work great and we are really happy with our purchase. One of the cameras came with a small consumer Panasonic camera which the previous user had used for digitizing as to save the heads on the DVX, and which we had intended to do also. For our first project all seemed fine, but now, when we try to play tapes shot on the DVX they won't play on the consumer cam...there is just a red "video" box on the lower right corner of the LCD screen with a slash through it. I also tried playing the tape in another Sony consumer cam (TRV350 I believe) and same deal...the error is different but it just won't play...it's as if there is corrupt or no video on the tape at all...now it plays back just fine in the DVX, but I really did not want to be using those cameras for digitizing 8 tapes at a time, because it will greatly decrease the life.

Any suggestions as to what happened here are greatly appreciated. We're shooting in squeeze mode, not sure if that has anything to do with it, but the first project that worked with the consumer cameras was shot with squeeze mode as well...as far as I know no settings have changed from that project to the next. Thanks for any suggestions in advance!
 
Hi Forever,

Just stream them from the DVX'es. Using other camera's to capture/stream is mainly nice/smart but not a necessity. They can take it.

I mean, I too have a small consumer camera that I sometimes use to stream my footage. But since reading around on these forums I kind of learned that the heads may need a cleaning once in a while, but that it hardly ever happens that they wear out because of the tape.

If you'd want to use other devices to capture, it wouldn't realy matter what you pick. As long as the device of choice has clean and reliable tape mechanism and clean heads. The signal that's on the tape is stuffed in a series of ones and zeros that will come out the same anywhich way you'd stream. Thrown in a widescreen timeline and do the things with the pulldown if that's appropriate, it'll be OK. (Don't know if you're shooting PAL or NTSC. If PAL, then no pulldown. If NTSC and no 24p or 24pa, than no pulldown. If etc....)


Jasper
 
A large proportion of the user hours on my DVX100a are from capturing. I would recommend, strongly in fact, that you try shoot some additional footage and try it in a few small mini-dv camcorders. I managed to find an older Panasonic with a Firewire connection that uses the same batteries as the DVX (5600mah will capture a lot of footage on a small camcorder). I don't know how much using the DVX as a primary capture tool really endangers the heads but they're nice enough cameras not to warrant the risk, also this may be less of a concern but typically if you're looking to resell them at any point a lower user hour count is usually more desirable.
 
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