Hey everyone. I am a college student currently getting involved in communications/film/media. I am still at a novice level (currently taking production I), getting hands on time with HMC40s and learning the basics of Avid Media Composer. I want to get my own camera to practice on, and further develop my skills and familiarity with camera work and editing, as well as everything that goes with it. I am giving strong consideration to picking up a DVX100B, which, while aging, still provides a nice image as long as I am okay with SD footage, which should not hinder my learning process with regards to framing, exposure, lighting, etc. I do not think there is a better camera available for equal $, but if you disagree, please speak up! I joined here because this forum was frequently coming up in response to questions I was googling with regards to cameras (dvx100, xl2, gl2), and seems to have a solid community looking to help one another.
Introduction complete, I have a couple of questions
rogar-BigGrin(DBG) I have zero experience with DV cameras. Am I correct in saying that however much footage I capture (1 hour, 6 hours, 24 hours), that is also the amount of time it will take to capture onto my PC? In order to capture to PC I have to playback at 1x speed?
If so, I would not want to do that unless I was doing very short clips. I just do not have hours to spare to "sit around" while the tape plays back. Therefore, I have discovered the device known as the Firestore (fs100, fs-4, etc), which records the stream from the firewire port. I would consider one, but they seem to be hundreds of dollars, which for me is not worth it.
However, is there any reason not to capture direct to PC via firewire? I can pick up a used laptop for about $50 on ebay (with a firewire port), and use that, can I not? That would be the best solution I would think, and I can always use the DV tapes as secondary solution should anything go wrong on the laptop.
If this is all making sense so far and that seems like a viable solution, I have one more question regarding capturing software. I have both Avid Media Composer as well as Adobe Premiere Pro (CS4 mind you), would either of these be suitable for capturing live stream? Does OnLocation have any glaring advantages? I did like the feature I saw where you can have your shot list before shooting in OnLocation, can you do this in Premiere or Avid as well? What about the Zebra (exposure) feature?
thanks to everyone that reads this far. I look forward to learning a lot, and in the process, sharing my findings with the community to help others as well.
-Andrew
Introduction complete, I have a couple of questions
rogar-BigGrin(DBG) I have zero experience with DV cameras. Am I correct in saying that however much footage I capture (1 hour, 6 hours, 24 hours), that is also the amount of time it will take to capture onto my PC? In order to capture to PC I have to playback at 1x speed? If so, I would not want to do that unless I was doing very short clips. I just do not have hours to spare to "sit around" while the tape plays back. Therefore, I have discovered the device known as the Firestore (fs100, fs-4, etc), which records the stream from the firewire port. I would consider one, but they seem to be hundreds of dollars, which for me is not worth it.
However, is there any reason not to capture direct to PC via firewire? I can pick up a used laptop for about $50 on ebay (with a firewire port), and use that, can I not? That would be the best solution I would think, and I can always use the DV tapes as secondary solution should anything go wrong on the laptop.
If this is all making sense so far and that seems like a viable solution, I have one more question regarding capturing software. I have both Avid Media Composer as well as Adobe Premiere Pro (CS4 mind you), would either of these be suitable for capturing live stream? Does OnLocation have any glaring advantages? I did like the feature I saw where you can have your shot list before shooting in OnLocation, can you do this in Premiere or Avid as well? What about the Zebra (exposure) feature?
thanks to everyone that reads this far. I look forward to learning a lot, and in the process, sharing my findings with the community to help others as well.
-Andrew