Should I capture to laptop or use tape deck

M

mrpheeney

New member
I recently purchased a DVX-100A to film sketches as a good way to pass the time with some friends. Now that I have a camera, I'm wondering if I should either:

A- Buy a tape deck and capture the footage onto my hard drive by tape

or

B- Buy a Firewire card for my laptop and capture the video onto that hard drive for later editing


It seems that bypassing the tape would be a good way of saving money, but I've also heard that the firewire ports are prone to frying the circuitry...so I don't know.
 
I'm confused. Seems to me that either way you're going to have to have a firewire connection to get the footage off the tape and into the computer.

Fried firewire ports are easy to avoid. Port frying typically occurs when you connect the camera to the cable first, then try to plug the other end of the cable into a computer that is powered on. As long as you connect the computer end first, there's very little chance you'll fry the firewire port. (Although other things can fry a port -- voltage spikes, close lightning strikes, etc.)

My question is -- does your laptop have a card slot? If it does, then get yourself a firewire card and an external (USB) hard drive. Capture to the external hard drive, and edit to your heart's content!
 
Thanks for the response! I was actually assuming that it was possible to capture the live feed from the camera and bypass the need for a tape. I'm also aware the accumulating hours on a camera wears down the recording heads, which was another reason I wanted to avoid the tape.

My laptop does indeed have a card slot...I will try as you suggest! Thanks again!
 
Three things to consider:

1) Trying to shoot with your camera tethered to your laptop is going to prove very limiting as far as camera movement, and what happens when your FireWire connection is compromised in the middle of a take?

2) Never use the internal hard drive on a laptop for media. It slows things down, so always use an external FW drive.

3) As already pointed out, you'll need a FireWire port either way.

You're probably better off shooting to tape and capturing later. You can get away with using a cheap ($150-ish) miniDV camcorder as a capture deck.
 
You can also connect the cheap MiniDV camcorder to the DVX100a via a firewire cable, and use IT as the recording deck, saving the wear on the DVX's heads. But then you still have the problem of having limited movement of the camera.

If you do decide to connect the DVX100a to the laptop and record straight to a hard drive, how will you connect the camera to the laptop? Via firewire, of course. So either way you'll need the firewire card.

C2V is right, which is why I suggested an external hard drive to capture to. However, it can be a USB drive or a firewire drive. I personally use USB drives and they work great.

Again, best of luck!
 
I recommend using the cheap mini dv camera method. Panny official VTR tape deck is over 1 g and a junky cam is 100-200. I recommend recording to tape inside the dvx but digitizing from the cheap camera. I've edited on internal drives before, and no, its not the best, but for someone starting out its not bad. on 60 min tapes you can re write 4 times with no ishues. My school got 10-20 on most of theirs, but you would start to see problems eventually. I would not recomend going strait into a laptop since there are to many things to go wrong. The cance for dropped frames just because your laptop is not happy is higher then i would risk. If you digitize form tape and get some dropped frames you can try again.
 
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