Hardware choices: standalone mini-DV deck, or cheap mini-dv camera?

[SgtRauksauff]

Howdy, folks!

I work for a newspaper company, and they've decided to begin doing some video production for the website side of things. They went ahead last year and bought a bunch of things, but not nearly everything that is required, and I'm sort of trying to pick up the pieces and make a workable system.

We've got a Sony PD170 camera, a tripod, a microphone or two, (wireless and wired), and a MacPro with FinalCut Pro.

I'd really rather not use the PD170 for doing all of the playback and capture onto the mac, for the simple reason of not wearing out the heads so fast.

Would it be better to get an actual standalone miniDV deck, or just a cheap miniDV cam and use that? What are the pros and cons of each, and what would the hardware recomendations be, if the standalone NLE deck was used? Of course, they're trying to be as cheap as possible, but I'd rather have equipment that lasts rather than replacing it every year, which is more expensive in the long run.

Thanks for your time,

--SgtRauksauff

[VirtualDoobMon]

standalone mini-dv units are a good choice if you don't want to wear the mechanism on your camcorder. From my experience, interchanging is an issue, so use a standalone from the same camcorder manufacturer.

[zoobie]

you don't want to do this, they don't want to do that...
how much use is too much use?
a deck will probably be better like you said
a cheap cam is a cheap cam
I wouldn't worry about the PD170...might as well wear it out at this point
the cap only happens once so my vote goes to being efficient with the equipment you already have and use the PD170 for rec & cap

[edDV]

Head wear shouldn't be a great concern. The main reason people use a deck is to keep the cam in the field shooting while a courier takes in the tape. TV stations use the DVCAM format for better tape interchange rather than DV. DVCAM records wider tracks but only records 40 min per tape. If you do that you will need a DVCAM deck like these.

http://shop.ebay.com/items/_W0QQ_nkw...Q_fromZQQ_mdoZ

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