conflicting info about capturing DV

[ecc]

I am the writer/director of a ten minute short film and I'm getting conflicting information from my editor and cameraman. The cameraman says the brand of camera or deck used to transfer the MiniDV tape to the computer must be the same brand used to capture the footage in the first place (we used a Panasonic DVC15 with their brand of professional quality 63 minute tape). The editor says that it should not matter and that he can use his Canon ZR to capture to his computer.

Also, my editor is using Premiere Pro. If we do the capturing on a Mac computer with Final Cut onto an exterial hard drive. Will there be any issues importing footage into Premiere on a PC that was captured on a Mac with Final Cut?

[Cornucopia]

Yes, and No...

Assuming it actually is a miniDV tape, and not DVCPro, DVCam or HDV, it shouldn't matter what brand is used. However, you'd also have to assume that the tape was recorded using standard parameters: SP speed (not LP), 4:3 NTSC 720x480@29.97 interlaced, with 2ch, 16bit, 48kHz locked audio. If you used LP speed, or some other samplerate/bitdepth audio, you could have playback problems.
And, occasionally/rarely, there is a brand/media interchange problem (usually having to do with the plastic's binder and lubricant - mismatch/buildup). In these cases, there may be dropouts (~=corrupt frames) or skippy playback.

Otherwise, go for it.

Now, why pray tell, are you not capturing on the PremierePro machine? No Firewire ports?
Ok, so you expect to use FCP...
After capping, save/export the whole program as 1 (or more if needed to segment for filesystem constraints) DV-AVI. Remember to give it/them the ".avi" extension. This should work fine in PremierePro as a standard Type2 DV file. You could also conceivably use the direct ".mov" caps from FCP, but I don't know if your copy of Premiere includes QT importing (it should), so this other way is a failsafe fallback.

Scott

[ecc]

Now, why pray tell, are you not capturing on the PremierePro machine? No Firewire ports?
Ok, so you expect to use FCP...
After capping, save/export the whole program as 1 (or more if needed to segment for filesystem constraints) DV-AVI. Remember to give it/them the ".avi" extension. This should work fine in PremierePro as a standard Type2 DV file. You could also conceivably use the direct ".mov" caps from FCP, but I don't know if your copy of Premiere includes QT importing (it should), so this other way is a failsafe fallback.

If we capture with the Canon ZR, then it will go directly into the Premiere Pro machine. I'd just like to give the editor the tapes and let him start putting it together. If it had to be captured using the Panasonic camera then it would depend on the cameraman's availability and if he can go out to the editor's house. The Final Cut solution would be if we captured it on the cameraman's computer to external hard drive. The cameraman dabbles in editing and uses all the same brand equipment down the line. The editor learned to cut with film in the seventies but had a late transition to NLE editing (but his earlier training shows in his editing style and references to pre-MTV editors that are somewhat familiar to me). They're both great at what they do but they don't really meet up in the middle ground where the tape moves from the camera to the computer.

[edDV]

I'd cap to PPro through the Canon ZR to a DV-AVI file and evaluate. If there are problems, try WinDV for capture. If still problems use the original camcorder.

FCP will default to raw *.DV Mac style file format and would need conversion with Quicktime Pro or Enosoft for use in PC PremierePro but the person doing it would need to be experienced.