Need info about capturing mini DV and which deck to use.

[Mr_Wizard]

I am wondering what kind of deck to use to capture video from a miniDV tape. I am also wondering what capturing speeds are available. I will have about 16 hours of video to capture. I'm new to this, but basically I just want to know what deck and firewire card to get to capture video from miniDV tapes at a reasonable speed.

[mats.hogberg]

Deck? What do you mean by deck?
All you need is a computer with a Firewire (IEEE 1394) port, and WinDV

/Mats

[Mr_Wizard]

All I have is the Tape, no camera with it.

[edDV]

You need a MiniDV camcorder or MiniDV deck. You connect either with an IEEE-1394 cable and transfer/capture the data from the tape to ths computer hard disk. A good simple program to use is WinDV. Expect about 13.5 GB of data per 62 min tape.

Examples of MiniDV decks. Decks generally are more expensive than camcorders.

SonyGVD900


Sony DSR-11


jvc_br-hd50


You can rent camcorders or decks by the day.

[Mr_Wizard]

Thanks Ed... one more question... will the transfer rates be the same no matter which deck or camera I use, or is some equipment faster than others for transfering to the hard drive?

[edDV]

Thanks Ed... one more question... will the transfer rates be the same no matter which deck or camera I use, or is some equipment faster than others for transfering to the hard drive?

Most DV is 1x transfer.

Expensive broadcast decks can use fast speed transfer at up to 3x ~90Mb/s but the software and equipment at the other end needs to be broadcast grade.

Comes down to how big your budget is and your personal cost for your time.

Max budget, least time spent means you pay a dub house to dub your 16 tapes to a USB2 hard drive.

If you want to rent the equipment that can go 3x, it will probably cost more for 16 tapes.

[aedipuss]

last time i looked around decks started around $1000 US - has anyone seen any new ones at a more reasonable 300-400?

[edDV]

last time i looked around decks started around $1000 US - has anyone seen any new ones at a more reasonable 300-400?

Other than 3x cue or connectivity issues, a deck = a MiniDV cmacorder with a smashed camera section.

[SCDVD]

Just buy an inexpensive DV camera. It will cost less than a deck and you will have a camera when you're done.

[JohnnyMalaria]

If the time to capture is important to you, you can get two (or more) camcorders and use our Enosoft DV Processor to capture simultaneously from them to the same hard drive. (As far as I am aware, it is a unique feature). In tests, I have captured from FOUR devices simultaneously without any issues.

I have 15 tapes of safari footage that I was able to capture in less than four hours.