Capturing For Archival Purposes - MiniDV/HDV

[ninlive]

Hello everyone,

First time poster here. I run the Nine Inch Nails live recording archive and recently I have come to acquire a lot of master HDV/MiniDV tapes. My expertise with archiving is really with audio and it's about time I start learning about video editing/capturing, especially after acquiring so many tapes. I would usually pass this on to someone else but I believe it's time for me to take a stab.

I run on a Mac Mini (2012, 16GB, i7 - at some point I want to try and get an external GPU to help with editing. I guess that will come later) and will be using firewire to transfer. I am just at a loss where to begin. Even with a playback deck to start off with. Here are some of the decks I have been currently looking at on ebay:

Sony HVR-M10U
Sony HVR-M15U
Sony HVR-1500A (I know it seems probably excessive)

Not sure what units to really be getting. If these smaller (and more affordable) units would do the job of just being able to transfer? Is it really necessary to get something like the 1500A? From what I've read here, the HDV tapes are all binary code, so does it really matter what heads you are using? Or if there is a difference between them in that regard.

I've seen many people in the archiving community encapsulate these in AVI format. Which I intend to do. I will continue to figure out what specs are the best for archiving footage and then also for YouTube/distribution. As right now, having a 25-30GB file being hosted on the archive's site is just too much with the amount of downloads that happen per day.

I'll keep reading on this forum as well and I appreciate any input you have going forward. First off it's figuring out what deck I need to make sure that I have some decent transfers of these recordings.

Thank you!

[dellsam34]

The link you provided is misleading, M15U is NTSC only not NTSC/PAL. Sony HVR-M15AU is the multisystem one. I'm a proud owner of one it plays both PAL and NTSC tapes, Interlaced and progressive (60i 30p, 50i, 25p, and 24p), HDV, DV and DVCAM in both small and large cassettes, It's all what you ever need for the this type of format.