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miniDV decks for recording in a studio control room?
Hi guys,
My university has a television studio w/ old analog gear that I’m looking to replace this summer. We don’t have the money to totally replace everything. For recording masters, I have an older Panasonic DVCPRO deck I’m thinking of putting in there to replace an old SVHS record deck. My problem is that although the DVCPRO deck would work great for me (I have another DVCPRO source deck in my edit bay), our students tend to shoot everything on MiniDV (as do tons of folks these days.)
Whatever I do, I’d like for our students to be able to come in, record multi-cam shows to miniDV so if they want to go back to their FCP edit bays and edit, they can. A MiniDV source deck would also help them if they edit some short segments together for including in a live studio taping.
I’ve been looking at JVC’s BR-DV3000U(B)deck as an option (since it’s in our price range) but in doing some research, I see that it’s really not designed to work w/ edit controllers. I have RS-422 and RS-232 edit controllers that I could use w/ them.
Any suggestions on a deck that would work for me?
It seems that tons of folks are using the MiniDV format but there are very little options for those needing editing/record decks.
Obviously, I could use my DVCPRO deck w/ the miniDV adapter w/ RS-422 as a source deck but I can’t use it as a record deck using the miniDV adapter.
I’d like to have the ability to use an edit controller in there but I bet these JVC decks would only be good as players and recorders being operated manually, eh?My studio control setup consists of:
Panasonic switcher
Videonics CG
Mackie audio mixer
Sony preview monitors
Sony program monitor
3 Panasonic CCUs
Panasonic SVHS record deck
Panasonic SVHS source deck
Panasonic edit controller
CD playerAny advice? It seems that JVC is the only company that makes MiniDV players and recorders even though various manufacturers make miniDV cameras.
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6 Replies
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Hi Robert,
With so many people using NLE’s today, EDIT BAY’s what are those??? I would venture to say that many people shooting MiniDV these days have never used an ‘analog style’ bay. Sounds like a neat studio you have at the University there. How often is it used? I assume since you’re a University that there is at least one NLE available… Let me do some digging and see what might float your fancy. Have you considered using Firestore’s to capture the cams feed instead of a deck???…
Talk to you soon.Johnny C
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Sure, we’ve got a few NLEs. I’ve got 2 desktop stations and 1 laptop station (all Media100) and our fine arts dept has a few FCP desktop stations.
We use the studio a couple times a week regularly and periodically at other times. We run our city’s govt. access TV channel. We do weekly, multi-cam talk shows for our local public school system and humane society. We’ve got a chromakey wall in there if anyone wants to shoot some green screen stuff. I’ll also use the studio for tight, one-shots for promotional videos and such for the univ.I was also thinking I could simply go w/ a Canopus bi-directional analog-to-firewire converter box. Thus, if a student came in wanting to master to miniDV they could use their camcorder as a record deck. Plus, I could record straight into my laptop editor if I wanted to.
Thanks Johnny for entertaining my dilemma.
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Hey Robert,
We picked and like the JVC BR-HD50 decks. We moved/are moving to HD with 720p as our native acquisition, until we are able to go to solid state acquisition like the EX-1. We were fully DVCam and now are in the process of kicking it up a bit. These decks feature an RS422 port for edit control as well as many features that make it a good fit for us; HMDI, ieee 1394 (DV & HDV) and they take tha large tapes so any program can be managed up to 4.5 hours! We generally have passed the linear concept and use these mostly with ieee 1394 control. Sony Vegas (v6 through Pro 8) have no problems doing frame accuate inserts and adendums.
The studio kits for the JVC HD250U are our replacement studio cameras. They are easily convertable to/and from feild use and the whole kit: Camera, lens, viewfinder, rear (studio) controls, ccu, and cable for under $20,000. They make beautiful pictures. The decks cost us about $3500 so it was an easy sale to the powers above considering the replacement DVCam decks (DRS-1800) were still nearly 3 times that. So I got 2-for-1 a saved money for other gear!
The other suggestion is to find a copy of Serious Magic’s DV Rack (now “On Location” and found in one of Adobe’s CS3 bundles) and an external hard drive. I record the school board and much in our studio direct to disk. I take the ieee 1394 feed from the back of either the 3000 (School Board system) or the 1800 in the control room. The program gives a full featured DDR, as well as video & audio monitors, and scopes all based on the digital feed NOt an analog conversion. I then either clone the file to my editors, or if I am in a bigger hurry, edit straight from the Hard Drive. It saves my large amounts of uploading, and printing time.
GB-)
“Better, Faster, Cheaper … Pick Two!”
Gary R. Brown, SCVE
Video Systems Engineer
Portsmouth Public Schools
Portsmouth, Virginia
23704-2135 -
Gary,
Thanks so much for the informative post. There’s lots of great info in there. It’s nice to hear from someone in a similar production realm (education.) -
Glad to put in my 2cents. Don’t hesitate to keep in touch, as we are probably affected by similar issues and stresses. I’m working through a BIG bottle of ADVIL as I design the HD upgrade here. Where in the country are you. I’m in southeast Virginia.
GB-)“Better, Faster, Cheaper … Pick Two!”
Gary R. Brown, SCVE
Video Systems Engineer
Portsmouth Public Schools
Portsmouth, Virginia
23704-2135 -
Send me you email addy. We can converse off forum.
I’m at rslenker@gsw.edu
Georgia Southwestern State University
Americus, GA
http://www.gsw.edu
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