Is there a cheaper DVCPRO HD deck?

[Noah Kadner]

Nope- that’s it.

Noah

[Barry Green]

Why would you need to output to tape? You’d only send it to tape if the intended recipient also had a DVCPRO-HD deck. You could just as easily burn the project to a DVD (if under 5 minutes) or to a Dual-Layer DVD (if under 9 minutes) or copy it to a hard disk and distribute that, or render it as a WMV9 file, or many other ways.

Do you have a specific company you plan on distributing the program to, and do you know for a fact they have a DVCPRO-HD deck in-house? If not, tape becomes irrelevant.

If they *do* require a DVCPRO-HD tape, you could perhaps arrange for a rental or dub facility to make the tape for you.

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[Blub06]

My world is tv production for broadcast or cable, thats all I know, thats all i do.

Chris

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

Hi Chris,

The least expensive deck is the AJ-HD1200A, and be aware that at that price it has no input card. You will need the firewire care which will raise its price a bit. However, I think it all goes back to how often you finish a project, or rather how many projects you do for TV, that would drive the decision to purchase or rent. The deck is available on a rental very cheaply, as an example you can rent it at Abel Cine Tech for $650.
So if it is a weekly thing you are needing to record, obviously you should look at purchase, but if it is once every couple of weeks, then maybe rental for a while.

Hope this helps,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Noah Kadner]

Perhaps with the $65K or so you are saving on a VariCam, a $21K deck is not a bad deal?

Noah

[Jeremy Garchow]

Please be aware, there are no RS-422 deck controlled, frame accurate, assemble edits to tape with the 1200A. You can forget about insert edits entirely. You would be better off renting the 1700 which is a fully enabled edit deck. you can probably get by with an old 150 deck provided you have an hd-sdi equipped capture card. Save your $30,000 on the 1200A if you are planning to do masters. Some people swear they can get by on using the firewire protocol for the 1200A and use that to layoff masters, but it’s not dead on accurate. I’ve tried it and it sort of works, but it’s a lot easier to use the 1700 and not worry about modifying your settings to use firewire.

At the very least rent the 1200 once and master a project with it before you make a decision to buy. if i were you and need to master to DVCPro HD all the time, i would figure something else out rather than buy the 1200.

Jeremy

[Blub06]

Thanks JeremyG, I have never mastered through firewire. Until JanC mentioned the firewire card I didnt understand that Firewire was an option. I saw the HD in and out on the deck and didnt think any further, but, Firewire would be a nice option.

I think I will be in the market to buy for both mastering and to archive the footage shot on location. Maybe a 2100 is the best option for archiveing, this is getting expensive…

Chris

[Jeremy Garchow]

Yeah, you can master audio and video through firewire (in Final Cut Pro), but what i was talking about is using firewire as deck control, and having audio and video outputting through HD-SDI. This is the only workaround that has even some sort of success laying off to tape on the 1200A. It’s kind of messy, and not frame accurate. If you do a search for 1200A over on the varicam forum, you will see the responses from Panasonic as to how the 1200A “never was and never will be” an edit deck.

Having said that, people have had some success in laying off the way I described above (a/v through HD-SDI & deck control through firewire), but it’s a workaround and not a solution. If you look over in the AJA kona 2 forum, you can see some of the discussions that happened their as well.

For the record, I am not slamming Panasonic or any of their products. DVCPro HD has been good to me. I just want you to know what you’re buying. 30Gs is tall dollar for something that doesn’t work like you thought it might. Rent one first and see if the firewire deck control solution is good enough for you.

Hope this helps.

Jeremy

[Toke]

[Blub] “mastering and to archive the footage”

If you need heavy duty archiving maybe Ultrium3 would be nice. 400GB per tape and 400Mbps.
Then you are not locked to one video format archiving.

Budget alternative would be wait for a couple of months and then buy blu-ray drive.

[Blub06]

It a good idea but I think I am going to archive to DVCproHD tape. I do look forward to the blueray thing but untill it pops up as a real recordable system for data I think I will go in the direction of DVCPRO HD tape.

Chris