Need advice with property options!!

[Paul Gilmore]

Thanks alot for everyone’s help! Answered all my questions and in detail which I really appreciate!

Paul

[Stephen Mann]

[Paul Gilmore] “i’d love to go tapeless however doesn’t that mean buying new equipment?”

Well, yes.
I bought a pair of Sony HVR-DR60 Record Units with my Sony Z7 cameras. They weren’t cheap, at the time they were about $900 each after rebates from Sony. It’s discontinued now, but there’s one on eBay for $500.

I like the HVR-DR60 because I can shoot up to 4.5 hours non-stop. Since a lot of my projects are multi-camera stage events that easily last 3- to 4-hours, I don’t have to stop for a tape change.

If I were buying now, I would probably look at a Sony HVR-MRC1K memory recording unit, but it has a significant handicap: you can only plug in one memory card. So, after the card is full you still have to stop recording for a card change.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Nigel O’neill]

Stephen

Have you had any experience with or heard anything negative about the Datavideo DN-60 CF card recorder?

One thing Paul needs to be aware of is not to mix tape brands as some are based on a wet formulation and others, dry. I think Sony’s are wet and Panasonic’s and JVC’s are dry. If you find a brand you like stick to it.

I am starting to go tapeless. After 5.5 years (but only about 200 drum hours), my Z1P’s tape transport decided to cr*p itself without warning at the start of a live shoot last week. Luckily I had a B & C camera to cover my *ss. The repair cost is $550 for something that is likely to fail again in a couple of years, hence my interest in a DN-60 which costs the same. Without moving parts, it is unlikely to fail for a while, unless the camera or firewire connection develop a fault.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Paul Gilmore]

“One advantage of going SD from an HDV source that hasn’t been mentioned is the ability to zoom/pan/crop your HDV footage.
I shoot HD but still deliver in SD and love the ability to crop a shot, zoom in or pan it if I want to.”

Maybe I’m not following, why cant u pan/crop with SD footage? I do all the time

[John Rofrano]

To be more exact… You can pan/crop HD footage with NO LOSS in resolution. When you crop SD you loose resolution. HD has 5x the resolution of SD. There is no reason to shoot SD unless someone has hired you to shoot SD and expects you to deliver the SD miniDV tapes.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com