Sony HVR-1500

[Bob Zelin]

the HVR-1500 is the only VTR you should use for professional editing with FCP and a professional capture card (from AJA or Blackmagic). It does everything you would expect from a normal Beta or Digi Beta VTR. It has SDI and HD-SDI outputs, both with embedded audio, and yes, perfectly working RS422 control. The cheaper HDV VTR’s from Sony will all give you aggrivation. The only other HDV VTR that you can use like this is the JVC BR-HD50U, and this only has analog HD component outputs without embedded audio. You certainly can put analog HD into a Kona LHe or Blackmagic Decklink Extreme, for example, but most people would get an AJA HD10AVA for the JVC BRHD50U to get embedded audio HD-SDI output.

You will be very happy with your purchase.

Bob Zelin

[Michael Alberts]

At our facility we have the HVR-1500 for the few HDV jobs we do. However, when trying to capture HDV tapes via HD-SDI and RS-422 we can’t seem to get anything close to frame accurate captures.
The deck works perfectly when capturing DVCAM tapes. Frame accurate captures all day long. But when we try to log a clip from an HDV tape and capture it it will be anywhere from 15 frames to 2 1/2 seconds off. In addition, when trying to conform a show that was originally edited by a client in HDV the clips wouldn’t even link due to mismatch in media lengths.
This problem exists with all three edit systems in our office: a Kona 3, Kona2 and Kona 3X system. However, if we use firewire as the machine control protocol the deck works much better. Still not 100% accurate, but almost usable.
The problem seems to rest with FCP. We know this because when we use the Kona capture app that comes with the card we can capture frame accurate shots all day long. It’s only when using FCP does the RS-422 problem occur. This was with FCP 6.0. I’m not sure we’ve tried capturing from an HDV tape since upgrading to FCP 6.02. Like I said, we don’t get that many jobs that were shot HDV.

Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc.
http://www.ambidextrous.net

[Heiner Boeck]

Thank you guys loads. As I will use it in DVCAM-mode, i think it would be a good solution for my purposes.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

We plan on getting one or more of these.

When we set up a post facility, we went and got 4 Sony HVR M-25. Definityely stay away from these. They have no RS-422 or SDI/HD-SDI. But we planned on using them with Firewire in FCP or with the Miranda HDV bridge for other systems.

They don’t work with the Miranda or at least reliably.

And more distressingly, all 4 VTRs had their Firewire ports blown inside 2 months. We had the FW ports replaced by Sony, but thereafter they blew again. Now Sony refuses to replace the ports any more.

Further, Sony insists that before connecting the HVR M-25, the Mac has to be shut down, else the ports will blow.

So Sony HVR M-25, beware. Also with the HVR-1500 please check with Sony if this recorder also requires that the host computer be powered off before connecting. Else you may also have fries FW ports.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Gnostic]

Who says after using an HVR-1500A and FCP 6, it will do machine control accurately?
With my tests, for every 24 tries, it gets lost about 4 – 6 times, and it captures from 4-frames to 15-frames off when it doesn’t get lost. Sony techs told me this was about par for the course.

I did an hour show that had every clip off by several frames when I recaptured. I put them all back in sync manually.

HDV is a terrible idea that looked good on paper.

Michael G

[Bob Zelin]

HDV was NEVER EVER supposed to be a “professional format”. It was a consumer format – JUST LIKE DV. But NOOOOOOOO – everyone wanted “cheap” and pressured the pro division. And look what happened. The HVR-1500A is sold to people that HAVE to deal with HDV on a regular basis. When the HVR-M10U was first released, and became wildly popular, professionals looked at it, and said “are you kidding me”. This is just like the Sony DSR-11, which is STILL used by some “professionals”.

Money decides everything.

Bob Zelin

[Gnostic]

True,
but the story was that some have said that the HDV machine control with the 1500 deck was accurate. It is Not.

The best,

Michael G