Alternative use for a DV Cam??

[Dr Mordrid]

That's a lot unnecessary of wear & tear on the cam. Most of us DV users are going in the opposite direction by looking for ways to offload our cam drive usage to standalone DV decks & firewire drives.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 09 October 2000).]

[Vic20]

Alternative use for a DV Cam??

Strange question time....

Does anyone know if is possible to use a Digital Camcorder with firewire in/out as a PC backup device? It strikes me that this would be a very useful feature, using the machine as a sort of DAT drive!

I guess that in reality the camera would be just too clever and not accept any sort of input that wasn't DV. But hell, somebody's gotta have tried it!!

Vic

[Vic20]

Are the mechanics of a mini DV cam particularly fragile? What is the published life expectancy of an average head in these machines?

I'm asking because I'm looking at getting the Panasonic NVDS15 which is getting good reviews and can be bought in the UK for around £600. My planned use for the machine would be home/holidays and a bit of work. I/ve already made a few VCD's using my RR-G so for now that would be my planned output media until I upgrade to firewire at a later date.

Incidentally, can anyone give an idea of average battery duration on this machine? Nowhere can I seem to find these figures published.

TIA


Vic

[This_Idiot]

Dunno about Panasonic, but my Canon MV200 is "rated" to run at appx 1h35m recording without the panel, or 1h20 with. I recently ran a one hour shoot which captured 23 minutes of video using zoom occcasionally. The rest of the time the cam was in standby mode (in between shots etc), and I used the panel all the time. The battery indicator was still showing a full load at the end of the shoot.

The "standard" battery can be replaced with a higher rated battery (also Li-on) with 200% greater rating.

[Vic20]

I'm surprised the battery life is that good! I was expecting an hour or less.

Ive read quite a few reviews that really slate the bottom loading tapes which is becoming a 'feature' on several machines nowadays. I wonder if the manufacturers have a technical reason for doing this other than keeping both sides of the machine free for more buttons etc?

Cheers

Vic

[Brian Ellis]

Vic

Since those stupid LCD panels came in, I don't think anyone quotes battery life, now.

The camera uses the same Li-ion battery as the other Panasonics, so I guess you'ld be looking at a max 3-4 hours for straight work, no focussing, no zoom and a min of 20-30 mins with much focus/zoom/LCD.

BTW, be aware that it's a bugger to change cassettes!

------------------
Brian (the terrible)

[Dr Mordrid]

My Rule #1 is that more hours of use = more service calls no matter the device in question. Because of this I prefer to use my cams for shooting only, not for editing or mass storage.

For me CDR and packaged projects are the order of the day. I can back up a folder containing video clips, graphics, sound files & the project file to a few CDR's without wearing out the cam and at a lower cost than a single DV tape.

Dr. Mordrid

[Grigory]

There was a post on Canopus DV Raptor forum with a promise to make data backup utility with the use of DV camcorder. However, there is no ready software one year later.
Grigory

[wkulecz]

The thought of 13GB backed up to a single <$5 D8 tape vs ~20 CD-R ($2-4) makes me consider the wear and tear on the camcorder acceptable. DV's 3.6 MB/sec compares favorably with other tape backup devices that cost a whole lot more that my D8 camcorder! For a busy system the camcorder system makes no sense, but for the home computer user, a quick system backup to the camcorder you already own would be a nice option to have.

IT does seem too obvious. I suspect the error correction in DV is not good enough for data. A single bit changed in that 13 GB backup could lead to a restored system that crashes. On "lossless" DV transfers you'd have to make many of copies to ever notice it. If it were a "random" playback error (not in the same place everytime) you might never notice it on video.

--wally.

[Greebe]

The data on these (all camcorders) is written to tape using basically the same rotory head technology. With a "check at 1000hrs of use, should replace at 1500hrs, and no more that 2000hrs max life". Considering the cost of repair you would be better off finding another solution to backup data.