Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 7/17/2006, 3:47 PM
No.
fwtep wrote on 7/17/2006, 3:57 PM
Oh well. Thanks for the info. I'm amazed and upset that 80 minutes is the longest tape available. Would it really be too hard to raise that to 90 minutes so at least a whole movie could fit on one tape? (I know that many movies are longer, but from what I've seen-- and done-- DV and HDV indie features are generally under 90 minutes, but are almost never 80 or under.)

Fred
johnmeyer wrote on 7/17/2006, 4:22 PM
I don't think the people that designed the format were thinking about off-the-air recording. We've got Hi-Def Tivo for that (and many other things coming). The main use envisioned, I'm sure, was taping events, etc. Since there are few events that require more than an hour without interruption (or at least where it would be relatively easy to pause for thirty seconds to change a tape), one hour probably seemed like enough.

Having said that, I'll admit that it is nice to stick an 80 minute DV tape into my DV camera, put it on LP, and let it grind during a long reception, rehearsal dinner, wedding, etc.

In the meantime, you can use an external hard disk or laptop to extend your time to dozens of hours. Since you want to record movies, this seems to me to be a far better way to go, never mind the tape problem. Why not just record directly to your laptop and play it back from your laptop?
Spot|DSE wrote on 7/17/2006, 4:39 PM
The spec allows for it, but it's just not a good idea (which is why I suppose it's not offered as a feature) to additionally tax the GOP, bitrate, etc.
For longer pieces to record, there is always HDD. If you're talking about delivery, I'm not aware of any major that will accept HDV as a delivery format, most everyone is requiring HDCAM or HDD, or even D5
farss wrote on 7/17/2006, 5:00 PM
The new Sony HDV decks will record 4.5 hours of HDV. Doesn't help much in the field though as they're not battery powered.

Got one a few days ago but yet to try it in the line of fire.

Bob.
fwtep wrote on 7/17/2006, 5:03 PM
I just needed to use the camera as a playback deck for a screening, so having a longer tape would have been great. Now we're looking at getting one of the decks that take the larger tapes.
riredale wrote on 7/17/2006, 6:14 PM
I've had fun using a generic laptop for HDV capture. You can go out to 15' with a regular Firewire cable, and through the use of repeaters you can run much further.

HDV takes about 12GB/hr, so a cheapo laptop with a huge hard drive (or an external drive) would be able to capture for a great many hours. Incidentally, I use HDVSplit to do the actual capture.