I'm using a JVC SVHS/miniDV deck which has been working well for around 3 years now. Chosen mainly for convenience of dual-deck feature (price was OK too). Works great for FW to analogue conversion for previewing Vegas projects, but so far I haven't tried print to tape from Vegas.

Richard Hunter

The JVC decks have a professional version of the consumer models that end in VS10,VS20 and VS30. (Consumer equivalents are HR DVS1, DVS2 and DVS3) These are slightly a nuisance product IMHO. We have a VS10, which has a very awkward design of having the firewire socket behind the front flap. Maybe OK for the casual use consumer, but on the commercial/pro version? Each have received mixed reviews and we're an owner with mixed feelings on this purchase.

Dubbing from your PC to VHS via firewire is a front panel jiggle. The opposite is always true, although most reviews say that VHS has to go to miniDV first, which isn't correct on my European model The DVS1/VS10 models don't support LP miniDV, nor do they playback DVCAM. The VS20 and 30 do play DVCAM on miniDV. None of the decks play DVCPro25 etc.

It was the right money. Actually less at the time than the street price for a screenless Sony miniDV walkman, and just a bit more than the Digital8 walkmans. It still works, although the used-hours are also low.

I don't dislike the decks for the job they serve but there is something antiquated about them.

I don't think the mechanisms are meant for industrial/constant use. There is a warning sticker on the DV slot to take care when handling the tape. Another thing I can think of that was a pain was the Matrox Video Tools for the RT2000 took a while to be adapted to the vagaries of the deck. The firewire protocol implemented was too bespoke for many pieces of editing software to handle. RT2000/Premiere wasn't the only NLE that had to include this deck in a later support update.

We bought it because it was cheap and we needed miniDV and VHS/SVHS playback. With the price of SVHS decks having tumbled, I would stick to a miniDV or a DV+miniDV deck and steer clear of this integration.

We could get into the camcorder/VTR debate again. Consumer miniDV camcorders with in/out are very aggressively priced of course.

I don't know what you mean by the money being right, but I now regret the $1,600 I paid for my "Professional" VS10. It has about 200 hours TOTAL on it, and the VHS side failed. Just waiting to see what they want to fix it. I may abandon it.

MY biggest complaint is that when you tell it to copy from one machine to the other there is an extraordinary delay before both units are working together. One runs for about 9 seconds before the other dains to start its job. An unacceptable delay, in my opinion. I could see 1 second, even 2, but 9 is absurd.

I was kind of tempted by these VCRs but I'm glad i didn't. Seems too risky having all your eggs in the one basket. For the same money I've got my ADVC-300 and a SVHS machine. I'm still down a MiniDV VCR but if and when I could justify owning one I'll get the DSR-11.
That means I can handle both sizes of DV tapes and in both PAL and NTSC.

The only "VHS" firwire vcr I am aware of the actually the D-VHS deck. Other than that the next things that comes close are the VHS/DV combos from Go Video and JVC. I have a JVC SR-VS30 that is great for my needs. Does Time Code and plays back DVCam. On the VHS side it is VHS/SHVS and a psuedo SVHS using normal VHS stock. pass through VHS > DV > Firewire or vice versa without recording on the DV side. The remote has a jog shuttle and you can do some sort of assemble editing interanally. Price wise just shop around and you can find it for under $800.00 (US). the 'consumer' (HR) version will be about $700.00, the differences are mostly cosmetic and the 'comsumer' version won't do timecode and won't play DVCam tape.

As for the D-VHS decks - I was looking into those because, again if you shop around, you can find it for under $500.00 (US). The D-VHS deck is a "HD" deck and you need third party software (Some of it is freeware) to get the HD material from the deck into Vegas and from Vegas back onto the deck. I had the VP of the broadcast/pro side of things admit that the DH3000 can take the DV firewire output from vegas and record it. It will not upsample to HD however. Panasonic also makes a D-VHS deck as well but I don't know that much about them.

The JVC D-VHS deck also play's VHS/SVHS tapes. I just ordered one

JJK

I had two of the earlier combo JVC decks. They both failed within the first few weeks of life so I gave up and went to a SVHS VCR and an A/D converter. Cheaper and more flexible.

My research showed that the only differences between the consumer and professional version of these decks is the color and the length of the warranty. My opinion was that is was a good idea but produced with poor quality control.

I'm told the JVC HR-S7600AM decks are pretty good but JVC don't even seem to list them.
Failing that the old rack mount ones can do a better job than a lot of the modern stuff. I've heard the ones that didn't do LP are the best as they've got a wider head. We've got an old moster SVHS deck that'll even let you record separate audio to the linear and HiFi tracks as well as lock to external sync which is handy when trying to dub to digibeta.

You see this kind of gear turn up on eBay from time to time or else someone just throws it out because it's old and ugly.

Just sort of of an add to this thread - i was under the impression that the JVC SR-VS30 didn't read 24p but...hey, it does. The film I am working on - they shot pick up shots last week and I got the tapes Sunday. I was digitizing today and not thinking abou ti too much, went into my 30p project adn put in some of the new stuff. The timeline playback hits the new footage and speed drops down to about 5 fps. I am wondering "What the hell now..." and I happened to look at the newly captured files - 24p with 2-3 pulldown. So, the deck does do 24p out so you can use it to capture 24p footage with no issues.

And if anyone wonders why the project is at 30p when the footage isn't - well this was the only stuff they shot at 24p, the rest of it was all done at 30p.

filmy,
I think the issue with that deck was reading or writing the 24pA header data. Straight 24p I thought it was OK with.