HDD DV Camera

Rick Bray wrote on 1/10/2008, 1:31 PM

Is there a HDD camera that records DV? I'm trying to avoid cameras that create MPEG-2 since Vegas has issues with large amounts of MPEG files in a project.

A camera that records to tapes is not an option and we'd want to avoid DTE's as well.

Comments

UlfLaursen wrote on 1/11/2008, 7:54 AM

Hi

Never heard of one - you would need a huge harddrive to get 13 GB for every hour you shoot.
Personaly I have not had problems with MPEG-2 files. I recently did 4 DVD's for a freind with som stuff she had shot on a Sony HDD cam with MPEG-2. That was in Vegas 7.0d though - have not tried this in 8 yet.
If you shoot indoor, you coud hook up a laptop and capture on the fly with Adobe OnLocation f.ex.

/Ulf

Rick Bray wrote on 1/11/2008, 8:41 AM

We shoot at constructions sites at various locations across the country, so the laptop solution wouldn't work for us.

Our camera operators shoot about 2 hours a day and then offload it, so a 40 GB HDD would be fine if I understand you correctly.

We use 7.0e and I believe when we get up around 80 MPG files it starts to red screen and crash. I've had 193 AVI files in a project and never had a problem which is why we want to switch cameras.

Vegas 8 is a major pain for us because certain MPG files come through without audio. Sony's fix for this was to remove the media, rename the with the extension .VOB, and then reimport it. This is fine for new projects, but for old projects it forces our editors to re-edit.

UlfLaursen wrote on 1/11/2008, 11:39 AM

I see - it's a bid tough :-(

I can only come up with the EX1, but it's quite expencive - dono what your budget is.

/Ulf

Rick Bray wrote on 1/11/2008, 12:28 PM

An HD camera? That probably won't work for us. We shoot thousands of hours of footage every year and keep every bit on our network servers (don't ask.)

It is a little pricey too. :)

johnmeyer wrote on 1/11/2008, 6:53 PM

You can purchase a Firestor or similar product and have a portable hard disk solution, even with your existing cameras.

UlfLaursen wrote on 1/11/2008, 10:29 PM

But of course - why din't I think of that ;-)

You are right John - this seems to be a good solution.

/Ulf

rmack350 wrote on 1/11/2008, 10:45 PM

From the first post in the thread: "...and we'd want to avoid DTE's as well."

DTEs like the firestor are really the way to do it. The only other strategy I can think of is to upload the media to a server with a compression program running on it - Procoder or Squeeze maybe, and transcode the media into something uniform and manageable.

Ideally, the process would be automated and the compressor would just watch the folder for new files to compress.

This would be cheaper than replacing cameras and I'd start sending queries to Sorenson and whoever owns Procoder (Canopus?) to see what they can do for you.

Rob Mack