Wow, That's a damn good idea.

I couldn't see anyone making one for Digital8, but havine a DVCAM/DVCPro internal drive would be slick. You could then use one of those adapter tapes for MiniDV. I am guessing that if anyone ever successfully masters the use of DV for other data storage these types of drives would be seen quickly thereafter.

I believe such drives are already in the marketplace, or at least they were at one time. I think Sony makes / used to make one. It was called Sony 1000 or something like that.

That's right; I remember seeing an ad for it, too, and thinking that it was a pretty good idea. I guess there wasn't much of a market for it.

I think Pinnacle surveyed the users on their forum for interest in an internal DV drive not all that long ago - don't know if it went anywhere or not.

They have not created an internal drive as of yet, i assure you. This is because the cable found inside the system, that would often connect to a cdrom drive cannot handle the media that a internal tape drive would produce.

If its all the same, Sony have a large range of external ones that are absoulutely fantastic. They come with all diffrent features. Depending what you want.

Hope this was of some help to you.

Yes fixler, I have a Sony D1000E Mini DV Deck. Inside the lid is a 4" monitor screen. It has stereo speakers.
It has a Sony memory stick port for recording to, or stills capture etc, analogue in/outs etc etc
I can connect it via firewire to any of my three computers, and take it on location for reviewing footage, capturing to laptop etc.
And, it has its own battery for field work.

To me, the idea of an internal DV drive is too inflexible.

DV cameras can of course do the same jobs as the D1000E, but I like to give my camera a well earned rest between shoots ....

A cheap internal drive would be great!
I do not like to use my camera for logging.

If it also could be used as a normal backup
drive, I would buy it, no doubt.

Runar

Not sure what you mean by this. The ideal scenario would be to have the internal DV drive connected via SATA interface at 1.5Gbs, getting you around 150MBs transfer rates. And SATA is designed to progress to 3Gbs and 6Gbs. At 6Gbs, or 600MBs, you could theoretically read in an entire DV tape in about 25 seconds! Of course, the hinderance here is that these transfers are usually not done at the OS level driving directly to the bus, but by application software which is often analyzing the data is it comes through, which can slow things down considerably. But it'd still be better than an external 1394 interface, which are often unfortunately sharing PCI channels or interrupts with the hard drive interfaces you're trying to transfer to, slowing things down quite a bit. Even just going via IDE/ATA133 with the DV as master to a drive as master should provide much greater throughput.

Fixler,

Not to be argumentative but there indeed was an internal DVCAM tape drive manufactured by Sony a couple of years ago. I don't believe they are available anymore though. It was very expensive.

Mike

Is this what you are talking about.

http://www.techex.es/pdfs/SON1.pdf

Dave - - great!

Do you know if these are still available, anywhere?

That was the only thing I could find. I searched for any combination on the web, and found just that flyer.

I saw them in a catalog last year, I think it was B&H Photovideo, but they don't have it listed either.

Sorry.

Dave T2

Saw one price reference punching the product name into google-$7,800.00. How many do you want ?

Surely a bottom of the range DV cam would be a more practical choice - for this application. It also gives you a second camera if needed.
Anyone care to make a recommndation as to which camera would have the most reliable transport mechanism and heads - I would imagine the same transport mechanisms are used up and down the range of cameras in famlies of DV cams.

I can't ever see the internal DV drive being cost effective especailly for amatuer use.

mark

I have a 3-year-old Sony TRV8, and it's been a solid performer. I used it in conjunction with Pinnacle's "Studio7" software two years ago to produce my first 1-hour video (compiled from 14 hours of raw video), and if you're familiar with Studio7 you know that there is a mode where one can capture a low-res version of the raw video, edit that into a finished product, and then tell the software to go out to the camera and re-input all the pieces that are to be included in the final output, but in full-res this time. This process works the camera pretty hard, with constant playing/rewinding/positioning that goes on for hours. The camera never missed a beat.

You can probably find a very similar camera in the $500 price range, either slightly used or perhaps even new.

I have seen two internal computer mount DV drives. The only one with any real memory was a Sony, from B&HPhoto, I believe, at least a year ago. I also seem to remember that it was almost exactly the same price as my Sony TRV30, $1400. So I just dropped the idea. If it had been HALF of that, I might have considered it (not too hard, though). After all, there are NO optics in it, no CCD, etc. Why did it cost THAT much? Is there any doubt in anyones mind WHY it isn't in every corner store?