I have this unit -- actually I have an SR-VS30, don't know what the U indicates in your post. My avice? Avoid it. Although the VHS side works fine, I cannot get it to read miniDV tapes without dropping frames, either when playing or capturing. This has always been the case. I sent it to JVC for service, and they said they found nothing wrong with the unit. I will never buy their products again.

Sony has a similar unit, but you have to import it from Japan. They carry it at planetjapan.org, but the site seems to be down now.

Good luck! Let me know your experience with whatever you buy. FYI I use two Canon XL1s cameras, and haven't tested the deck with tapes recorded with other cameras.

The Japan only WV-DR5, DR7, and DR9 are not available new any longer. Sony, Japan, has discontinued them and I do not believe they have replaced them. They were Professional grade in a Japan only Consumer line.
The closest in that price range would be the Sony DSR-11. It takes full size DV tapes, but doesn't have a VHS/SVHS side.
http://www.expandore.com/product/Sony/Proav/model/Dvcam/dsr11.htm

Ask Rextilleon about it, I believe he has one.

John

Thanks for the report - I was eyeing this unit as I often need to make VHS tapes, and thought this would be a slick way to go. Guess I'll take a look at the Sony + a Canopus ADVC-100 (and haul my 2nd [or is it 3rd] VHS machine back up from the basement).

Well, for making VHS tapes, it's the bomb. You can't control the deck from Vegas, but it sends the signal directly to the VHS side via firewire, so you get minimal signal degradation. But you're paying for the both decks, so it's not worth the price for VHS alone.

If you just want VHS, look into an SVHS machine with S-Video input. Go from your ADVC-100 to that, and you'll have a nice signal.

Thank you for all of responses. I think I will stick with the Sony deck. Thanks.

Bill

We have a JVC miniDV / SVHS combo deck here, and a problem with it is that it strips the Panasonic AG-DVX100 "shooting frame rate" DV header, so that 24p/24pA footage comes in as 60i for tapes captured on that deck. Beware.
///d@

Dennis,

Do you experience any dropped frames issues with the miniDV deck? Particularly with footage captured from an XL1s? As I said in my post, this is a big problem for me. I'm curious if my deck is defective (despite JVC's diagnosis) or if all decks have this problem.

I have the same JVC deck, as well as a local cable access channel. We have had no problems with the JVC SR-VS30U. It has performed flawlessly on the mini dv as well
as the s-vhs side. I hope that this helps.

Dwuane

Yeah, well I'm curious if it's an incompatibility with footage recorded with Canon XL1/XL1s cameras. Do you use these? I sent the deck back to JVC and they found no problems, but I assume they tested it with house-brand cameras and tapes.

Have you tried playing back the same tapes from the XL1 in another deck?

Despite the beautiful optics and great video XL1 s are not reknown as the most rugged of cameras and seem to suffer from a lot of problems with the transport getting out of alignment.

Even if it they do playback in another transport it still doesn't mean the JVCs at fault. From what I know in general the more you pay for a deck the better the head servos are at tracking. The DSR2000 will playback tapes like nothing else can but its a bit out of most poples price range.

We had a customer with tapes from a misaligned XL1, he didn't realise he had a problem until the camera was fixed (again!) and then it wouldn't play the old tapes. A DSR300 could get the odd frame off them, a DSR45 got most of them with the occasional dropout. He eventually found someone witha DSR2000 and got it all back.

It could be a problem with the cameras, but I doubt it. The same issue occurs with footage shot on any of three cameras (one XL1, two XL1s), and the odds of the same problem existing on all three is pretty low.

Possibly its not a fault with the cameras but its certainly not the first time I've heard of problems playing back tapes from them, I've met people who've had issues playing the tapes back in Sony VCRs as well. Perhaps (I'm only guessing here) the write heads in the Canon are narrower in general or the guides are set right at the limits so other machines if they're right at the limit the other way have difficulty playing them.

I seem to remember that when I came back from Florida last month, I was having problems with dropping audio in the JVC at certain parts of the tape, but it did it in
other players as well. I currently have the XL1's at the Canon factory to be checked
out. I don't think that it is the JVC. I think it's the XL1's. To this date I have yet to have a problem with the JVC, and the local access channel has a slew of these decks
and have not had one problem with them.

I hope that this helps. I bought my JVC at B&H Photo Video out of New York. I
really like this deck. In my opinion, it's a good investment but I understand others have had problems and reservations about them.

Dwuane

I know it's not really relevant, but I've owned a SR-VS10 Professional Series for several years now and have never had a problem with it (knock on wood). Also, Vegas has always been able to control and capture from this deck. Seems really old fashioned now, but I use to RA Edit with this deck with great (uhum, cough..) results. It's also cool not having to hook up the camera to capture.

I erred on the VS30U. Mine is the VS20U. But the answer remains. I have had no
problems with it at all.

Dwuane

I just got my JVC SR-VS30U and hooked it up. So far so good. No problems with VV reading the deck, no problems with firewire out to the VHS side, or from the VHS side in via firewire either. I know people have had issues with those two things so here is the 'how to', short version:

For VHS in via firewire
1> Push "DV"
2> Select input as "L-1"
3> Push "S-VHS" and hit play.

You should see the VHS signal in your capture window coming in via the firewire.

For output to VHS side via PC firewire:

1> Select input as "F-1"
2> Push "DV -->" button next to "dub"
3> Push the "S-VHS" button
4> Hit the record button
5> Start playback or PTT in NLE program.

**There is no deck control on the VHS side**

So far my only dissapointment is not figuring out how to get the Time Code window on the internal DV > S-VHS dub. I only see it on the output going to the monitor. So I guess you would have to just go to an external deck for the window burn copies. (And yes I know you can render a TC window with VV but that takes forever and the deck is 'real time')

I would say go for it Bill. get this unit because it is convenant and the ablity to record from/to both the DV side and S-VHS side is a huge plus. Oh, it also will play back (and only play back, not record DVCam) the DVCam tapes as well - the small, mini-dv sized ones.

"**There is no deck control on the VHS side** "

Any problems the deck control on the DV side? I'm considering something like this to cut down the wear and tear on my cameras.

Thanks in advance.

Andy

What cameras do you use filmy?

>>>Any problems the deck control on the DV side?<<<

VV deck control works fine with the generic DV (microsoft) drivers.

In Premiere go into the "Scratch Disk and Device Contol" settings, choose "DV Device Control 2.0" and - 'Device brand' = 'JVC' and 'Device Type' = 'SR-VS20U'.

For Avid XpressDV the 'generic' works as does the "JVC" and "SR-20" setting. (but I don't use XpressDV, I just opened it to see if it had deck control for this and it crashed the whole system. I just don't like Avid Xpress for many reasons - the constant crashing in one of them)

I just got the JVC SR-VS30U and have experienced problems with the fire wire in from S-VHS and wondered if you had any sugestions. When following your directions (I use VV 4) for firewire in capture from S-VHS the audio comes accros fine but the video only shows up for about 1 second and then it goes back to the blue capture srceen and says divice stopped. If I change from the capture tab to the advance capture tab again I get video from VHS from about a second then back to blue. Also if I hit the capture button it switches the deck to DV and starts a capture from the DV tape. If I remove the DV tape then the capture options are greyed out and the blue screen says insert tape. What am I missing? Any sugestions? Are there drivers you need to install for the deck? Using windoze XP when I hook up the firewire it ask for driver disk? I did not recive anything with the deck - Any help on this would be great.

Thanks,

John

Hi,

Go into the video capture program's preferences and uncheck "device control". I had this exact same problem, you have to have device control off when using the firewire port on the JVC for VHS capture. It should work fine if it's disabled, if not let me know. BTW make sure you remember to turn device control back on if you want to use it for Mini-DV device control.
Oh, and I've been using this deck for 3 months now and everything works great, on both the DV and VHS ends. No problems whatsoever. Also if you have this deck I'd try to spend a day and experiment with it and VV.....I found that anything I took for a 'problem' was me not having something set right. That said, I'm going to go and see if I can replicate some of the problems you guys have described, I'll let you know what I find out.

Sincerely, Leviathan

Luxo, I also have a couple of XL1S' and the SR-VS30U but I've never had a problem with dropped frames with tapes from either cam.
BTW, how do you PTT directly to VHS, I seem to have to go to DV first and then dub from it.
I'd have to agree about the VHS being such a great recorder though, I don't know if it's the ET technology or not but my VHS looks almost as good as mini DV.
Randy