OT: Sony Z1 tapes caputred with Sony A1/HC1?

Arks wrote on 7/13/2006, 7:10 AM
any idea if this would work?

SPOT (or anyone else with these cams),

If you still read this forum, I was researching yesterday and came across a post that you said were purchasing an A1 and had 3 Z1's. Can you transfer the Z1 tapes to the PC via firewire using the A1 or even the HC1 (all in HDV, no downconverting)? When using SD tapes from my dvx100 (60i recorded) I would sometimes use a cheapo minidv cam to capture as to not ruin my dvx100 heads. I am wondering if the lower priced sony HDV camcorders could do the same thing with the images captured in lets say 1080i from the Z1. I would rather have an extra camera than spend $3,000 on the sony HDV deck.

thanks for any replies,

Brian

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 7/13/2006, 7:11 AM
You can use any Sony HDV deck or camera to playback any Sony HDV or DV tape.
In other words, shoot with Z1, use an M10, M15, M25, A1U, FX1, HC3, HC1 to play back the footage shot with the Z1. There is no difference in quality of output.
p@mast3rs wrote on 7/13/2006, 7:20 AM
Heres a question. Why cant a regular DV camera transfer HDV if its only copy bit data to the computer? I mean if both formats can be stored on the same tape, why cant the tape have its data copied because there seems to be no encoding going on during bit transfer? Does that make sense?

Seems like a market for that so people dont have to wear out their HDV cam heads playing back when they can use a regular MiniDV cheapo cam just to transfer the data.
riredale wrote on 7/13/2006, 7:30 AM
Don't know the exact answer, but I do know that ScLive won't recognize an HDV tape, and that currently any DV material on an-otherwise-HDV tape will crash my PC if using the wonderful HDVSplit freeware utility (the author, Paviko, is aware of this and says he will try to make changes to the next version). So I have to conclude that very different drivers are being used for the two formats; all they have in common is the link via Firewire.

I've also noted that DV material fills the drives at the rate of about 13GB/hr, while HDV consumes about 12GB/hr.
Spot|DSE wrote on 7/13/2006, 7:53 AM
Because the information on the tape is different. There needs to be a decode process as it's being passed.
In different terms, it's sort of like asking how come an English speaker can't simply speak Twi, as both languages are spoken by humans. The data is significantly different in both coding, frame content, header info, etc.
Arks wrote on 7/13/2006, 8:08 AM
Pmasters,

The way I understand it is that a regular old DV camera has an old transport deck in it and the HDV tapes need some sort of "extra" decoder to transfer over.

SPOT,

thanks for the quick response, that is exactly what I wanted to hear (and was assuming that was the case, but wanted to make sure).

Brian

Arks wrote on 7/13/2006, 9:51 AM
is there much of a difference between the A1u and the HC1?
johnmeyer wrote on 7/13/2006, 1:36 PM
Why cant a regular DV camera transfer HDV if its only copy bit data to the computer?

Because, while the bits are copied, without alteration, the capture program is actually looking at those bits to decide what headers to put on the file and, I think, possibly do other things as well. Thus, while the actual video bits are transferred, bit-for-bit, some of the other things are altered.