Capture with DVCPRO50-deck?

[VonOben]

Hi.

Today I use a Canopus DV converter for capturing video, I find it nice to get the resulting stream in a quite compressed format as DV. However, color do suffer at times.

Swedish public service TV sells old equipment, and at the moment they are shipping away quite alot of DVCPRO50-decks, probably because most new stuff are produced in HD. This shop is about to close down for a while soon, so I'm wondering if anyone here have any experience of this kind of equipment.

Some decks have analogue input options, and firewire and SDI out. I don't know if the firewire out can forward the analogue input directly, or if I have to use a tape as a cache in the middle.

These decks are quite expensive, do you people think this would make good captures?

[Ghitulescu]

Pro tools must always be used in a pro environment. Not only they use formats different from what a consumer has, which require expensive media, but also feature I/O incompatible to most/some consumer tools (like SDI in your case). Last but not least, these tools require additional equipment to work.

So while analog in seems to be compatible, you don't have normally access to SDI enabled gear (not in the consumer realm). The FW interface uses locked audio, which may not be compatible with consumerr FW (unlocked audio, ie the audio can skew a bit).

And without a model and/or type there's not much to be said.

PS: just forgot (I thought I've mentioned it) - unless you're extremely lucky, you'll end with a gear those servicing is due (or past) and both the service and the parts are extremely expensive (like 500€ for a drum, depending on the model and original/equivalent).

[VonOben]

So while analog in seems to be compatible, you don't have normally access to SDI enabled gear (not in the consumer realm). The FW interface uses locked audio, which may not be compatible with consumerr FW (unlocked audio, ie the audio can skew a bit).

This source of equipment has closed, so this is not a question anymore I'm afraid. My intention would have been to get an SDI-interface card.

Did not know about the differences in FW-standards. Thank you for clearing that up.

[Mug Funky]

you could do it (if the source hadn't dried up), but it would require an additional investment.

you could probably go firewire out with no trouble. the decks are usually switchable from 50 to 25, but DVCpro is a different beast to DV and DVCAM (though they're practically the same).

the tapes are hard to come by, and a bit error prone. they also require ugly adaptors to fit the medium and small tapes into the large hole.

the decks have very fail-prone power supplies.

there is very little industry adoption - there is one TV channel in Australia that insists on it, and EVERYONE else in the industry curses them for it.

you could certainly get a 2nd hand SDI capture card for cheap, but if you're going down that route, you can get one with analog capabilities (plus SDI and rs422 machine control) and it will serve you much much better.

tape is slowly dying. i will not miss it, though many will as there's a decades-entrenched workflow based around it, and even now you'd be hard pressed to find a producer that doesn't insist on some kind of tape backup for dailies (RED, P2 and XDCAM is changing that fast).