miniDV to PC simple question

[YZ_-Freak]

I have borrowed my friends Sony TRV27 miniDV camcorder to transfer some video from a miniDV tape through firewire to my PC. I was always under the impression that the video was transfered from a miniDV tape as a file via firewire, not a realtime capture. So to pull 20 minutes of video would only take a couple of minutes. I have tried SCLive, Premiere 7, and Pinnacle Studio 8. All these programs want to record the video off of the tapes as a "capture" (ie press play on camera and record in capture software).
I've searched the forum and found references that the file transfer is as simple as transfering a file from one drive to another, and others stating the video has to be captured. So which is it?

[bb]

"Capturing" via firewire has nothing to do with analogue captures. If you ask me, I'd prefer to call the process "streaming", not "capturing".

Unfortunately you can't get the data off the tape faster than real-time. It should be technically possible, e.g. if the manufacturers would add a "double speed" option which would read the data from tape twice as fast, you could stream the DV data to your PC at twice the data rate. Of course the heads must be able to cope with the higher speed, the electronics around may need some tweaking, too, and maybe the streaming protocol needs to be modified as well, so that programs like Scenalyzer recognize the double data rate DV stream.

There is no such "high speed dubbing" available for DV devices as far as I know. Maybe this will change when they start using hard disc drives as storage devices, not tapes. I wonder when - and even if - this will happen...

bb

[mustardman]

I was under the impression that you could already get camcorders that were hard disk based??? The DVD ones are certainly available.

I think the real issue is price.
DVD @ 4.5 GB ~ $3
DV tape @ capacity about 20 GB ~ $10
Hard Disk @ capacity 40GB (2.5") ~ $200

I know what I'd go for, and whatever it is should be removable. Can you imagine having a half dozen spare blank hard disks with you when you go on that holiday?

Besides, if the hard disk was not FAT/NTFS compatible, you would still need your camcorder to read it. Hence, the transfer would be limited by the IEEE1394 interface (~400Mbps) and not by the drive.

[hendrix]

Originally posted by bb
There is no such "high speed dubbing" available for DV devices as far as I know. Maybe this will change when they start using hard disc drives as storage devices, not tapes. I wonder when - and even if - this will happen...

bb
actually there is...Sony DSR-80 DVCAM Decks connected to the Sony ES-3 EditingStation via QSDI cables can do rapid digitizing...i saw it at the Tokyo Video Show a few years ago and it was nice.

[communist]

Originally posted by hendrix
actually there is...Sony DSR-80 DVCAM Decks connected to the Sony ES-3 EditingStation via QSDI cables can do rapid digitizing...i saw it at the Tokyo Video Show a few years ago and it was nice.
Yep professional setups (D9 / DVCAM / DVCPRO...) have such a 'feature' that allows faster than real-time digital dubbing called SDTI (lossless transfer).
http://www.xs4all.nl/~brw/ds_products/sdti.html

But that would be way too expensive for the normal user cause you'll need SDTI interace card + SDTI capable deck :|

[theReal]

Sony also offers harddisc recorders for professional DVCAM camcorders now.
Also they offer different new types of recording media for IMX compression (HD and I even heard they experiment with high capacity SD "memory cards").

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Professional/webapp/ModelInfo?m=0&sm=0&p=2&sp=20132&id=70132

I know what I'd go for, and whatever it is should be removable. Can you imagine having a half dozen spare blank hard disks with you when you go on that holiday?
That's why mostly professionals are interested in hd or memory card recording techniques. At my work every cutter wastes about three hours a day for recording into the Mac and back to tape - HD recorders could cut that down to 10-15 minutes!