Capturing HDV with non-HDV camera

[epinhao]

Someone asked me to edit a video and needs it in 2 days!!! The problem is that he rented an HDV camera and didn't transfered it to his PC; he is not able to rent the camera again in the next 2 days. I don't have a HDV camera or deck myself but I got an SD camcorder. I don't have the tape right now with me I'm getting it tomorrow. Might I be able to capture the video with my SD camera or should I better look for another solution?

[ajk]

I don't believe any DV only camcorder will be able to understand the mpeg2-stream HDV uses. Editing HDV may also pose problems if you normally only handle DV. HDV camcorders can usually output DV too but obviously that doesn't help unless you have one. You should probably look into borrowing a HDV camcorder from somewhere else.

[epinhao]

I was thinking, if there's some way to extract the raw data from tape using the non-HDV camera through firewire without the camera "understanding" it? I'll later transcode it to SD in a much editing-friendly format so I have no problems.

[bb]

As far as I know there is no way to capture HDV using a standard DV (non-HDV) camcorder.

bb