I was told that a dvdeck was a good idea for transferring minidv tapes to the computer, and that doing so with the camera would somehow damage it over time. Ive searched for dvdecks online and they were all $800+ which is more than my camcorder. Are there any cheaper sub $100 decks out there, or is it ok just to use my camcorder?
Also i tried transferring a tape from my camcorder via USB and although XP picked it up as a removable drive i couldnt access it and no editing programs read it. Should it have worked or is firewire the only way to transfer video to the computer?
It used to be a good idea, but now that you can buy a DV camcorder for $250 it really doesn't much matter; if you don't want to use your camcorder then just buy a second one, the cheapest you can find with Firewire in/out (or just out if you're outputting to DVD rather than DV tapes).
DV heads should last 1500-2000 hours, so it's not really a big deal unless you use your camera a lot. Particuarly if you capture complete tapes at once rather than batch capturing individual shots with lots of fast-forwarding and rewinding.
Good idea, thanks!
What about transferring HDV? I don't think it'd work because of the different codec or whatever HDV uses compared to DV, but is it possible to use a non-HDV camera to transfer HDV footage to my computer?
No, unfortunately; DV cameras won't play back HDV footage, unless that feature has been specifically added to some models. You'd need to buy a cheap HDV camera instead.
