Has anybody heard of a mini DV player that allows you to play your mini DV tapes and export them to your computer so you don't need to use your camera? I would think a product like that would exist somewhere. Any ideas? Thanks
Yeah but they are usually expensive. There's one where I work but it comes as part of a huge machine that has a VCR in it. Loads of people have been looking for a standalone DV player but have always ended up just buying a camera or a separate camera for the task. DV camcorders are cheap enough that if you didn't want to wear the mechanism out on your good camera, you could get a cheap camcorder for £100-150 and use it for capturing only.
What we've started using is a hard drive based capture solution, which captures as you shoot. This way you don't even have to use tapes at all and you can edit as soon as you get onto your computer. It's much faster and much more reliable because there's no more bad tapes to mess up a shoot. The only problem is it can be quite expensive (£300+) but in the professional game, saving time saves money and if you shoot up to 6 hours of footage a day, it saves around a full working day.
Check out devices like the Sony DSR-11, DSR-20, etc. They are DVCAM decks but can do Mini DV just fine. But like the first poster said, a camcorder dedicated to this use will still be cheaper.
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What we've started using is a hard drive based capture solution, which captures as you shoot. This way you don't even have to use tapes at all and you can edit as soon as you get onto your computer. It's much faster and much more reliable because there's no more bad tapes to mess up a shoot. The only problem is it can be quite expensive (£300+) but in the professional game, saving time saves money and if you shoot up to 6 hours of footage a day, it saves around a full working day.