On Fri, 14 Aug 1998 03:35:53 -0400, "FyLmZ" wrote:

>Hello there everyone. I'm getting ready to make my first "serious" film in
>which I'm taking things very seriously. (Multiple Script Drafts,
>Storyboarding, and Buying new equiptment) I happened to get a hold of a Sony
>VX-1000 Digital Video camera and I'm pretty excited about using it.

Nice, versatile camcorder... (BTW, don't overlook the possibilities
provided by the "custom" menu... [though be careful not to go TOO far
from "normal"...! ;-])

>But
>there's a question I have about the DV medium and that question is about
>"firewall".
>Okay, is this possible?
>I finish filming the movie...have all the takes ready for post production. I
>edit on my computer so I suppose I'm going to need to buy a new video
>capture card with a firewire plugin. (Any suggestions?)

I have been happy with the DPS Spark (with ver. 2 software) combined
with Premiere 4.2 - but set-up is not necessarily easy. It would be
good to have a VERY computer-literate helper nearby, if you are
not V.c.l yourself...;-)

>Anyway, Unlike using
>a VHS camcorder, I'm betting that since DV is all 1's and 0's there is no
>frame drop at all. Is this true? I'm wondering if the Hard Drive still
>"records" the video as if you were playing it off a VCR or if the Digital
>Video is simply "downloaded" into the computer without having to worry about
>a dropped frame here...a dropped frame there.

Um - so long as the *sustained minimum data transfer rate* of your
drives is at least 3.6MB/sec (in your system...), you (probably)
won't get "grey-blocks" - the DV equivalent of dropped frames. Several
UDMA IDE drives (even when not used in UDMA mode) are fast
enough for DV, and are inexpensive. You will find useful having at
least three drives: a program drive, a capture drive, and an "edit-to"
drive - though their functions don't need to be always strictly separated for good results.

>And, if that's possible...then would this be possible. After d/loading it
>onto your computer and editing it then I imagine you could just upload it
>back into some other device..(say the camera maybe?)

Yes - this is what is normally done, for producing a master tape.

>and you wouldn't really
>have to have a high horsepower computer. Like, I have a Pentium 133MHZ with
>96 megs of RAM and a nice ultra wide scsi Hard drive...all that. But with
>DIGITAL I was thinking that wouldn't matter..

Ummmm, I would add at least another IDE drive, and look into a CPU
upgrade (about 200mHz minimum, with MMX - otherwise you will
wait forever for renderings of filters/effects/transitions). Also, the
CPU does get rather occupied with DV work, and one that is too slow
may not work well at all...

>Ahhh hell....try to make sense of this thread I'm new to the DV format if
>I'm unclear here as to what my point is, just ask and I'll answer.

The computer requirements (at least for drives) for mini-DV editing
are less than for equivalent-quality analogue-in video work, (I
think...), but for a major project, available resources of even fancy
computers may be somewhat strained. I would start with a small project
with maybe the Spark card, and see what you need from there.

>Oh yeah, will the steadicam jr. work with the VX-1000? (in case ya know)

I don't know, but from what I've heard, the VX-1000 may be a bit
too heavy for the standard model (there may be a DV model available).