w00t New DVC30 Arrived!

Ahhh finally got my grubby little hands on this camera after all these months.. NICE! It's bigger than I thought it would be, more buttons and sexier looking than my Canon XI lol. Now to go through the long process of reading through the book and learning how to use this thing.

I purchased the Rodes VideoMic to go with it to start with, perhaps later moving up to the bigger better mics

I had gone though the forum reading up on what people had been saying about settings and first impressions with this camera and wish I had jotted all of this down lol..

The ONLY main question I have while waiting for the batt to charge and going through the book is "What is that clunking noise when you tilt the camera?".. I know it was mentioned in an article here but for the life of me I can't find it =( I remember this being a normal thing but it's loud, does it get picked up by the mic? I'm sorta remembering the noise is not there when a tape is inserted?

Anyway.. thanks to the community for helping me choise this camera, it's one of the last new ones before they discontinue production this fall. It should server me well.

Now if I can only find a local videographer who has one who could help speed up my learning curve =)

Hi

Sorry to say this, but if you hear a clunking noice you have to send your camera to service as soon as possible!

Just kidding!

What you hear is the Optical Image Stabilizer system which is loose in the cam until you put it on. It's some kind of gyro inside which needs power to work.
It's normal and dissapears when the cam is operating and therefore doesn't show up on tape.

Welcome to the "club", by the way, hope you will enjoy your new mate.

Regards,

/Bo

Ha Ha, the clunking noise got me also when I got my DVC30. I thought I had a major malfunction. Enjoy your new cam and share your experience and questions.

Regards,

Mark
natureflixs (http://www.natureflixs.com)

Phew!

I hear that noise as well!

I always wonder if something is loose in my camcorder!!

Hi

Sorry to say this, but if you hear a clunking noice you have to send your camera to service as soon as possible!

Just kidding!

What you hear is the Optical Image Stabilizer system which is loose in the cam until you put it on. It's some kind of gyro inside which needs power to work.
It's normal and dissapears when the cam is operating and therefore doesn't show up on tape.

Welcome to the "club", by the way, hope you will enjoy your new mate.

Regards,

/Bo

GAh ya silly person, you almost got a reaction out of me on that first line! LOL.. (too early in the morning!).. But thanks for clearing that up for me =)

I did my last shoot last night with the Canon and now sitting down all day to go over the DVC30 as I plan to shoot with it Sunday evening.

I'll let you know how it fares compared to the old camera.. Something tells me it's gonna be a fun night lol

Ha Ha, the clunking noise got me also when I got my DVC30. I thought I had a major malfunction. Enjoy your new cam and share your experience and questions.

Regards,

Mark
natureflixs (http://www.natureflixs.com)

Thanks Mark.. You can be assured that I shall be asking many questions about this camera. The ONE thing I never really bothered to do with the CanonXI was explore and use all it's many settings as I primarily shoot indoor with Quartz lighting and basically used the one setting as it worked well for our production work. However, I bought the DVC30 as I did want to step up my video production work and end up with a better quality video in the end. And try some other genre of video work later on.

My Main Question remains: Because I go through perhaps 5 or 7 tapes a week for my web work, I am looking for the brand / make of tape that will work well with this camera that (A) will not clog up or cause harm to the camera, (B) Offer good quality and (C) be affordable due to the amount of it I go through..

I plan to purchase in bulk and worry about buying a bulk amount of one kind to find out it's sub par. Going Pana MQ is obviously a choice but expensive. Any recomendations? I know this question gets asked a lot but I know some of you guys have been into this camera for a while now and have the experience to know what works and what doesn't work best.

Is there any ill effects of reusing the MQ tape that came with the camera? I normally shoot on tape, save it as the archive and when finished editing on PC, master it on another tape.. One time use usually.

Cheers

Cheers

Well, this question gets constantly asked on this and other forums. After spending $$$ on a cam you want it to perform at its best. All I can tell you is what my opinion is based on my experience. I have the DVC30 at home and the PV GS-400 at work. I have shot about 100 Sony Excellence DVM60EXL tapes and this is the only brand I have used in both cams. Out of the 100 tapes used I had two tapes with glitches which resulted in a few seconds of dropped frames and a timecode loss. I guess nothing is perfect. However, I plan to stick with these tapes. Also, although some would disagree, I never record on a tape more than once. I think my last tape order was $7.35 each.

Regards,

Mark
natureflixs (http://www.natureflixs.com)

I've been using sony tapes for 2 years now, The Blue premium jobbers. I've had 1 dropout in... not sure how many tapes i've used, 150 hours or so. I re-use tapes all of the time with no problems. I have about 6 tapes that I rotate for test stuff and practice stuff and internet stuff. I'm guessing that I've used each one about 3 times over with no dropouts. I get them on ebay for about $2.50 on average. If it's important I'll crack open a new tape, but for the most part, once i've loaded in the footage to final cut and I don't think I need the tape anymore, I recycle it. I also have a 1 chip pany camcorder for home stuff and i've only used old tapes for that with no problems.

Sometimes I use an old tape as an archive. i'll load the footage in and get the edits done. Then i'll dump the final edit to an old tape as a backup. But then again i'm not doing this for a living.

I thing most would be hard press to tell the difference between any premium or better tape regardless of the maker. I would fine a good tape and stay with it, also like TT2 said before, pick one that is availiable everywhere if you travel. I also use the sony blue premium tapes, over fifty used to date with no issues. I buy mine in 20 blocks off the internet. Now back in the day when I was into high end audio I remember reading that every time you play a tape it loses some quality, and I would think that video is more critical then audio. To date I never reused tapes, but I think that is a great idea to reuse test tapes, thanks TT2 I think I wil also start to do that to save the new tapes for the good stuff.

I basically don't reuse tapes at all either.. I shoot the raw on one, and master the edited version on the other. I'm basically self taught where I do everything in order to ensure to have a backup in case of fire or damage and for efficiency. So 'timecodes' is something I know nothing about..

Most of my video work is for web content, for which I sell DVDs and Full Video Downloads of our content. If I were to be shooting high end commercial stuff I would fret over the highest possible quality but thus far the quality I've been achieving with the CanonXI seems to be good enough.. but now I'm looking to improve on that even more with the DVC30..

Having chatted with some local videographers who know what kind of shoots I'm into, they recommended going to the consumer level tapes (Pana, Sony or JVC) for my production work, but switch to MQ when I start getting into the higher quality showcase work. Where as I normally shoot with JVC consumer level tapes at $9 a tape (expensive) I can get bulk Pana tapes for $2.50 a tape.. Dunno, still debating the issue.. I just don't wanna buy a bulk of "wrong" tapes, ya know?

Thanks all for the pointers!