Concern for wear on camcorder motor

[Guest]

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Using the camcorder to play tapes to capture for editing places a fair
amount of wear on the camcorder. I was thinking it might make sense to
try and find a broken one on ebay that could be used for this purpose.
Should I be concerned about this wear and tear on the camcorder motor
or not?

 

[Guest]

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"B Russell" <brent_russell23@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:f1d26c56.0404181232.6a470ae9@posting.google.com...
> Using the camcorder to play tapes to capture for editing places a fair
> amount of wear on the camcorder. I was thinking it might make sense to
> try and find a broken one on ebay that could be used for this purpose.
> Should I be concerned about this wear and tear on the camcorder motor
> or not?

It's definitely a real concern if you're doing a lot of editing. Not just the motor
per se, but the heads and the rest of the transport mechanics do wear out.
If you're doing a lot of editing, you might want to consider buying a dedicated DV
player "deck" - or, as you say, find a camcorder with broken optics to use as an
editing deck in place of your camcorder.

Not that I do this, mind you, but I've heard of it being done, and it makes sense.

Another tip I've heard is that one should buy and use shorter DV tapes (30 min),
as there's less tape mass being accellerated and decellerated by the motor and
the mechanism.

 

[Guest]

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On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 23:31:47 +0200, "Kevin D. Kissell"
<deletethisspamtrapKevinK@paralogos.com> wrote:

>> Using the camcorder to play tapes to capture for editing places a fair
>> amount of wear on the camcorder. I was thinking it might make sense to
>> try and find a broken one on ebay that could be used for this purpose.
>> Should I be concerned about this wear and tear on the camcorder motor
>> or not?
>
>It's definitely a real concern if you're doing a lot of editing. Not just the motor
>per se, but the heads and the rest of the transport mechanics do wear out.
>If you're doing a lot of editing, you might want to consider buying a dedicated DV
>player "deck" - or, as you say, find a camcorder with broken optics to use as an
>editing deck in place of your camcorder.

Is this a real issue? The tape goes through the camera once while
recording, once again to dump to computer. Not that big a deal?
There's no need to shuttle around with capture lists on today's
systems, surely? The first capture is the final capture.

 

[Brian]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

brent_russell23@hotmail.com (B Russell) wrote:

>Using the camcorder to play tapes to capture for editing places a fair
>amount of wear on the camcorder. I was thinking it might make sense to
>try and find a broken one on ebay that could be used for this purpose.
>Should I be concerned about this wear and tear on the camcorder motor
>or not?

Dumping the whole tape to the hard drive would mean less wear on the
camcorder motor. If you want to view the tape on a television several
times before deciding what parts you want from the tape then I'd
suggest coping it to a VHS tape and playing it back the VHS tape. A
cheap VHS recorder motor would be cheaper to replace than a Camcorder
motor.

Regards Brian

 

[Rich]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

"B Russell" <brent_russell23@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:f1d26c56.0404181232.6a470ae9@posting.google.com...
> Using the camcorder to play tapes to capture for editing places a fair
> amount of wear on the camcorder. I was thinking it might make sense to
> try and find a broken one on ebay that could be used for this purpose.
> Should I be concerned about this wear and tear on the camcorder motor
> or not?

Interesting thought. It was my concern when I purchased my expensive Canon
A-1 8mm system in 1990(?). In that 13 year period I shot about 80 hours of
tape and and almost always immediately dubbed the tapes to my VHS VCR. So
maybe I have about 180 hours on the unit. A lightning strike which melted
the expensive charger (while the unit was plugged in) and dropping the
camera in the hold of an aircraft which broke the lens filter and chipped
the lens housing might have placed some stress on the unit. Filming in the
Southwest bright sun probably didn't help (I carried a white towel to cover
the black camera for shade).

Lessons learned:

1. Camcorders get cheaper and better each year.

2. A cheap UV filter is good insurance to protect your lens.

3. Camcorder motor replacement has not been a repair on the three video
recorders I've owned.

Rich