Re: Camcorder as a playback deck.

Works fine. Just be careful to keep camera powered off when plugging the firewire cable in and out of computer. You might consider a powered firewire hub or a port isolation cable or both.

Firewire ports can get fried and cables are easily damaged. The hub can make it easier to reach the ports without accidentally damaging the pins. The port isolation cable protects from the surge that can burn out ports.

To play it really safe turn everything off before plugging and unplugging.

Also best if camera is plugged in, not battery powered. The tape transport is not as robust as a deck so I find it easier to capture the whole tape rather than log and capture or lots of reviewing/searching through footage before capturing. Also give the loading mechanism lots of time to load and unload the tapes. Easy to get careless when swapping tapes and causing a jam. The Sony minis have pass-through feature which can come in handy on occasion. It is also handy to have the cam's LCD screen and speaker.

I have also found that Canon cameras are best captured using Canon’s. Since you are using pd170, you might want to stay with Sony brand though I have captured pd170 footage using Panasonics and JVCs without a problem. One advantage of a deck is you can use the larger size tapes if you edited a longer program and want to master out to tape. If your shooting cam gets a head misalignment you’ll need to capture using the shooting cam. Best to take your pd170 to Sony once a year for cleaning and alignment.



OSX 10.5.3; MAC PRO 2 X 2.8 GHZ (EARLY 2008); FCP Suite; Sony camcorder vx2000/pd170;Canon xl2; Pana consumer cams; write professionally for a variety of media;teach video production in L.A.