My latest xfer was recorded to DVCAM tape. I looked at it today on a DVCAM deck at the university where I work, but didn't have time to capture the footage to my firewire drive. One of the lab techs that oversees the editing suites told me I could capture the footage with a regular miniDV camera so I went home and have done that. I used Windows Movie Maker and captured as WMV because I didn't want to spend the time capturing raw AVI because I just wanted to have a look at the shots.
Something weird happened: The moving pictures speed up and slow down in sort of a rythmic pulse-like way. And I seem to be getting excessive drop outs.
Whoever told you that a home MiniDV camera will play DVCam needs to have their head looked at...DVCam is a whole different signal which also involves higher tape->head speeds. I tried playing a DVCam signal on a MiniDV deck without knowing that it was a DVCam signal and it would play very fast for about three seconds with a lot of dropped frames and then stop.
....well, it played back on the camera LCD just fine. It was the capture that is all screwed up. It isn't a big problem for me because I'll have access to the proper editing equipment in a few days time. I'll just wait.
