TV&Video
examined Sony's proposal for post-production of low-cost HDV material, the basic elements of which are the VCR HVR-M10U and a new version of the Sony Vegas editing system. What did we find? Sony offers a system that allows you to edit with relative ease the material originated with the Z1-U and HDR-FX1 cameras, but it has a restriction that can become a serious inconvenience for some users: generating a matrix tape in HDV requires encoding the finished program and converting it into a single MPEG-2 file that will finally be dumped into the tape. This is a relatively wasteful process, but it works without major inconvenience and ensures a minimum of quality loss in the post-production process. The machine...Sony's HDV deck , a very attractive piece of equipment, is a robust machine that apparently shares the transport of camcorders, which is why it can only handle MiniDV or DVCAM small box tapes. Its mechanical performance, comparable to that of the Z1-U, offers slightly lower rewind times. It has the repertoire of inputs and outputs that is to be expected in a recorder of this level, and its operation is as simple as that of any handycam. It can be used as an analog to DV-25 signal converter, but not as an upconverter, and like HDV camcorders , it works interchangeably in PAL or NTSC.
As a feeder of non-linear editing systems, this deck offers a performance similar to that of a DSR-45 recorder, since it also works with MiniDV or DVCAM recordings, and when the editing system "knows" how to handle them it delivers HDV streams that, in theory, can be edited on a personal computer.
Like the machines of the DSR family, the M10U offers the possibility of adjusting the pedestal point of NTSC signals and can be controlled by a PC with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Perhaps its main limitation is the lack of an RS-422 control port, although if we analyze the market to which it is directed, it is not a problem of greater importance.
An interesting detail: the M10U can be used with handycam batteries. And, obviously, you don't need a separate monitor. Its operation is very stable, although like all firewire devices it may need an occasional restart to communicate with the computer or with other devices. In fact, in almost all cases it worked at the first attempt with the PC, with a DVD disc burner and with several camcorders of different makes and models. It had some problems when we tried to mount it on a 1394 bus in which a Canopus ADVC-100 converter was installed... but that was to be expected, really.
Final comment: Everything indicates that the M10U is not comfortable with Windows XP if Service Pack 2 has not been installed. In some computers its behavior is erratic with SP1, but we did not find a clear relationship between the chipset of the firewire ports and connection problems. In short, it seems that the problem is more in Windows than in the firmware of the recorder. With Apple equipment, zero problems. From OS 9.2 onwards, the VCR always appears on the first attempt.
