The HVR-Z5J has XLR inputs, the HVRs are the pro versions, HDR is consumer version, it was the same with the DCR/DSR standard def camcorders. I had to look at this and the HVR-V1 for a long time to spot the difference, it seems to have a manual iris ring but apart from that not much difference. Not everyone is an 'indie film maker' (yeah right) 'consumer' or 'you tube fool'. TV stations, program makers and news organisations still buy and use a lot of tape; it's cheap, robust and fits their existing infrastructure.
I'd wager that any organization that needs to share footage will be using miniDV (or DV sometimes). I've filmed events that news stations have needed footage from, and if we know in advance we use tape. You just hand them a little piece of plastic and everything works. Not so easy when you have to transfer off the hard drive into someone else's workflow.
Thank you for mentioning the tape issue. In our shop. we don't shoot on a daily basis (non-profit PR). However, we do need a footage library that we can pull from for years to come. That brings up messy issues of disk space, RAID arrays, best compression algorithms, file structure and organization, and other problems that tape solves quickly and elegantly. We don't need to ingest footage faster than real-time, so it's the perfect "solution."
As much as gadget lovers malign tape, it's still a necessity for many productions.
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The HVR-Z5J has XLR inputs, the HVRs are the pro versions, HDR is consumer version, it was the same with the DCR/DSR standard def camcorders. I had to look at this and the HVR-V1 for a long time to spot the difference, it seems to have a manual iris ring but apart from that not much difference. Not everyone is an 'indie film maker' (yeah right) 'consumer' or 'you tube fool'. TV stations, program makers and news organisations still buy and use a lot of tape; it's cheap, robust and fits their existing infrastructure.
I'd wager that any organization that needs to share footage will be using miniDV (or DV sometimes). I've filmed events that news stations have needed footage from, and if we know in advance we use tape. You just hand them a little piece of plastic and everything works. Not so easy when you have to transfer off the hard drive into someone else's workflow.
Thank you for mentioning the tape issue. In our shop. we don't shoot on a daily basis (non-profit PR). However, we do need a footage library that we can pull from for years to come. That brings up messy issues of disk space, RAID arrays, best compression algorithms, file structure and organization, and other problems that tape solves quickly and elegantly. We don't need to ingest footage faster than real-time, so it's the perfect "solution."
As much as gadget lovers malign tape, it's still a necessity for many productions.