Does that also mean that we can buy defective VX for real cheap and this will work ?
I mean, having the tape deck error will still allow me to record ?
Last thing is regarding the firewire cable.
On most of my cap cams it gets loose after some time, and I'm always afraid it's not connected properly.
Any chance this can happen ?
I’m tempted to bite the bullet as well but as mentioned above my main concern would be the risk of the cord coming out or dragging on the ground. I like to get as low as possible to the ground with my fisheye stuff so it seems kinda risky.
You're welcome dudes. Happy that this could be of any insight.
The tapedeck gets no use whatsoever, so as long as the tapedeck issue doesn't cause your VX to auto shutoff, I can't see it being an issue. I have a constant 'no tape' icon flashing all the time I film with the unit and it's always fine. And the fact you don't feel like you're wasting tape leaving the camera rolling or filming random shit is a nice benefit too.
And in response the FireWire worries, I gotta say its super stable, and I swing the camera a lot and film pretty low (although the footage in the video I attached maybe wasn't the best example of that). I've had the camera bump the floor and still never had even a dropped frame, let alone have a firewire loosen/come out.
With the side mount rig you never seem to have that issue, and the cable is short and study enough to never catch on anything. Been filming with this setup the past 4 months now and it's been great.
This is the most problematic part of the setup for me. The location of the firewire port makes it likely you either a) scrape the ground with the end of the cable or b) accidentally cut off the legs of the skater to avoid hitting the ground when filming fisheye. The clip in the instagram post kind of proves the latter. An angled firewire cable might help but it's still a scary thought to lose a clip due to the cable becoming detached.
I can see why you'd think that for sure. I can only speak from my experience but I gotta say I've never scraped the Firewire, even when filming low lines.
With that footage i attached where i chopped the legs, like i say it was probably a quite bad example, as that was the first time I'd used the device so I was being really cautious. But since then it really doesn't feel like it effects how low I can get comparatively to before I used the unit. I'll try and get together some footage after all the COVID situation to show it.
Either way, with all these ongoing tape-deck issues it's a scarier thought to film without it now as I almost know I'll lose a clip at some point to that :/