On 10/02/2021 16:17, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
jon wrote:
On Wed, 10 Feb 2021 14:19:49 +0000, newshound wrote:

On 10/02/2021 13:41, jon wrote:

I have an XL1 video camera I purchased for a company project in 2000
and it was never used, in fact it is still in pristine condition,
having only a couple of hours use since new. It is not worth very
much now, but it is a super SD camera that uses MiniDVD tapes. I am
thinking about converting it to record on solid state media. This
would require removing the tape drive and replacing it with a mini
recorder. At the moment I am just thinking about the practicality of
the modification. The other anomaly is the useful digital output from
the 'Firewire IEEE 1394' socket, there are very few adapters or
connecting devices around now for this obsolete format, although it
was a premium digital connection solution in it's day.

Has anybody any thoughts on such a project..?


Heroic. It will look impressive, but I doubt if it will match the
performance of an entry level domestic camera.


It was a good camera in its day, but only SD of course.....the film '28
Days Later' was filmed with XL1 cameras.

Most pro video cameras have an easy way of providing an external video
feed. Others - not just the cameraman - need to see the pictures.

It is also interlaced video, which may not look so good these days.

The wiki article claims a 30p picture mode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...non_XL-1/XL-1s

It's not something that was (much) used for pro broadcast even in those
days. Although maybe for a situation where it had to be small and
disposable. ;-) Or maybe for news, etc.