How to Play a MiniDV

Video Transcript

"Hey, it's Rokosz, your digital lifestyle expert here and I'm going to show you how to play a MiniDV tape. Now somebody's given you a MiniDV, said there's some great footage on here, you got to check it out. You've never seen one of these before, what do I do with it? Do I put it in my VCR? No, please whatever you do don't put it in your VCR. This is a very common tape, mostly in consumer and prosumer and professional grade HD and standard camcorders. It is the tape to use. Now if somebody gives you this you're going to need a deck to play it on, right? OK, here's the secret is that commercially available over at Best Buy or your other big box electronic retailers, it's very difficult to purchase off the shelf a tape player that plays these. Here's the other secret, when you try to order just a standalone DV deck, MiniDV, expensive, somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 dollars. Your best bet, grab your camcorder. Camcorder records on it and it can also be used to play them. Over here and all we're going to do is slip it in, properly close up the camera up there. Make sure with these moving parts, very easy to jam the gears and once you do it, you're either in for a repair bill or trashing the camera, not a fun situation, trust me I know. Alright now normally when you turn on your camera here, you're going to go into the mode of recording things. Oh it's grandma's birthday, we got to turn it on, make it happen. Well there's also a review or VCR function. Over here we're going to change modes and now we have the ability to simply hit play down here this is a touch screen and we can watch all that fantastic footage. I'm Rokosz, your digital lifestyle expert always in the right format saying we'll stream you later."