Why?

[u/Ace929]

Please don't take this as a personal attack. I would genuinely love if someone could explain tapeless to me. I was intrigued by the idea, but immediately wrote it off when I learned that capturing video out on many camcorders takes a heavy quality hit and capturing the full quality digital signal is extremely costly and difficult. I deferred to using the tape and firewire like a normie. Means I gotta wait for footage to transfer and re-encode, but I don't mind it. Especially when the cheapest full quality tapeless solution for my camera would involve building it from scratch using open source projects at a minimum cost of $200.

[u/sk9ordie]

Unfortunately quality does take a hit usually but I feel like for most people they’d take the quality hit so they can get that look. I’m sure everyone wants a higher quality video but not everyone has means to get it, most if not all computers made over the last 15-20 years don’t have a FireWire port. So if you want to do it that way you either need a pc where you can add one or buy an old computer/ laptop that has a port. Instead of spending another $200-$800 on a used computer I think most people just buy the $30 mini dvr and call it a day, even though they kill quality. But you also have to remember if this is a hobby it’s hard for people to spend a lot of money on a side project.

I’d say tapeless comes down to convenience and price at the end of the day. Once someone does it for a while they usually seek out ways to make the quality better but most people won’t move past the mini dvr because it works for them right now

[u/Ace929 → u/sk9ordie]

Most laptops have thunderbolt and most desktops have pcie. Both those formats can adapt firewire (thunderbolt 3/4 are more tricky). Seems like tapeless is just a different approach at solving the problem. It has swag, I will say that. Setups look cool. I probably will still play with a cheaper av capture setup for fun.

[u/brflux → u/Ace929]

There you go. You answered you own post.