I'm talking about a device like the Focus Enhancements FS-5 .

Are there any other devices like it? My department where I work is trying to save money on miniDV tapes by buying a device (or three) like this. We have captured straight to laptops before, but that is too bulky and time-consuming.

Ideally, we would buy all new camcorders with flash memory storage, but that is out of our current budget range since they would have to be at the very least pro-sumer quality and HD/SD capable. So for the forseeable future we plan to make do with our current miniDV camcorders and some devices like that FS-5.

By the way, we do videography and editing for a university. Some of the more demanding projects include multi-camcorder (3-5 operated devices) recordings of concerts and theater plays. We also record guest lectures, local student events, various gatherings and conferences, etc . . . In other words, we go through enough tapes (even re-using some) that it would be more cost efficient to record to an external device.