Digital Camcorder advice

[ByronBlack]

Hey chaps, I'm hoping there's some video experts in here somewhere that can point me in the right direction.

I'm going to be doing a bit of video podcasting soon and need to invest in a camera, I've never used a camcorder before and know very little about the specs and whats current etc..

I'm looking to spend about £200, and I need something that will allow me to import the video easily to my mac (using imovie or final cut express) and give me enough quality for a video podcast and perhaps at least DVD quality.

Any advice on models, makes, what I should look for?

If it helps, the shooting will be a combination of both indoor and outdoor situations.

TIA

 

[matt]

Check out the buying guide on John Lewis' web site. It explains all the pros and cons.

For ease of transfer a hard disk (or similar) recorder is quicker as it's simply a case of moving a file, as opposed to playing a digital tape real time. However, the digital tape still rules for quality (so I'm told).

 

[Dave S]

Given the time it takes to actually edit the footage properly, the time to transfer is rather academic, IMO.

As far as tape vs hard disk is concerned - I had a £250 JVC tape camera which was really good, and I used it a lot. It finally gave up the ghost, and to replace it, my wife bought a £400 Sony hard disk camera whilst in Hong Hong. The tape quality was much better than the hard disk quality, but for a podcast this might be academic.

However, the Sony is absolutely awful in just about every way possible. A complete waste of £400 as it is never used and we couldn't take it back :roll:

My advice, based on my own limited experience:

• try it out at length to ensure it works ergonomically for you
  get one with a viewfinder - touch screens are useless in bright daylight
  get one which can be used off the mains, otherwise consider a spare battery

cheers
Dave

 

[matt]

Good point about the editing v. transfer time. I just connect mine up and transfer the tapes while I'm off doing something else. You should also budget for a large hard drive too

 

[Paul.V]

HardDrive or SD card video cameras would be good enough for POD cast and reasonable quality DVD
(edit: when a video camera is refered to as HD, it generally means High Definition, rather than HardDisk)

most digital still cameras and mobile phones do video as well, this would be good enough for POD casts, though would not transfer to DVD that well.

to get a good DVD picture, you need at least 640x480 resolution at as many frames per second as possible, usually around 15-25

any digital still camera (or mobile phone) that can do video for around £50 will be ok for POD casts

however, for DVD you'll really need a proper camcorder, any one price around £150-£200 would be OK, however i recommend going to currys/dixons or the like and getting the salesperson to demonstrate them for you.

 

[ByronBlack]

Thanks for all the advice chaps. I've since read a lot more on the web and slowly getting to grips of what to look for, so I'll start having a look around for a few models. Are there any particular brands that have a good rep? I've used nikon still camera's exclusively for years so not clued up as to what is a good alternative make for a camcorder.

Paul - thanks for the info, I definitely want something better than a phone. I do have a couple of digital camera's that produce video also, but find them quite limiting in various lighting conditions hence my requirement for a proper camcorder, normally, I would agree with your advice about talking to the sales guys at comets/dixon's etc.. but at my local stores, the 'sales' people didn't know the difference between a scart lead and a HDMI and it took me 3 hours to buy a television.. that's why I come on here, so I appreciate your advice and I'm pleased that you've confirmed that my budget will actually get something that will be good enough.

Will 720p be good enough for DVD quality?

 

[wizer]

I bought a JVC HD HDD model a couple of years ago and it's been good. Not used it much, but then I didn't expect to. We filmed out wedding on it and the quality when burned to DVD is very good. Copying over the mpegs to the PC is simple but you have to change the filename of each which is frustrating.

 

[kityuser]

careful about what model you get with regards to iMovie compatibility.

check model of camera against iMovie version. Most problems can be worked around but it can be a pain.

Steve

 

[wizer]

Byron, Marc Spagnuolo is the guy to ask. I think he posted a site of tutorials which helps you create podcasts with iMovie.

 

[kityuser]

Thanks for all the advice chaps. I've since read a lot more on the web and slowly getting to grips of what to look for, so I'll start having a look around for a few models. Are there any particular brands that have a good rep? I've used nikon still camera's exclusively for years so not clued up as to what is a good alternative make for a camcorder.

Paul - thanks for the info, I definitely want something better than a phone. I do have a couple of digital camera's that produce video also, but find them quite limiting in various lighting conditions hence my requirement for a proper camcorder, normally, I would agree with your advice about talking to the sales guys at comets/dixon's etc.. but at my local stores, the 'sales' people didn't know the difference between a scart lead and a HDMI and it took me 3 hours to buy a television.. that's why I come on here, so I appreciate your advice and I'm pleased that you've confirmed that my budget will actually get something that will be good enough.

Will 720p be good enough for DVD quality?

from wikipedia:

Although many resolutions and formats are supported, most consumer DVD-Video discs use either 4:3 or anamorphic 16:9 aspect ratio MPEG-2 video, stored at a resolution of 720×480 (NTSC) or 720×576 (PAL) at 29.97 or 25 FPS.

Even 720p is WAY over the top for dvd quality, theres no need you`ll basically be throwing all of that extra "HD" data away when you transcode to mpeg2 for burning the dvd.

I`d stick to a SD tape camcorder, JVC miniDV type, put in 6 years of good service and still going strong.

Steve

 

[ByronBlack]

Tom - cgood idea, I'll ping marc an email, his video quality is one of the reasons why i prefer his podcast to many others.

Steve - thanks for clearing up a few items there.

So, it seems then that my best choice would be a miniDV camera with a viewfinder and is easy to hook up to my mac .. i'm not so worried about using imovie, I have a copy of final cut express and the relevent book for it, just no material to start learning with it yet

Does it take a long time to import video from a miniDV camera as opposed to an SD or HDD camera?

 

[kityuser]

Tom - cgood idea, I'll ping marc an email, his video quality is one of the reasons why i prefer his podcast to many others.

Steve - thanks for clearing up a few items there.

So, it seems then that my best choice would be a miniDV camera with a viewfinder and is easy to hook up to my mac .. i'm not so worried about using imovie, I have a copy of final cut express and the relevent book for it, just no material to start learning with it yet

Does it take a long time to import video from a miniDV camera as opposed to an SD or HDD camera?

Basically real time (my experience with (imovie).

I suppose one way of looking at it is an offset of quality.

SD(flash) or HDD camera - video is encoded (compressed) already by dsp in camcorder, thus transcoding in imovie reduces quality (potentially), UNLESS that is if its already DVD grade mpeg2..... BUT that means you can't touch it up in imovie such as brighten or re-balance. Transfering to mac is quick.

MiniDV - video is "raw" effectively DV format meaning uncompressed. Importing into imovie is slow (real time playback) but as no compression has already occured the loss in quality when imovie converts to mpeg2 for your dvd is minimal.

transcoding - converting from one compressed movie format to another, reducing quality (typically).
encoding - compressing video from an uncompressed format.

with a SD/HDD camera you'll be transcoding (potentially) with a miniDV camera you will be encoding. BOTH ARE SSSLLLLLLOOOOOWWWWW and cpu intensive :-(

horses for courses, quaility offset by speed and storage space.

sorry it sounds like a lecture..

oh and if I were you I`d add firewire as a requirement, better speed than USB2 (expect arguments here), and alot more support from apple, although USB is getting better support these days.

Steve

 

[ByronBlack]

steve, no worries about it sounding like a lecture, i'm interested in this stuff, so it's great info, and I appreciate you explaining it to me.

It definitely sounds like MiniDV is the way for me to go then, as in digital photography, I always preferred to shoot in raw - i'm a bit of a control freak and like to have ultimate control so i can see the parallels with using a compressed format such as jpeg - you loose a fair amount of data/control.

So, going on all the info/advice given and my requirements, do you think something like this would be a suitable - or am I barking up the wrong tree?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-DCR-HC51E- ... 203&sr=1-8

 

[kityuser]

steve, no worries about it sounding like a lecture, i'm interested in this stuff, so it's great info, and I appreciate you explaining it to me.

It definitely sounds like MiniDV is the way for me to go then, as in digital photography, I always preferred to shoot in raw - i'm a bit of a control freak and like to have ultimate control so i can see the parallels with using a compressed format such as jpeg - you loose a fair amount of data/control.

So, going on all the info/advice given and my requirements, do you think something like this would be a suitable - or am I barking up the wrong tree?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-DCR-HC51E- ... 203&sr=1-8

looks cool to me, superb at that price, I found my JVC ate batteries so I stumped up 60 quid for a 6 hour battery, which is 75% the size of the camcorder but typically lasts an entire 2 week holiday 8)

Steve

 

[ByronBlack]

Thanks for all the guidence steve (and others) i'll find some similar models and read up on some reviews before splashing the wedge - ideally, I would buy something other than a sony - never had a good experience of a sony product

 

[wizer]

me neither. Look at JVC

 

[kityuser]

Thanks for all the guidence steve (and others) i'll find some similar models and read up on some reviews before splashing the wedge - ideally, I would buy something other than a sony - never had a good experience of a sony product

I`m also not a sony fan but having no experience of this particular model I didn't want to put you off. At least MiniDV cameras have fallen in price now they are out of favor.
I`ll probably invest in another and stick it away in the cupboard for when the JVC gives up the ghost.

oh and DV footage eats disk space....... :roll: just like raw images do.

Steve

 

[ByronBlack]

but I have another dilemma - I'm a spurs fan, and for many years I had boycotted JVC as they were the sponsor for our mortal enemies (arsenal... ooh, I feel little ill typing that..)

;-)

In all seriousness, I'll just go with the best model and hope it doesn't turn out to be the Sony..

I've also got a 500GB firewire drive lined up for use as a scratch disk so hopefully that will be enough.

In terms of backup - I suppose the tapes themselves if stored correctly will be good for a while?

 

[Steve Maskery]

Mine's a Panasonic and I've never regretted buying it. I bought some spare batteries from BatteryStreet and they are a much larger capacity than the one that came with the camera. If I were buying again I'd look for one with a more sophisticated zoom, soft start and stop, for example.

Choose one brand of tapes and stick to it. I'm using Panasonic. If you mix then the head gets dirty quicker, because all the tape manufacturers use different lubricants on their tapes. So the lubes react with each other and gums everything up. Look on eBay for tapes and cleaners. I went to Currys for a Tape Head Cleaner tape, £29.99. I found the identical branded product on eBay for £1.25. OK the postage was a few quid, but even so.

Downloading from tape to computer is very slow, especially if you are downloading a bit at a time (not bothering with duff takes, for example). The actual transfer is real-time, but you have to set up your in and out points before hand, so there is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. The alternative is to download the entire tape. I hope you have lots of disk space. What comes after Terabytes?

OK, I've answered my own question:
* 1000 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte
* 1000 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte
* 1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte
* 1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte
* 1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
* 1000 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte - In 2000, 3 exabytes of information was created
* 1000 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte
* 1000 Zettabyte = 1 Zottabyte
* 1000 Zottabyte = 1 Brontobyte - that is a 1 followed by 27 zeroes

S

 

[kityuser]

now its not THAT much data.

the tapes are 19.5G max capacity (90min ones) I know its a fair bit but it isn't THAT much these days :?

I`ve been known to generate far more data than that at work over a weekend *oops* :roll:

a 500G external drive will do swimingly and being FW you are guaranteed that the camera and drive will play nice with full 400meg of bandwidth all day everyday.

tapes are ok for a while but if you leave them too long its best to spool them every once in a while to stop the tape sticking.......

I agree completely about the mixing tape issue, don't do it ESPECIALLY if you end up with a JVC they can be quite fussy about tapes and mixing brands (google it).

steve