Video Camera Advice pls :)

[Crafty]

Hello all, looking to replace the old faithful video camera with something a tad more modern....

Have up to $1500 to spend...

Getting confused so seeking advice. Do I go digital tape, DVD, or hard drive. Are any of the major players better than the others. (Sony, Canon, Panasonic etc etc)

Any other advice let me know.

Cheers Chris

[Padre]

hmm.. depends..
for tah money a lil extra will get you into the HD realm, which is somethign i'd recomend.

The recording format will be deteremined by whether or not you wan to edit your stuff... for tape based HD material, its HDV, which is probably the most common.. with this canons HV20 is a great option. Prolly one of the better options in fact.

Sony have some smaler units which are tape based and use the HDV mpg2 format. Not bad IMO, and prolly the easist HD format to edit with.

For straight shooting and playback, teh JVC and the new everios are pretty decent efforts. They use a proprietary format though, so be aware that editing may nto be posible unless its converted.

Panasonic.. now this is the interesting one...
AVCHD... AVCHD is the new improved HD codec which has been touted as being the future of HD acquisition and delivery.
IMO, theyre right, as AVC Intra (Professional version) does not have long gop issues such as motion or compression artefacts. There is also teh issue of tape based units and incessant dropouts which have the potential to lose critical material. As the Pana units (and the upcoming Canon units) are recording to solid state or flash memory, the issue of tape based acquisition will no longer be an issue.
No dropouts, no cpaturing,.. jsut direct to flash/SD/CF card recordng then transfer to PC for edit.
Now AVC however doesnt use as high a bitrate as HDV, but it doesnt need to and this is the beauty of the format. Its cleaner, richer in colour, less compressed (seemingly to the human eye) and does not have motion artefact issues.

If i was in yoru hoes at this point in time, I would check out teh AVCHD offerings from P, BUT i wouldnt buy anyhing till i checked out out the new canon units which use Flash and CF memory

[soap]

excuse me Padre, do you mean Hard Disc or High Definition?

[Padre]

For waht are you refering?

HDV MUST be on tape, its a required element of the format.
For the JVC everios, and its proprietary format to JVC so HDD is theyre storage medium. AVCHD through Pana and Canon are recorded onto SD and Flash (NOT hdd) although some will be offering AVCHD (as mp4) on HDD.

As for teh HD i am specificlly referign to High Definition.
If I write HDD, it means Hard Disc Drive
If i write HD, it means High Def

hope that helps

[Crafty]

Thanks for the reply Padre.

It's actually difficult to find unbiased opinions on the ..

I was looking to go for a hard drive, but from what you're saying and correct me if I'm wrong, this format is not the best for editing..

Having said that in reality, my useage will be mainly memories, kids b'days, holidays etc etc and the editing will be more based around simple cutting and pasting segments onto a DVD for playback etc.

Happy to up my price a little for the best format but in all honesty obviously fell for the hype around harddisc units.

Will look out for some info on the flash memory units from panasonic.


Anyone else have an opinion.

[Padre]

Well thers nothing wrong with recording to Hard Drive, but it really depends on WHAT is being recorded to hard drive or miniDVD.
Ideally youd start with the least compression possible, this would either be avchd with the Pana and canons, or HDV with tape.Due to the licensing requirement of HDV it cannot be recorded to HDD or Disc directly (it MUST be recorded to tape), so any tape based HD camcorders you see will be HDV

The others (HDD or miniDVD) usually record straight to mpg2 which is around 6 to 8 mbps. you CAN edit this, but i wouldnt recomend it unless you have a kick ass machine as well as being able to accept the footage being overly compressed, as its already been compressed in the camera, then again after youve finished your edit.

best thing to do is determine whether or not you want to spend time on the PC editing, and of that, HOW MUCH time.
Also there are some pretty decent consumer edtiing apps out there, so check out Vegas Studio and Pinnacle Studio. These 2 are prolly the best youll come across

[Crafty]

Ok pretty much decided that this is the one for me...



Seems to be that there is no perfect camera, and the longer you wait the more options open up etc etc. It's not a perfect camera but at the moment seems the best of the group..