Digital Camcorder Help

[crumbles]

Just curious what you guys thought was a decent digital camcorder for the price.

I have a new baby on the way, and I'd like an easier way to get the video to my PC than having to use my old analog tape camcorder which takes FOREVER to record to my PC using a video capture card...

Thanks in advance.

[alaskalonewolf]

I am partial to the Nikon line. You can't go wrong there. Most have 640x480 FMV @ 30 fps which can go directly to any computer with an SD card slot or card reader. Most come with a decent tutorial and software included. Unless you want to stock footage, you can use a harddrive pretty easily. Buying an expensive camcorder is sometimes a waste, in my opinion, because there is always something better just around the corner. The Sony line is good, and scalable, depending on what you want to spend. Look for features like motion stabilization, stay away from built-in editing. (Adobe makes some really cool software for that, well worth the 75 bucks.) Have fun shopping.

[masherscf]

Originally Posted by crumbles

Just curious what you guys thought was a decent digital camcorder for the price.

I have a new baby on the way, and I'd like an easier way to get the video to my PC than having to use my old analog tape camcorder which takes FOREVER to record to my PC using a video capture card...

Thanks in advance.

First, congrats! Second of all, you should be able to get a passable standard definition DV camera for between two and three hundred bucks. Sony and JVC are good brands. You'll need fire-wire if you go that route.

Unfortunately, DV cameras aren't any faster that standard VHS-C or 8mm in transferring. For that you need a DVD-R or HDD camera which are considerably more expensive. My DV-camera can also take MPEG4 video and store it to a memory stick for about a hour a gigabyte. It's convenient but the video quality isn't as nice as uncompressed DV. DV-tapes are also considerably cheaper than memory sticks. However, this may change.


Having 2 children myself, I understand the allure of having video. Honestly, I got a new camcorder just before the birth of my last one and I've taken less than an hour of video in the year since. Babies just don't make that compelling video. Any good point-and-shoot digital still camera is probably going to take good enough video clips. One the other hand, there are about half-a-dozen baby items that I could recommend to you for the money.

In any case, good luck with the baby and the video camera.

PS. Make sure you have about a dozen sleepers...babies leak.

[tokenuser]

I love my Panasonic PV-GS500. It is a high end consumer camcoder, takes great footage, is 3CCD, takes 16:9 (widescreen - not NOT HD, just the correct aspect), is easy to use, blah, blah blah.

Key points: MiniDV is still slow, but has highest capacity tapes. MiniDVD can have problems in some PCs (ESPECIALLY slot loaders) and have limited (30min) capacity. HDD units (like the JVC) are great, but no good for extended travel, since one the HDD is full you need to upload it somewhere.

To be effective you need a IEEE1394 port on your PC (firewire is an Apple brand name, i.Link is a Sony one ... why don't they stick to what it actually is called rather than trying to make it sound new and unique ... but that is just more fodder for another debate ). OK, USB 2.0 is faster @ 480 vs 400 mbps, but in reality 1394 has a higher sustainable throughput rate, so transfer is faster, AND using the appropriate software on your PC (I use Adobe Premier) you can control the camera directly from the PC, unlike USB which only allows you to stream the video to the PC. The camera control aspect might be unique to my specific computer and camcorder - not sure about that, but that was my experience.

[masherscf]

Originally Posted by tokenuser

... AND using the appropriate software on your PC (I use Adobe Premier)

I recently switched from Adobe to Sony Vegas 7. I like it just a little better and I can make HD WMV to play on my XBOX 360. Why does that matter? (you say) You only have a standard definition video camera. Oh yes, I make HD slide shows with my Nikon stills. You have no idea the *WOW* factor I get blowing my stills up to the 42 inch display. It really shows off both the camera and the HDTV.

[crumbles]

Thanks for the advice thus far guys...

The firewire ones.... you were saying that it will still take some time to copy, however, once the copy is done, I have an actual VIDEO file on my PC, right?

Sorry to sound so ****ing stupid about this, but I totally dropped off the planet with camcorder technology quite some time ago...

[masherscf]

Originally Posted by crumbles

Thanks for the advice thus far guys...

The fire wire ones.... you were saying that it will still take some time to copy, however, once the copy is done, I have an actual VIDEO file on my PC, right?

Sorry to sound so ****ing stupid about this, but I totally dropped off the planet with camcorder technology quite some time ago...

yes. A good capture program will even separate your video clips into separate files for future editing.

The only difference between a digital-DV camera and a conventional one is how it stores the video. The barrier to transferring the video is compression. There is so much data in an uncompressed DV stream that you need USB 2.0 or firewire to transfer it in real time. To transfer faster the camera itself needs to compress the data, which a DV camera doesn't need to do. A DV camera stores the data stream on a tape as it records it.

A DV camera doesn't require a device to translate the anolog video to a digital stream because the data is already digital. But, transferring that data off the camera takes just as long.

You can't really share uncompressed DV video either. You'll need video editing and probably DVD authoring software. A DVD burner helps as well.

if you compresse your video to MPEG4, you can upload it to Google video to share it with family over email or blog.

An HDD camera or DVDR camera compresses the video stream for storage purposes. Uncompressed video is really bulky. Therefore, getting the video off a DVDR or HDD camera is faster. However, the compression is not lossless.

One of the benefits for using mini-DV tapes is that DV-tapes a cheap enough to use them only once. The tapes themselves can be a permanent back-up archive of your raw video.

[crumbles]

Originally Posted by masherscf

yes. A good capture program will even separate your video clips into separate files for future editing.

The only difference between a digital-DV camera and a conventional one is how it stores the video. The barrier to transferring the video is compression. There is so much data in an uncompressed DV stream that you need USB 2.0 or firewire to transfer it in real time. To transfer faster the camera itself needs to compress the data, which a DV camera doesn't need to do. A DV camera stores the data stream on a tape as it records it.

A DV camera doesn't require a device to translate the anolog video to a digital stream because the data is already digital. But, transferring that data off the camera takes just as long.

You can't really share uncompressed DV video either. You'll need video editing and probably DVD authoring software. A DVD burner helps as well.

if you compresse your video to MPEG4, you can upload it to Google video to share it with family over email or blog.

An HDD camera or DVDR camera compresses the video stream for storage purposes. Uncompressed video is really bulky. Therefore, getting the video off a DVDR or HDD camera is faster. However, the compression is not lossless.

One of the benefits for using mini-DV tapes is that DV-tapes a cheap enough to use them only once. The tapes themselves can be a permanent back-up archive of your raw video.

OK, thanks. I'm very familiar with video editing. Once I have the video file, I can pretty much take over and create whatever I want from there...

Ba hahaha, I just found my video game ownage videos:

http://www.mattandthat.com/myspace/bfv_movie.wmv
http://www.mattandthat.com/myspace/bfv_airwolf.wmv
http://www.mattandthat.com/myspace/bf2_video.wmv

[tokenuser]

Before I went to Europe last year, I really wanted the JVC Everio camcorder (one with a HDD), but since I was going to be away for a month, and the thing only stored about 4 hours of video, that wasn't and option. As it turns out, it also has lousy colour reproduction due to the compression Masher mentioned above.

MiniDVD was another option, but 30 minutes of standard play recording blew that idea.

MiniDV really is the way to go at the moment. It is recorded linearly, but it is raw digital, so quality is great.

[masherscf]

Originally Posted by tokenuser

MiniDVD was another option, but 30 minutes of standard play recording blew that idea.

My father-in-law gets really into new gadgets. Sometimes it backfires. Right before a month-long trip to India, he got this brand spanking new DVD-RAM video camera. It uses these proprietary rewritable DVD-RAM disks. They only record 30 minutes a side. The trouble is, nobody pointed out that you actually had to turn them over. So he got 2 disks with the camera but didn't figure that he wouldn't be able to find them in India. So there he was, a month in India with only an hours worth of recording capacity.

Oh well.