I'm in the market for a camcorder (Wife and I have a baby due in March) and the selection is more overwhelming than buying motor oil! Does anyone have any knowledge they can share? I am intrigued by the DVD models as I could load it into my PC, copy the video to the hard drive and then burn DVD's for the families. Any help/ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Camcorders?
- Thread starter Slick17601
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The DVD camcorders aren't as cool and easy to use as one would think. That's what I gathered when doing a similar research recently. There are many formats, not necessarily compatible with eachother.
All digital camcorders allow you to copy the video to the hard drive. You do this through a firewire connection or high-speed USB 2.0. After you're done editing it, you can of course burn it on a CD or DVD.
I was looking for a camcorder for my g/f for christmas, but my budget was up to $400. In that range I ended up getting the Panasonic GS35 (she also wanted something pretty small). My dad bought a GS250 earlier this year, and the picture quality from this one is really good, but it also has a lot of bells and whistles that an average person will not use.
The camcorderinfo link sprintman provided is a good resource.
All digital camcorders allow you to copy the video to the hard drive. You do this through a firewire connection or high-speed USB 2.0. After you're done editing it, you can of course burn it on a CD or DVD.
I was looking for a camcorder for my g/f for christmas, but my budget was up to $400. In that range I ended up getting the Panasonic GS35 (she also wanted something pretty small). My dad bought a GS250 earlier this year, and the picture quality from this one is really good, but it also has a lot of bells and whistles that an average person will not use.
The camcorderinfo link sprintman provided is a good resource.
Mini-DV is the winner here. They do a better job then DVD camcorders that have awile to go before they meet or beat Mini-DV as far as picture quality goes. DV is taking films place in hollywood because they can shot an entire movie on $10k worth of tape compared to $1 million on film. Low light performance isint as good with DVD camcorders. The Canon Elura is a very good camcorder that shots awsome results.
another vote for mini-dv. Once you've burned a DVD it's actually harder to extract the video to something usable and edit-able. MPG video which is what a DVD is really slows down editing programs like Premiere since it spends so much time resampling and decompressing. I can see those camcorders being helpful for doctors, realtors, and those types of professionals, and the truly hands-off filmers who just want a DVD and be done with it.
Mini-DV spits out a huge .AVI file but once you're done editing you can then compress and burn a polished, final product DVD and erase all your work files.
Mini-DV spits out a huge .AVI file but once you're done editing you can then compress and burn a polished, final product DVD and erase all your work files.
Thanks guys for the info. I'll research the mini-dv.
Add a third vote for Mini-DV. DVD based camcorder has serious issue with burn quality. This is an information from my co-worker who used to work for Sony developing the optical drive inside those DVD camcorder. He said they have a hard time calibrating the laser to the right focus due to all the hand movement and shocks while recording, thus the burn result is not in high quality (relying too much on ECC for data acuracy), and a small scratch or UV exposure could easily ruin the disk down the road.
HD based one should be common in a year or so, but the price won't be reaching $400 anytime soon. They have much better power saving and smaller size.
HD based one should be common in a year or so, but the price won't be reaching $400 anytime soon. They have much better power saving and smaller size.
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