Video Camera Recommendations

[Jarrett]

The wife and I are looking to get a video camera. I don't know much about them. I thought I wanted one that records straight to DVD. However, after looking at them a little online I learned that the DVD's aren't good if you want to do any video editing. I'd like that ability. So, I guess it's either a miniDV or one that records to a hard drive. Any recommendations, insight, thoughts, concerns from you guys would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Shimon]

The ones that record directly to DVD are convenient but the quality is diminished because it records them in mpeg2 which is compressed. You can still edit them on a computer but the quality will be further diminished because you will need to re-compress the original compression so you have two layers of compression.

If you go with a standard video camera that records to miniDV tapes you will have higher quality but more work because you need to transfer the tapes to computer, edit them and then author them to a DVD.

Ok. Time to be honest. Will you make the effort to edit and burn your own movies? Do you have a computer that is powerful enough and has enough hard drive space to accomplish this task? Or would you rather make the movie directly onto DVD and not worry about the computer editing portion? If you make your own movies, you can edit out the junk, rearrange scenes, add music, titles, fades, etc.... Very powerful and fun and you can make some great home movies that people will enjoy watching rather than dread sitting through. But the real question is will you do it? And can you do it? Ask yourself that question now before you drop money on something you will not use.

 

[anojones]

I would avoid the DVD ones for reasons above, difficult to edit and not as good quality. While the hard drive based cameras seem ideal, if your on vacation and run out of hard drive space you're out of luck. I think the tape based cameras are still the way to go at this point- you can transfer them for editing, and can carry tapes with you on vacation and have essentially unlimited space. You can actually get digital still cameras now that will do some pretty good taping to flash media, if you only plan on video from time to time.

Aaron

 

[Kendall69]

I just picked up the:
Click Here

You may not need the HD feature, I got it just to have the latest greatest.
Take a look at what this thing does.
You can take still pictures also 4.0 megapixel still capture feature to the HDD or Memory Stick Pro Duo™ media.
It has a built in 30 GB hard drive.
You can flip the monitor to take video of you and your wife with an extended arm, geat audio.

I swear by Sony my last mini DV lasted 10 years and is still running strong.

MikePA: Corrected overly long link which caused the entire thread to become wide.

 

[Shimon]

If I recall correctly, the DV format stores about 1GB per 4 minutes of video. So, a 30GB HD should store about 2 hours worth of video.

Kendall69, is that about what your Sony stores? I would think even less with HD content. So, you would need to carry a laptop or something to dump the data from the built in HD.

I prefer miniDV tapes since they are relatively inexpensive and you can use them for archiving videos. I have about 30 miniDV tapes with stuff stored on them. I generally don't erase over them unless I know I don't want to keep the videos. I never know if I may want to re-use a clip at a later date. Plus I keep my original, final edit version of my movies on tape since a DVD version would be a compressed, lesser quality version. Storing them on computer would get too expensive and unwieldy. I already have 6 HDs in my computer for over 1 TB worth of data with one 300GB drive dedicated to video editing.

 

[Timber]

OK I have just gone through this whole thing. I am very much a novice at this. I bought my wife a Samsung MiniDV digital video cassette camcorder. At 1st I was bummed out because I though I wouldn't be able to load them onto my computer. Turns out I bought the but one I could. What you do need is a IEEE 1394 Data transfer cable you can get anywhere. Most all new PCs have this built into them. The camcorder has the program all ready built in, It is a plug and play. Mind you now I am an Idiot when it comes to this stuff. I have still yet to figure out how to edit but I know how to up load it to my computer and then to Youtube LOL. I have posted several 10 minute tractor clips in this group playing with it. My 1st question would be what are you using for a computer. I have an HP media center on a Laptop I can tell you there is plenty of space on this to do what ever I want. When you plug your camcorder in it gives you several options. You can go right to disk, go to one of you movie makers or directly to the hard drive. The bottom line is you want a MiniDV Digital Video Cassette

YouTube - Box blade

When I upload my vidio I set it to do 10 minute clips, this one is 8 minute. It was suprisingly easy

 

[Timber]

If I recall correctly, the DV format stores about 1GB per 4 minutes of video. So, a 30GB HD should store about 2 hours worth of video.

Kendall69, is that about what your Sony stores? I would think even less with HD content. So, you would need to carry a laptop or something to dump the data from the built in HD.

I prefer miniDV tapes since they are relatively inexpensive and you can use them for archiving videos. I have about 30 miniDV tapes with stuff stored on them. I generally don't erase over them unless I know I don't want to keep the videos. I never know if I may want to re-use a clip at a later date. Plus I keep my original, final edit version of my movies on tape since a DVD version would be a compressed, lesser quality version. Storing them on computer would get too expensive and unwieldy. I already have 6 HDs in my computer for over 1 TB worth of data with one 300GB drive dedicated to video editing.

I know my computer stores in MB 10 minutes is 37 MB and 30 is 90 MB
I know I have had several hours on my computer and it barley uses any space. That is video with audio. I think it stores it as wmv I don't know if that has anything to do with it. When I am done with my movie I burn it or host it then I dump it from my computer and I'll tape over the cassette again. Once it is on disk you can always reload it to the computer. I can tell you I know I could load a lot of hours onto this Lap top and still have a lot of space on the hard drive

 

[Shimon]

I think it stores it as wmv I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

That has everything to do with it. WMV is a (highly) compressed format. You can stick a ton of WMV files on a HD and that's why it's used for web video (Youtube) because bandwidth is expensive. But if you want to make "professional" looking DVDs that will look nice your TV set then you need to transfer DV format video from the your player to your computer which will use 1GB per 4 minutes (you can't get something for nothing). You don't post DV format video on the internet because it would take forever to upload and download. You don't even put DV format on DVDs because a DVD will hold 4.7GB single layer and double that for dual layer discs. But, you edit your video in DV and when it's done, you compress it with mpeg2 compression to get it on the DVD so you can watch it on your home DVD player. Make sense?

 

[Shimon]

So back to the original question which Jarrett asked: what to get?

And I ask you again, after reading some of these posts: how deep do you want to get into it? Editing video and putting them onto DVD takes work and learning. And I'm not just talking about "professional" looking videos...any video you make will require software to do all this which you will have to learn to use. I usually recommend to most people that unless they are really serious about getting into video editing that they just buy a video camera that records to DVDs. Many people still buy a camera that records to miniDV and still use them effectively but never use them to their potential which in my eyes means they wasted their money. Sure they can still do some real editing...but will they?

 

[jdbower]

How serious do you want to get?
RED Digital Cinema

If your needs are more modest, I've found that my FireWire-enabled Sony was fairly easy to get video from the tape to the PC but I've also discovered that still photography is more to my liking than video.