 Poster: A snowHead
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i am about to purchase a camcorder to do some filming on our skiing trips, looking for some advice on which type to buy, want to films loads of stuff then do the editing via my PC when we get back. i am not sure whether to go with a hard drive or to use DVD format.
then simpler the better for me, just want to film then download, no complicated finalizing etc.
any advice for a technophobe like me would be great 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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MiniDV tape, no contest.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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hyweljenkins, from your web site you obviously know your stuff, can you recommend a make or model in a budget of £300 to £400
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| hyweljenkins wrote: |
| MiniDV tape, no contest. |
I agree with you but can you give some reasons? I find recordable DVDs to be too fragile, a scratch and you get dropouts or even unplayable film. I would be worried by HDs too. I've read that the cameras use more compression on these formats but surely they are just using MPEG4 like with tape?
Tapes seem to be pretty much indestructible.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I'd definitely say "non" to DVD in the mountains - steamed uplaser lenses and discs are a pain in the butt. And after problems I've had with Sony Mini and Micro DV equipment over the past few years, I'd be put off that as well (is all Sony stuff over-priced and designed to break down just outside warranty?)
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I've recently bought a Canon MV960. Widescreen MiniDV. It cost me about £250 but it may be cheaper now. It is a budget camcorder, but I am extremely impressed with the picture it gives on my TV (37" lcd tv).
It is a little shaky when skiing and filming, but I don't have any more expensive camcorder recordings to compare it to. Maybe it's just my rubbish technique 
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I’ve got a JVC hard disk video camera. I think it’s this one, http://www.amazon.com/JVC-Everio-GZ-MG50-Camcorder-Optical/dp/B000A140H8/sr=1-10/qid=1170842599/ref=sr_1_10/002-3978078-5536808?ie=UTF8&s=photo&tag=amz07b-21
The video quality is okay, not good in bad light (indoors) I’m sure for the same money non-hd cameras give better video quality, but it’s so very easy to plug into PC and start copying off video files – which is what won it for me. Just plug in via USB, pops up as another hard drive, start copying files. The files are in mpeg 2 format though the file extensions are something stupid, but you just rename to mpg. No tapes or dvds to muck about with, no slow copying to PC , rencoding etc. Comes with some video editing software that is aware of the specific codec used by JVC so editing of video without slow re-encoding, means quick editing. The software is simailr to MS Moviemaker, plenty good enough for my needs. I picked up mine a few months back from local comet store – it was going quite cheap (£350) as it’s in the previous range – but I couldn’t see any difference to the latest version of the camera. The entry level model only has a 640K CCD so avoid that, the top of range has 3 CCD and 2MP which should give far better video quality but you’ll have to pay for it. Standard battery will only last 60mins! I got a 120min battery off ebay for about £20, it’s a bit bigger but does last longer and oddly seems to loose it charge when not in use far less than the supplied JVC one. Seemed like the best deal when I got mine.
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PS: I should of added the JVC is compact and very light, which is another plus when out skiing with it. I have used it in coldish weather (-10 degrees) and it worked fine.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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davidof, DVD options just give you very limited capacity and quality. They use the small DVDs which only give about 10 minutes at the highest quality which is nowhere near as good MiniDV. IMHO it's always best to capture and store at the highest possible quality setting and then downgrade that to fit the playback meda - a bit like shooting high resolution images for a web site.
Hard-disk cameras are even worse - once the disk is full you're screwed unless you can download the content to another device. At least with DVD you can swap the media out. The "advantage" of being able to take a DVD from the camera and play it back immediately is guff - with HD and tape options you just need to carry a cable.
MiniDV doesn't compres the video when it's stored unless you're in long-play mode. To increase the capacity of the tape it moves through the camera at a slower speed, giving a sort of pseudo-compression. As an example, one minute (yup - one minute) of DV quality video with stereo sound requires 178 megabytes of disk storage. an hour requires 13 gigabytes. Compare that against a dual-layer DVD that can only store about 3 hours of MPEG2 video on it's 9 gigabyte space and you can already see that quality is lost.
I take my Sony TRV14 (about three years old) along with a few tapes and just use that. It occasionally struggles in extreme cold, but keeping inside my jacket for a few minutes usually sorts that out.
If I were buying a camera now I'd be looking for FireWire In/Out, SVideo In/Out, MiniDV, and a good optical zoom. Digital zoom is next to pointless and you can do that while editing anyway. I don't need titling and effects as I use http://www.editstudio.com/ for that. Firewire In and SVideo In are useful because you can cut out all the crap from the tapes and write it back to the tape; SVideo In so that I could connect a bullet camera to it. FireWire Out is essential because that's how you get high quality DV-AVI from the camera to your PC. £400 would get you a lot these days, even in Dixons!
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| hyweljenkins wrote: |
[
If I were buying a camera now I'd be looking for FireWire In/Out, SVideo In/Out, MiniDV, and a good optical zoom. |
sounds like my camera. Thanks for the extra info in the thread. I have a Digital8 camera which is a bit bulky but I used to work in SysAdmin which was convenient for the tapes. I would personally go MiniDV. The cheapest MiniDV cameras start a bit over 100 quid and are probably good enough if all you want is to do some YouTube videos. A good image stabiliser is important for compression for Internet use.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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I've hyweljenkins Hard-disk cameras are even worse - once the disk is full you're screwed
Well I've never got close to filling up my 30GB! 7hours at highest quality setting, that's a fair bit of video.
As i said the camera is far from perfect but if you want light, compact, easy as pie copying to PC and editing then it does a great job.
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waynos, how much video do you get on 30GB? That's the equivalent of two MiniDV tapes but is still not even close to MiniDV quality. Copying to PC is the main problem with tape - you have to "watch" the video, so copying one tape can take an hour - I guess copying 30GB over FireWire would take a similar time but you are getting twice the data.
The cool think about MiniDV is the time stamp indexing - whenever you press Play/Pause the tape is marked to make cutting the 13GB file into smaller "scenes" is easy.
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You know it makes sense.
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hyweljenkins, 7 hours at highest quality. As I said the main factor for me was as simple as possible copying to PC and subsequent editing. I did look at the few HiDef cameras available when I looked, but decided not to bother on basis of premium prices and the thought of handling, editing, storing huge HiDef files.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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One feature that is useful if you want to make internet ready videos is some kind of progressive scan recording. MiniDv cameras in the past did not generally support that.
I guess the main disadvantage of the systems which rely on mpeg2/4 compression (DVD and hard disk) is that the quality is limited by the fact that the encoder must work in real time. e.g. If you watch live football on ITV you can see how bad theirs mpeg2 encoder is and it's probably a lot more powerful than the one in a consumer camcorder.
Personally I am tending towards a digicam with a good movie mode just for the convenience (Thinking about the Panasonic TZ1).
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Poster: A snowHead
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nessy, you're looking for something else. The Pana Lummocks TZ1 is a stills camera. Neilski is after a video camera. Why would "progressive scan recording" help make internet-ready movies? PS is, after all, intended for viewing DVDs on TVs.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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hyweljenkins, interlaced recording is only useful for displaying on a CRT. If you plan to view on an LCD, the display is not naturally interlaced so it will look better if it is progressive scan.
Many encoding formats used on the internet (e.g. Mpeg4/Divx) do not support interlacing so if you have an interlaced source you will have to deinterlace it before encoding. If you don't deinterlace it the result will be jagged lines on motion scenes and poorer quality for any given compression ratio.
The TZ1 has a 10 times zoom, optical stabilization and a wide screen movie mode at better than VGA resolution (limited by storage space). The compression probably means that the quality is not as good as a dedicated camcorder but as I say I would rather have the convenience of the small format. I have a 4 year old Sony MiniDv camera myself and I never have it with me when I really want to capture something.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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nessy,
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hyweljenkins, interlaced recording is only useful for displaying on a CRT. If you plan to view on an LCD, the display is not naturally interlaced so it will look better if it is progressive scan.
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Aaah, I see.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Mrs Kiwi bought a Panasonic DCR SR90 back in Sept just before our wedding. It's probably about the best HDD camera you can get at the mo. 3 weeks of constant use and the memory was only 1/4 full.
I really love the camera BUT for skiing it's not for me. 1 good crash on ya back and it's hard drive over. I'd go for a mini DV anytime with an analog in connection so I can use a bullet cam.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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What about the ones that record to cards?
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Kramer, I suspect that cards would be unable to record high quality because the write speed is fraction of the other formats and capacity is limited.
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Neilski, I've little to add to what hyweljenkins and waynos have said except my personal take, which is that if you want convenience, HardDiskDrive is the way to go with compact size as a bonus but only acceptable quality. However if you want quality, it's still mini-DV. My 6yr. old Sony mini-DV packed up recently, and I was aiming for a High Definition HDD to replace it but I don't think the technology/price ratio is quite high enough for me yet, and anyway needed a mini-DV for playback so have bought a Canon MV960 like Paul Holland which isn't as good as my old one but a great buy for acceptable mini-DV quality, compact ski jacket fitting size, DV in/out, true widescreen, analogue-in and A2D converter. So it's quite personal and depends on the particular mix of quality, compactness, convenience, format and value that you require.
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Neilski,
To get onto PC you're still need an editing stage..some cameras allow this onbaord but I don't bother. I dump down, warts and all and secure that master on PC. It might be better to retire that tape so you can use the media through an HD camera and I will be trying that route to see if we can up the quality just a bit. MOst reasonable cams have a good pic through the TV straight off the cam but degrade through transfer. Try and do this without any compression, or the least amount.
You might say you want the easiest route but you probably will want to play around with things, otherwise you might just as well plug the cam in the TV and run the Vid that way..as it is the best playback quality you'll see.
When you get into editing...because we all take crap pics somewhere along the line.... thats when you'll start to lose definition, IME
So for me....
1) Hi-def cam...the pics are just so much better...by miles
2) Mini DV...because thats the most robust media and least suspectable to cold and movement...its the least delicate
£) Firewire out. Almost all cams should have this.....all except the cheapies maybe. Firewire being better than USB so therefore you'll get more quality across in the transfer.
I have recently dumped all my tapes onto PC but will have to re-do them again because of the USB issue.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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JT - your comments about USB causing a loss of quality should be qualified as it very much depends on the camera, the PC and what's being pumped over the USB. Certainly with my JVC HD camcorder the USB is simply transfering mpg files, just like dragging and dropping mp3 files from hard disk to mp3 player - no loss in quality. Not sure about the claim on Mini DV being most robust - it still has moving parts. Small mobile hard disk are pretty robust. I've had a IBM Compact Flash based 1GB hard disk for my digi still camera for years that has never failed. And touch wood my JVC HD camera has been fine so far. I think slikedges, sums it up quite well. What's best depends on what you want and what you got to spend.
I do think just like VHS tape and now writeable DVDs are being replaced by hard disk based TV recorders the same will happen with camcorders. As for HiDef camcorders whatever recording media you use you'll have some very very large files to edit, so you'll need a high end PC with stacks of hard disk storage.
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JT, waynos, slikedges, hyweljenkins, thanks for all the info, have done some internet reasearch into your ideas and i think that HD camcorder is the one for me. seems like the simplest option for my filming, then easy downloading, then may take a night class in editing etc to put right all my mistakes.
then again i could always get my son to do all the filming+editing+downloading and everthing wil be spot on 
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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This is isn't a bad bet - it's what I'm taking to the Alps in a few week's time!
Sanyo HD1
I picked up an import one for under £250 (unlike most camcorders it actually outputs both PAL and NTSC). It's by no means the ultimate in video quality but in it's favour it is tiny, records HD footage, comes with a docking station, uses SD cards (so no mechanisms to worry about out in the cold) and also serves as a really quite decent 5 megapixel stills camera.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Our camcoder runs the mini tapes. DH uses a firewire cable to bring the film from the camcorder tape to the computers hard drive and ULead video studio. He then edits it and formats it as he wants before burning onto a DVD - I have to say he's good at it too - he made a great film from last years skiing trip - effects, music, the works!
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waynos,
Maybe, but all the vids posted here on this site that I have seen have degraded and I doubt anyone would have brought those images if they had known about it in the shop because as entertaining as the vids may be, the quality is not good. I'll let you know if Fire-wire is better on my cam..it had better be.
If you are happy with HD or DVD storage in a dynamic environment like skiing then no problem.
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You know it makes sense.
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thanks everyone for the tips ended up getting a jvc hdd camera with a sd card for stills and extra large battery, and docking station for easy dvd production great price well happy going out to hills tomorrrow to get some snowy footage 
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FAQ
