Seems like everyone and their mother got me a Circuit City gift card for Christmas, and I know exactly what I want – a digital video camera.
Given that I know absolutely nothing about video cameras, I do know enough to have a couple requirements for such a thing–
-I’d rather not have any kind of actual tape used. I would never use it for anything, since my main goal is to digitize all my video on my computer.
-I’d prefer something that records in MPEG-2.
-I’d also like something that makes taking a photo easy; one I tinkered with in the store had a ‘photo’ button right next to the index finger for easy capping. I want to be able to captrue photos at at least 1024x768.
-I’m not sure what size most camcorders capture at (320x240?), but I’d like one that would capture at a high resolution wiht great quality. Something I could put onto a DVD from my laptop and not notice any quality degradation.
So I guess what I’m looking for is a memory card/stick camcorder with a good zoom, no tape hassle, photo ability, and something I can plug right into my laptop’s USB or IEEE1394 port and download right off of. If it could double as a streaming-video camera when attached to the laptop, that would be great, too.
Given my stringent (maybe?) guidelines for a machine like this, is it possible to find such a thing at under $500, or am I going to have to dig deeper into my pockets to pay a large difference? I’m going to go up there tomorrow to talk to the sales people, but I wanted to go armed with some knowledge – and perhaps with a couple products in mind.
As a user of DV video cameras for over 5 years I will give you my personal take on your issues:
“-I’d rather not have any kind of actual tape used. I would never use it for anything, since my main goal is to digitize all my video on my computer”
Trust me, you do want tape. Tape records “AVI” format with minimal compression. If you want to edit, you want to minimize compression until your final product (DVD) is produced. The alternative (recordable DVD) is best for those people who want a playable DVD immediately and don’t really intend to do a lot of editing of the video.
“-I’d prefer something that records in MPEG-2.”
No, you wouldn’t. Encoding into MP2 requires additional computing overhead within the camera. Encoding should be done on the computer, not in the camera. Cameras record in a pure digital image, compress into AVI and record on tape. Encoding into MP2 requires much greater compression and more overhead and image loss.
“-I’d also like something that makes taking a photo easy; one I tinkered with in the store had a ‘photo’ button right next to the index finger for easy capping. I want to be able to captrue photos at at least 1024x768.”
“-I’m not sure what size most camcorders capture at (320x240?), but I’d like one that would capture at a high resolution wiht great quality. Something I could put onto a DVD from my laptop and not notice any quality degradation.”
Standard DV format is 720 x 480 pixels. All DV cameras record at this resolution. You can get higher definition on specialized professional cameras but you are talking multi thousands of dollars for that.
I think you can get what you need (as opposed to what you want) for under $500 with no problem. I would recommend moving up to about $600 limit (the one I referenced above is $580) to get a good quality camera.
Also, I hope your laptop is pretty new and high end. Video editing is massively demanding on cpu capability and hard disk throughput capability.
Oh, I dunno, my three-year-old iMac does DV editing without a hiccup, and any new Mac you buy today will easily do video editing out of the box. You’d have to have a rather embarassingly pathetic computer if it can’t handle video editing in this day and age, IMO.
I was editing DV on a PC 5 years ago and felt like it worked pretty well. However, today I’m finding people feel it’s unacceptable to let the computer run 10 hours or more to compile and encode a DVD. I’ve seen a lot of people who think their software doesn’t work just because it doesn’t finish in 20 minutes.
Also, I also find a lot of beginners are very surprised to find they need as much as 30 or 40 GB of free disk space to produce a final edited DVD. A lot of older but very usable notebooks don’t have that kind of space available.
We may be experiencing differences in perception here. “Handling” video editing and handling it quickly can be two diffferent things. I’ve got software on my Sony Vaio (2.4Ghz CPU, 1GB memory) that lets me set up an editing session for a video clip pretty quickly and easily, but producing that video clip pegs my CPU at 100% for a healthy amount of time. Converting a ten-minute AVI file into its equivalent ten-minute MPEG-II file for example takes almost ten minutes, with the CPU pegged during the entire interval.
I didn’t see KenGr’s excellent comments until after I’d already posted mine, and I want to second his comment about disk space. A two-hour DVD contains roughly 4GB’s worth of files, and if you’re using an MPEG-II file as its source that’s going to chew up another 4GB. That’s 8GB just for the raw source and finished results.
…and if you have to ask how much disk space a two-hour AVI file chews up, your hard disk isn’t big enough for it.
Thanks for the great suggestions! I suppose what I really want IS a tape format where I can pull off the videos and encode them on the computer. A digital video camera (Sony DCR TRV-250) I had played with before produced 320x240 movies on the computer, but you couldn’t download them directly-- you had to stream them and record them from the camcorder.
The one you linked to is nice, but maybe something a little lower end would be better.
I hate asking too many questions, but on the subject-- what’s the big difference between MiniDV and Digital8?
My main goal here is to shoot video, then easily get what’s on the camcorder onto the PC in either an AVI or MPEG format at 720x480. Is MiniDV the best way to go?
Mini DV, firewire, good quality digital capture card (if you’re on an iMac or better I think that’s included by default, for PCs it’s an addition), and an 80Gb high speed hard drive, a crapload of RAM (1Gb at least).
One hour of raw DV is 13Gb. After that you’re going to need space to save clips and finished results, so the more HDD space the merrier.
Some PCs come with a firewire connector built-in these days (my Sony VAIO did, but the Dell my wife bought recently didn’t), and if your video camera comes with a firewire connector that’s probably all you’ll need hardware-wise. I have several capture/editing packages on my Sony, and they all recognized both my video camera and the one my brother-in-law got for Christmas immediately when we plugged them into the firewire connector.
(My brother-in-law’s video camera came with both firewire and USB 2.0 connectors. I’m afraid that we didn’t try the USB connection and he’s already left for home.)
I like JVC’s. I’m buying another one because my first was trouble free for 5 years until it was stolen last month. However, the D70 is old technology in that it’s got a 1/6" 680K pixel CCD sensor. If you move up to the JVC GR-DV500 you will get a 1/4" 1.33 megapixel CCD. This is much better for an increase in cost of only about $75.
Whatever brand you are looking at, I would recommend getting a 1/4" megapixel CCD camera. Otherwise you risk not being satisfied with the quality.
Digital 8 stores the same digital video signal on 8mm tape instead of mini-DV (6mm) tape. Pluses - camera will also play back existing 8mm analog video tapes if you have a library of them. Minuses- cameras are bigger, system is a stopgap Sony proprietary system, probably a dead end when Sony no longer makes a profit with it.
Mini-DV is definitely the way to go except for those with a need to play old Analog 8mm tapes.
Dang, DV cameras are cheap as hell these days – my bare bones Canon was $1200 back in 1999. Incidently, that’s also when I got my 400MHz G3 iMac that had no problems with video at all – granted that didn’t include burning a CD, and I’d upgraded the drive from the measly 13Gb it came with. Any computer more modern shouldn’t have any problem processing video.
Granted, now that my G4 Mac has spoiled me, processing video on the 40MHz G3 PowerBook seems painful. It’s not even fast enough to play DVD’s in Mac OS X despite having a DVD drive (the hardware decoder only works in pre-X).
If you have a PC, I’m sure there are PC FireWire PCMCIA cards – that’s why the aforementioned PowerBook needed. An a PC FireWire card can be had for $25 or less, and WinXP recognizes it and most Linuxes I imagine (SuSE 8.2 does for sure).
Oh, I remember doing video as early as my 180MHz PowerMac 6400. It was slow, but capable. Video was all analogue captured through my video card, and played out through the video card. But dang it, it was worth the effort!
k, so I’m looking at 2 right now-- theJVC GR-DV500 and the Sony TRV-250. The former is DV, the latter is Digital8.
Is there a general consensus among camerageeks as to which I should get? I’m primarily looking for something which will provide the BEST quality when transferred to PC-- least grainy, nicest color, etc. Both have 0lux capability with their respective night vision technologies.
Do both JVC and Sony have equally reputable histories with digital video?
If this is more suited for IMHO at this point, feel free to move it =)
DV definitely should get the nod. I have seen technical evaluations that say DV has a small technical edge. But the key factor is it is an industry standard and the future standard while Digital8 is a stopgap.
You can get all sorts of opinions on brands. JVC more or less invented consumer video. Sony is the 800 pound gorilla. Personally I find Sony a bit overpriced but they do have very good equipment.
With some heavy prodding in this thread from KenGr, I got a JVC GR-DV500 (1 megapixel CCD). Overall, I am VERY impressed by this camcorder. The one thing it lacks, though, is an infrared night vision. The “Night Alive” feature just slows the shutter speed and increases the exposure, which helps very little unless I’m just taking a photo. Video is pretty much useless at this speed.
Is there a way to give the camcorder some kind of accessory that will give it a feature more like Sony’s NightShot, which just uses an infrared light that looks really good in total darkness?
What if I just held an infrared light? Would it pick it up?
I’m primarily looking for something which will provide the BEST quality when transferred to PC-- least grainy, nicest color, etc. Both have 0lux capability with their respective night vision technologies.