Camcorder formats

[Stamp]

Just looking on the bay at camcorders.
They make no money and as we will hopefully have a little one on the way, I was thinking about taking a punt.
What is the best formats. There seem lots of Hi 8 MiniDV etc.

[bobthemonkey]

The big question is what do you want to do with the footage?

Do you just want to record it to tape, and play it back on a TV by plugging in the camera? Do you want to output straight to DVD or would you want to edit it on a PC?

[Stamp]

I'm not too sure. I would like it to go to DVD. I have a sony DVR with recordable DVD.

[bobthemonkey]

If you want to edit on a PC/mac, miniDV is fine as you can just import over firewire. Get yourself a nice big hard drive to keep it on. If you are content keeping it on DVD, you could get a camera that records directly to DVD. The footage is harder to get into an editable state, but once you record it thats it. Nice and easy to play back and copy for relatives to watch. Of course you can output miniDV to DVD, but you need to do the intermediate work on the PC.

[dave_s13]

Do you have a PC with a firewire input?

I've got a pretty old but still very small sony miniDV camcorder. It plugs into the PC via firewire and pulls off the footage prety rapidly using windows moviemaker. Moviemaker is free and really easy to use for basic editing/burning.

So I would say get a miniDV one with firewire out (capturing via usb is cr@p) and you can't go wrong really.

Mine is similar to this (but model is HC18)
this'll do ya

And if you don't have firewire on the PC/Laptop you can add a card for not much money.

Edited by dave_s13 on Monday 8th December 18:51

[Stamp]

dave_s13 said:

Do you have a PC with a firewire input?

I've got a pretty old but still very small sony miniDV camcorder. It plugs into the PC via firewire and pulls off the footage prety rapidly using windows moviemaker. Moviemaker is free and really easy to use for basic editing/burning.

So I would say get a miniDV one with firewire out (they prob all have that anyway) and you can't go wrong really.

The PC hasn't firewire, but the mac powerbook has.
I don't know if I can add firewire via PCI?

[dave_s13]

Updated my post.

Yes you can (PCI firewire card).

Just hook it up to the mac though they are better at video/picture editing anyway, and they "just work" too

[Stamp]

dave_s13 said:

Updated my post.

Yes you can (PCI firewire card).

Just hook it up to the mac though they are better at video/picture editing anyway, and they "just work" too

Great.
Thanks Dave

[uk_vette]

Don't get Sony microDV
It is probably the most useless available.

The very small tapes are expensive.

I have yet to find a program that will take a video copy off the tape onto my 'puter.
Cam corder and 'puter have firewire.
The 'Milk shake' that is bundled with the Sony camcorder is pathetic.
.

.
DCR-IP7






If any one DOES know of a suitable, tried and tested program let me know !

Edited by uk_vette on Monday 8th December 19:15

[dave_s13]

Obvious I know but have you tried windows moviemaker?

[nsa]

I would avoid JVC' HDD camcorder because it records in .MOV format and you need a converter to get it into Movie Maker (speaking from experience). I am looking for a widescreen HD camcorder that uses a format that I can import straight into Movie Maker as well.

I used http://www.nchsoftware.com/software/video.html to convert the JVC files, but have not tried it for other formats.

Edited by nsa on Wednesday 10th December 11:06

[nsa]

I would avoid JVC' HDD camcorder because it records in .MOV format and you need a converter to get it into Movie Maker (speaking from experience). I am looking for a widescreen HD camcorder that uses a format that I can import straight into Movie Maker as well.

I used http://www.nchsoftware.com/software/video.html to convert the JVC files, but have not tried it for other formats.

Edited by nsa on Wednesday 10th December 12:26

[Dr MAD]

Stamp... you have mail

Dan

[Road2Ruin]

Try one of the Panasonic SDHC camcorders. As small as a large packet of fags and much better than tapes. The transfer times from an SDHC card are only minutes instead of hours and it records in MPEG2 so re-encoding is a doddle.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/camcorders/review/20...

Have a look at the above, I think they can be had for about £145.00 now.

Pete