Camcorders

I've been asked to buy a camcorder for my folks.

They were thinking of it a while back, but it got forgot about. They're going on safari in about 4 weeks though, and along with wanting to capture my neices early years, this has made it a MOre definite purchase.

I know nothing about such things

From what I can tell, the first thing is to decide on format. There seems to be 3. Harddisk, Mini DV, and DVD.

I'm guessing there will be pro's and con's to each.

Any thoughts and opinions on which to go for any why would be greatly appreciated.

Wont be looking to spend much on it. £200 as a rough figure, but flexible with in reason.

 

Check out this JVC from Morgan computers

review here

manual here

For £105 it does enough to make it useful without being over complicated. Simple stuff like an image stabilizer, manual focus and white balance really help. There'll be some change left too for essentials

• batteries
• tapes
• cleaning cassette
• UV and circular polarising filters (27mm for this camcorder)
• camera bag
• ...did I mention spare batteries

I wouldn't bother with a tripod - too much hassle - but a table tripod might come in handy in the future (think XMas prezzie). Daft as it might sound, a long length of string with a footloop on one end and a tripod screw on the other is a brilliant tripod substitute. It works on tension. When it's finished with just roll it up in a ball and stuff it in a pocket. You can't do that with a tripod

Regards

 

Ta very much.

There's seems to be confusion about whether it's USB compatible or not?

Also, can you (or anyone?) give some info on the differences between the available formats?

How do they compare regarding editing and such?

Cheers
MO

 

A FireWire port is the what you need.

I do my editing on a desktop PC that I added a Firewire card to. The card I chose was an ADS Pyro 1394DV. It was about £50 at the time and came with two editing packages.

There's now a version of this for laptops. see here. It comes with a FireWire card that goes into the PCMCIA slot of the laptop. Not bad for less than £25

For editing all the systems are pretty much the same once the footage is imported. DVD and harddisc cams will make the 'importing bit' easier.

Mini DV cams need to play the footage back in realtime as the PC captures the data. If your camera work is good (no shots of the floor or the camera waving about) then this is one of those jobs you can leave running while you go for a beer The capture package will automatically divide the video in to clips. If you aren't quite Cecil B DeMille yet then you can scan through the shots and just pick up the ones you want. Either way, the capture package controls the camera so it's all pretty easy.

Editing can be as straight forward or as complex as your wallet allows. I wouldn't get too hung up on special effects and stuff. I used a basic package which did me well.

The final stage is outputting to DVD. The editing package will probably have a facility for this, but if you want fancy menues etc then there are authoring packages available that will let you have all the bells and whistles.

A couple of useful resources:

DVD Doctor

The ADS Forum


Regards

 

Dare I say it but avoid JVC camcorders... especially the MiniDV varieties... they're cheap and boy does it show. The casette transport in nearly every model since 2000 kills itself after any degree of use.

Canon's aren't very good quality, especially the cheap ones, picture noise like no-ones business.

Best bang per buck would probably be Panasonic or Sony. You can beat them up and they still soldier on, and don't have iffy casette transports.

 

Hows about JVC's with hard drives? Any good?

 

Heck yea, I have a JVC one here, its not mine one day I ejected the tape it opened I pulled it out but it did not let the tape go so the tape was ruined. After that no tape would run in it.

POS.

 

How about this Sony?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000MJYQS6/interactiveda3013-21

I'm confused though. If this thing records straight to DVD, then how come it's smaller than a dvd? Or am I missing something here?

 

Anyone?

If it uses a small dvd, will these play straight in a dvd player like with mini cds in a cd player?

 

My wife's been bugging me for a camcorder as well, but so far I've resisted because like you I'm confused about what to get. I was told by a friend not to get one that records onto a DVD, because various memory cards and HDD offer far higher capacity.

 

I think you'd be wise to wait to buy a solid state memory jobbie. HDD ones seems vulnerable and as I understand it the tech to protect the HDD will interfere with the recording process.
With new MPEG4 standard and even a 4GB memory card you'll be laughing.

 

My parents are going to Kenya on MOnday so I want to get this sorted tonight really

I think I'm going to go for the Sony. Ease of use seems to be rated high for it, and that's perhaps the main requirement.

 

Clueless!

Right, the sony it is. I've no idea what media I'm meant to order to go with it though.

Anyone?

 

The trouble with mini DVDs is thats it, its going to cost a lot of money, and lets face it even safari home vid is going to be 90% crap which your folks will want edited out, so the DVD will still need to go in a computer and be imported etc.

 

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying gary.

Are you saying editing and importing will be harder/MOre expensive due to using mini DVDs?

 

I think whats he saying is that the dvds aren't reusable therefore any crap that has to be edited has to be done on the pc - thus, everything has to be copied from the dvd to the pc...

thus, the cost will be of the dvds - and also the time...

 

Arrived today and is now charging.

Managed to have a quick play with it, and though I've no previous experience to compare it against, it seems great.

Ease of use was perhaps the highest priority, and this seems very easy. It fits nicely into the palm with all buttons easy to reach. The LCD also works as a touch screen to navigate the menus and options, which are simple to use.

Though it's quite plasticky, it doesn't feel cheap. Certainly not for the £230 it's available for from amazon.

It says it's compatible with 8cm DVD-R / -RW / +RW / +R DL

So the DVDs (the RW ones), are reusable no?
Also, there seems to be some basic in-camera editing options.

Just need to find out the differences (pro's/con's) of the various formats now. Anyone?

 

Nonsense. Unless you have info to the contrary.

 

Point 1, 2, 3 or 4? Note 3 already has a caveat.

 

"I understand it the tech to protect the HDD will interfere with the recording process."

Please tell me more. I am in the market for a new camcorder and 30Gb sounds good to me. Why would the HDD 'tech' 'interfere'?