Looking to upgrade digital camcorder - suggestions?

[Jussei]

Hello,

I just recently sold my aging MiniDV camcorder as I feel that it's time to invest in a newer model.
I'm looking for something that can provide HD resolution (it looks like there are a fair amount of 1080i's camcorders out there that are reasonably priced).
I plan on doing some research as it's an area I'm not too familiar with. I figured I'd ask for some Head-Fier's opinions prior to my research and purchase.
Brand isn't particularly important, but I usually lean towards Sony or Canon when I'm looking for camcorders. I'd like to keep the price under $1000.00 and, again, I'd like to be able to shoot in HD, but it's not absolutely necessary.
Any suggestions?

Also, a quick question: When shot in HD, does editing still remains the same or do I have to have different software to edit HD video? I figure it would still be transfered to the computer as completely uncompressed DV, but just with larger files sizes.

Thanks for your help,
Jussei

 

[odymmij]

Canon HV20 all the way. Some programs would edit HD footage, some wouldn't. Depends on what you use to edit. Oh and you're gonna need an awesome rig to edit HD footage as smoothly as you would SD footage.

 

[GAD]

HD rocks in camcorders. You'll be blown away. I have one of the first-gen Sony's that does 1080i and I'm just thrilled to death with it.

Editing in HD requires software that supports it. When I bought, few did. I ended up buying a copy of Sony Vegas. Way more than I need, but it's nice to have the features if I need it.

You'll also need lots of PC horsepower, memory and time. HD video is huge. A short clip easily consumes gigs of drive space, and to make it viewable for my mother over DSL, I need to render it to something manageable. Often a 1 minute clip would take hours. I upgraded to dual-core and it's much faster (and I can multitask again), but it's still very resource intensive.

All worth it in the end. I have friends who scoff at HD until I show them home movies. There's just something about it - the expectation is there that it should be grainy or something, then you get magnificent 1080i and people are floored.

HTH,

GAD

GAD

 

[Jussei]

Quote:

Originally Posted by odymmij /img/forum/go_quote.gif Canon HV20 all the way. Some programs would edit HD footage, some wouldn't. Depends on what you use to edit. Oh and you're gonna need an awesome rig to edit HD footage as smoothly as you would SD footage.

Cool. I'll definitely check that one out.

 

[Jussei]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GAD /img/forum/go_quote.gif HD rocks in camcorders. You'll be blown away. I have one of the first-gen Sony's that does 1080i and I'm just thrilled to death with it. Editing in HD requires software that supports it. When I bought, few did. I ended up buying a copy of Sony Vegas. Way more than I need, but it's nice to have the features if I need it. You'll also need lots of PC horsepower, memory and time. HD video is huge. A short clip easily consumes gigs of drive space, and to make it viewable for my mother over DSL, I need to render it to something manageable. Often a 1 minute clip would take hours. I upgraded to dual-core and it's much faster (and I can multitask again), but it's still very resource intensive. All worth it in the end. I have friends who scoff at HD until I show them home movies. There's just something about it - the expectation is there that it should be grainy or something, then you get magnificent 1080i and people are floored. HTH, GAD GAD

What model Sony do you have? I don't have to have the latest and greatest as I'm usually not cutting edge on anything because it's just too costly.
Also, what Vegas edition do you have? I think I have 5, so I may have what I need, maybe not. I'll have to check since I haven't used it in awhile and it's on my PC, not my Mac.
Finally, do you have the option of shooting SD with your camera? I'm pretty sure I want to have that option since I don't want to plunk down $500+ for new video software if my current doesnt support HD.

 

[Jussei]

After finally getting in some research on camera I came across the AVCHD format. This seems to be a killer of many of the newer cameras as I guess that you can only edit with the supplied software?!?
Anyone familiar with this format or editing it?

Also the Canon HV20 looks like a very probable candidate currently.

 

[rockin_amigo14]

sony vegas is an awesome program. i have it and really like it, though it's a bit confusing to learn.

 

[lan]

I have an HV20 and I really recommend it. The HV30 is going to come out as it was just announced at CES but it's not really an upgrade. The pricing of HV20 now is great.

I'm a long time Vegas user myself. I use 6 and 7 for HDV. I didn't upgrade to 8 yet because there was some weird issues at that time a few months ago. Don't know about now though. I wouldn't use 5 though because it's slower.

I did the first head-fi meet video with Vegas 5 I think with Sony HC3. It had too much noise for my tastes.

HDV files are MPEG based and they consume the same bandwidth as DV files so they'll take up the same space on your harddrive.

AVCHD support isn't as big as HDV. AVCHD are mostly flash and harddrive cameras no? Are there any tape units that use this? All I know is that tape is good because it is more spacious. Sometimes the drive or flash units use more compressions to fit more time into their more limited space so the quality suffers.

You can see some of my HV20 footage in my signature. I recorded the last head-fi NY meet with that.

Only issue with HV20 is that it might not be wide angle enough. I use Canon HD wide angle adaptor.

 

[Edwood]

Yeah, I played with the HV30 at CES. I had my HV10 with me, so I got a chance to pop my tape out and into the HV30, I shot the same scene (fairly dark, and bright stage lighting) over and over with different settings, including the HV30's new 30p setting.

Otherwise, the HV30 is nearly identical to the HV20, pretty much only adding a few things, like new housing color, 30p mode, new LCD, and able to accept new extended battery. Otherwise, exactly the same as the HV20.

Exciting thing is that it will drop the price of the HV20 as it gets clearanced out. I'm going to pick up an HV20 for sure.

I really wish I brought SD cards with me to try their new AVCHD cams. Their bandwidth is still quite small, but they are all above 15mbps at least. I think one of them is over 17, which would be nice.

I'm really waiting (in vain) for a HDD (or flash) based cam that shoots in an HDV format that writes to a native .m2t format so that I can have the full HDV bandwidth in the convenience of solid state.

While it's a PITA to deal with tapes, it's an automatic archive, where the tapes will outlast HDD and optical discs. So, I think I'll stick with HDV for the forseeable future.

One thing to consider with AVCHD (h.264) is the extra computing overhead the compression requires when editing. The time you save by not having to capture from tape is eaten up and then some by the extra computing time needed to deal with the extra compression.

And yeah, I love Vegas. I can't wait until they come out with a native 64 bit version. I will definitely be using Vegas with my Vista 64 based workstation in the future.

-Ed

 

[Edwood]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lan /img/forum/go_quote.gif Only issue with HV20 is that it might not be wide angle enough. I use Canon HD wide angle adaptor.

It's a small price for the extra light sensitivity due to a better lense. Having a smaller focal length range means more wide open apetures with less glass.

When the price of the HV20 drops low enough I'll be picking one up and then use my HV10 as my EDC camera since it's so small. I'll be able to use the HV20 for the more serious stuff, and I'll be buying a decent mic for use with it. I already have the headphone dept. covered.

-Ed

 

[Edwood]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jussei /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'd like to be able to shoot in HD, but it's not absolutely necessary. Any suggestions? Also, a quick question: When shot in HD, does editing still remains the same or do I have to have different software to edit HD video? I figure it would still be transfered to the computer as completely uncompressed DV, but just with larger files sizes. Thanks for your help, Jussei

Even if you don't plan on outputting HD content, HD is the way to go even with plain old NTSC (or PAL) SD content. So even if your end product is a DVD, the end result will look better when you start with HD. Most noticeably i n the color dept.

And yeah. You're going to need a faster computer and more RAM, not to mention hard drive space. HD is much larger to deal with than SD.

-Ed

 

[Jussei]

Thanks again everyone for chiming in. It seems like the HV20 will likely get the nod.
Ian, I checked out your footage and it looks great!
A few quick questions about the HV20 as it seems that at least a few of you own it:

1. Are there extended battery options? On the rare occasions I do shoot, I usually need 2+ hours. I could easily just buy a couple regular batteries, but the long-life ones are always nice.
2. I checked and I do have the Vegas 6 suite (I thought that I had 5), will I be able to edit the HD video this is capable of producing?
3. My main computer is a MacBook Pro with 2.16 Dual Core, 2gb RAM and 256mb video RAM, would you forsee any problems with this setup editing HD? (Oh, I'd be using Windows XP via Parallels or Bootcamp). I've got an HP Media Center that could probably do the trick as well.
4. Lets say I put together a 1.5hr-2hr video and want to burn to DVD. Would I buy DL DVD's to get more resolution (due to more info on the disc)? Or does it not work this way?
5. Cost. These seem to be available for around $600 used, should I wait just a bit longer until the HV30 comes out or do you expect this price will stick for awhile?

Thanks again for helping out a video newbie.

 

[lan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Edwood /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yeah, I played with the HV30 at CES.

Did you get footage of 24P and 30P on the HV30? Can you upload so I can see it?

Is there any mention of the HV30 's 24P flag set correctly?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Edwood /img/forum/go_quote.gif It's a small price for the extra light sensitivity due to a better lense. Having a smaller focal length range means more wide open apetures with less glass.

I thought wide angle lenses would require something bigger and would just look awkward on this camera.

I already have Sennheiser mic but it's just too crazy to use. 1) it's too large 2) it's too sensitive and hears flies fart. I cannot handle editing the audio also for not so serious projects.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jussei /img/forum/go_quote.gif 1. Are there extended battery options? 2. I checked and I do have the Vegas 6 suite (I thought that I had 5), will I be able to edit the HD video this is capable of producing? 3. My main computer is a MacBook Pro with 2.16 Dual Core, 2gb RAM and 256mb video RAM, would you forsee any problems with this setup editing HD? 4. Lets say I put together a 1.5hr-2hr video and want to burn to DVD. Would I buy DL DVD's to get more resolution (due to more info on the disc)? Or does it not work this way? 5. Cost. These seem to be available for around $600 used, should I wait just a bit longer until the HV30 comes out or do you expect this price will stick for awhile?

1. BP-2L14 will give you over two hours. There are also 3rd party batteries which give longer life than the stock one.

2. Vegas 6 is fine with HDV.

3. CPU and RAM wise your computer is fine. I'm not so sure laptops are great harddrive wise though. I use the fastest laptop drive, Hitachi 7K200 and it still stutters too much. Things are much smoother on my desktop with WD Raptor. I don't know if using external drive is better in this regard.

4. DVD are SD by definition. 2 hours movies already fit on single layer DVD. You cannot record HD to disc and play it back unless you use Bluray or HDDVD. That's too costly for me at the moment although I'd love to do that.

5. Prices of things can only go down but it's already dropped considerably since it came out so it can't drop that much more. If you wait, there's also the time you lose from experimenting with the camera. With HD, you'll be using a lot of time also. If you can wait, then wait other wise just get it and learn from it now.