Camcorder help

[Tink-a-bee]

Hi, I hope one of you kind 'techie' types can help me. I have decided that I want to get a camcorder for our forthcoming trip, and with Xmas just around the corner, well you never know...

My question is, what type? I was thinking DVD camcodere, but I have read a few nagatives (not such good quality, fairly new technology etc.), so I'm now thinking mini-DV. I want to spend (or DH does ) around £300. Am I on the right tracks with a mini-DV, and if so, which one?

Any help greatly appreciated.

[Andre]

Do you want to do any editing on your PC later? If so, definitely stick with Mini-DV (mostly still cheaper than DVD anyway). DVD has the advantage that you can just stick the disk into any DVD player back home and watch it, but the quality will never be quite as good as mini-DV.

Andre

[Tink-a-bee]

Thanks Andre, that's really helpful. Yes, do want to have the option of editing on my PC. I was reading that in most cases you need some additional software (Firewire? ) to be able to do this? I also have a Vaio laptop for work, and I think I also read that you don't need it if you are using that?

So many questions!

I liked the look of the Panasonic NV-GS178 Mini DV, which i found on Amazon for £250. Seems to have pretty good reveiws, any thoughts...?

Thanks again

[Guest]

There is basic video editing software built in to Windows, it's called Movie Maker, to get you started. With a DVD camera, if the disk is DVD-RAM, it may not play in a set top player. My brother found this with a borrowed camera, then he couldn't play the disk in his PCs or set top players or recorders. You can copy out to PC using a firewire lead with a DVD camera, which you will also need for a miniDV camera. Most cameras come with a USB lead which isn't much good for transferring video to a PC, mainly USB is used for stills. Video needs the sustained high speed of firewire.

[Andre]

Quite. Firewire is a connection standard rather than a piece of software - your Vaio will almost certainly have it, and most decent-spec modern PCs will have the relevant socket too. Mini-DV can be transferred losslessly via firewire into your PC, and be simply edited in the same data format (Movie Maker 2 is free with Windows XP and will get you started fine), then you can output it back to tape. For simple edits with decent software, the resulting tape will be exactly the same quality as the source you recorded.

If you use a DVD recorder, firstly the recorded video & audio is more compressed and hence lower quality, and secondly due to the nature of DVD (MPEG) video streams, it's not possible to make frame-accurate edits without decompressing & recompressing the video data, which is never ideal. It's all to do with I-frames and B-frames and stuff, but I won't bore you with the details.

Andre

[Tink-a-bee]

Thanks for your help both - I feel a lot more informed now - at least I will seem like I know what I'm talking about when I visit Jessops this weekend to take a look at the merchandise (before trotting home to order on Amazon or something similar )

thanks again

[DIBBadmin]

This thread has been automatically closed as it has not been posted on in 365 days.