Best Camcorder?

[Interventionist]

You might look into the Canon HV30 although it is still tape drive. The picture quality is amazing from videophiles perspectives, shoots in mpeg2 which is still long GOP but would work fine in your NLE.

I was actually looking into this camera since the HV20 came out but now reaching a bit higher with Panasonic's HPX170 due out at the end of this month. If you can afford it there are plenty of HVX200's which have gone up for sale since the HPX170 was announced. That being said the even more affordable DVX100 is being offered at lower prices if you wish to remain with SD.

Getting back to the HV30 some are even hooking up lens adaptors to this camera to make their movies with greater DOF. This camera also records in 30P and 24P frame rates. If you wish to upload your movie to YouTube which uses 15P then shoot in 30P and you wont have any dropped frames lending for a much smoother movie file. Use the 24P for film look.

 

[Fendweller]

Best camcorder?

Hello all - very interesting (and entertaining) discussion. I have iMovie 06 on an eMac (G4). Does that officially rule me out of any hard drive camcorder? I'm told that the AVCHD format doesn't work with that version of iMovie, but am hoping that's not right as the idea of tape isn't that attractive, except for the fact that any problems with tape are not so terminal as problems with hard drives. Alternatively, might an SD card-based camcorder be possible (with a card reader to let it talk to the mac, obviously)? All I want to be able to do it move footage from a camcorder to the mac's remote storage box, possibly muck about with it a bit and burn some DVDs. Most grateful for a steer - can't believe this is so complicated.

 

[Dr.Pants]

Well, generally no, AVCHD -> AIC on the Mac doesn't work, but a search on the Apple website yielded this Unfortunately, it converts to "any quicktime format", which may mean you lose some information. To anybody out there who can answer this definitively - does this mean it shaves off luminance values?

If you are not too concerned about the quality of the film and very concerned about your budget, then this might be your answer. You may have to fiddle around with the picture. On the SD card note, it still depends on the video format.

 

[jojolafrite]

Don't buy the Panasonic HDC-SD9

The HDC-SD9 is quiet good for the colors. Nevertheless, when the light goes a bit down in indoor takes, i can see noises coming up.
I said dont buy the panasonic because i made a mistake when i first wrote this post. Actually i posted a video edit with a stabilizer. The stabilizer zoomed into the video so that i had huge pixelisation and noise.

For you to see the quality of the cam, i uploaded one of my past work without any edit. (no stabilization).
The original file is 1080p - H264 - Highest quality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz2JamxU4-c
This shot has been taken in august with lots of outdoor light. It is not really helpful to see the limits of this camcorder. Nevertheless, you can compare the general picture quality with other video from youtube. You can for instance compare the video quality with the TM700 which is better than the SD9 (but twice pricey).


My main advice would be
check the indoor youtube tests for HD cams
It would be also important if the cam as a progressive mode. The Progressive mode allow smooth and hi quality video when you shoot moving scenes.