Newbie needs serious and complicated help with a choice pls

[Gloor]

Hi there,

I have a very specific and complicated situation and I thought I could ask you for help. So, I am in market for a new camcorder and I don't know anything about it. What will I need for? Well, here are some things I'll be doing with it :

1) video reference for animation - I would ideally want to export it in quicktime or something like that and I would ideally want to have a frame counter if possible. I would be needing it mainly in 24fps sometimes 25fps (PAL).

2) very rare and occassional footage that I would track and then add CG into it so HD would be favourized here.

3) and of course some holiday stuff but for that almost anything is good, right?

Well, I've searched forums and found that Canon HV30/20 is really praised here so I would like to ask you what do you guys think. My price range would be maximum as the HV30 is so either something at the same price level or cheaper. They tell us that for animation reference we can have anything even webcam, but I don't wanna buy a camera just for that. I also want to have a nice footage from holiday and stuff so something decent here is needed.
Please let me know what you think as I really don't know anything about cameras. I don't even know which brand to go for nor what specs to look at.

Thanks in advance

 

[mikeyPotg]

What's your budget? I had the HV20 and loved it. The 24p workflow though gave me a bit of a headache, and I tended to have some interlaced clips (I think most people were better at this than me, hah).
By far my biggest issue though, was that I had problems importing my footage without any timecode breaks and it would always split my clips and I'd lose several frames. I never figured this issue out and I'm thinking I was in the minority of people who had this issue, but I spoke with 2 others that had the same problem and could never figure it out.

Anyway, HV20 - awesome camera for the price.

If High Def and price aren't that much of an issue, I'd DEF recommend the Panasonic DVX100b. The camera takes care of the 24p as you record (and has the advanced option where you can take out the frames yourself - not my cup of tea). Also, a TON of people are selling used ones for around $1,800 - 2k these days.

Good luck!