Which prosumer/pro camcorder do you use/recommend?

[ftaok]

I haven't bought a camcorder yet but hopefully sometime around christmas. I have been looking at the HDR-HC1 from sony, man if I could stretch my dollar I would get this, that way I wouldn't have to upgrade to HDV once it is standard.

I'm not to familiar with the HDV process, such as writing it to a DVD, etc. I'm assuming you'll have to convert it to DV so that it can be played in a DVD player. Can you burn a HD video onto a DVD or does it have to be something like Blue-ray???

Nuc

Well, we'd all want one of those HDV Sony's if we could afford them. Hey Sony, are you listening, reduce the price of the HDR to $299 and you'd sell a ton of them. You'll make it up on volume.

Anyways, DV is the format used by iMovie and Final Cut. It's a very good format in terms of video quality because it's not heavily compressed. Standard DVDs are encoded with MPEG2, which is not as good as DV footage, but on standard TVs, you'd be hard-pressed to spot the difference.

With HDV, you would be able to capture footage that can fully utilize an HD display. I'm guessing that you can burn HDV movies to standard DVDs, but you'd lose quality going from HD down to MPEG2.

Using Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, would solve that problem. The only thing is that they aren't readily available yet.

ft

 

[aloofman]

I haven't bought a camcorder yet but hopefully sometime around christmas. I have been looking at the HDR-HC1 from sony, man if I could stretch my dollar I would get this, that way I wouldn't have to upgrade to HDV once it is standard.

I'm not to familiar with the HDV process, such as writing it to a DVD, etc. I'm assuming you'll have to convert it to DV so that it can be played in a DVD player. Can you burn a HD video onto a DVD or does it have to be something like Blue-ray???

Nuc

It has to be Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. The current DVD specs don't support the aspect ratio, resolution, or bit rate that HD requires. There are various ways you can downsample the HDV footage to put the movie on a DVD. And in many ways it can look better than standard-def DV would. But you'll be jumping through some hoops to put it on a DVD.

I've said it before here and I'll say it again: unless you'll use it to make your living or you're a super techno-geek, you're wasting your money if you pay more than $1K for a camcorder. Even the prosumer models are really intended for the wedding videographers and amateur filmmakers. To really take advantage of the extra resolution that a prosumer DV camera has (especially the 3 CCD variety), you'd better also have a good tripod, a lighting kit, a separate pro-level mic, and some experience. If you don't, you're wasting your money so you can tell your friends what a great camera you have.

As for HDV, this is a pretty new standard. It's shot at HD resolution and heavily compressed so that it fits on standard DV cassettes. Some of what I've seen looks really good, but it won't be as good as that Discovery Channel show you saw on the huge plasma screen at Circuit City. The industry is still kind of coming to grips with HDV, and the editing software is just getting to the point where it can really edit the new standard. (Without getting too technical, the compression that HDV uses makes it problematic to cut at a particular frame.) All of these are reasons to hold off on HDV (especially at the consumer level) until things shake out a little bit more. In my opinion, if your goal is burning HD onto DVDs, you should wait until the whole Blu-Ray/HD-DVD feud shakes out. Change is coming fast, and I think it will be worth the wait.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Well, we'd all want one of those HDV Sony's if we could afford them. Hey Sony, are you listening, reduce the price of the HDR to $299 and you'd sell a ton of them. You'll make it up on volume.

Anyways, DV is the format used by iMovie and Final Cut. It's a very good format in terms of video quality because it's not heavily compressed. Standard DVDs are encoded with MPEG2, which is not as good as DV footage, but on standard TVs, you'd be hard-pressed to spot the difference.

With HDV, you would be able to capture footage that can fully utilize an HD display. I'm guessing that you can burn HDV movies to standard DVDs, but you'd lose quality going from HD down to MPEG2.

Using Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, would solve that problem. The only thing is that they aren't readily available yet.

ft

W/o nitpicking you pretty much hit the nail on the head.

DV is definitely the best consumer format until HDV really gets cheap enough for the masses, and going from HDV to MPEG2 (for standard DVD) is going to be a big drop in quality. But, as you mentioned, that's the best we got until HD DVD burners, players, and media become available and affordable.


Lethal

 

[aloofman]

Anyways, DV is the format used by iMovie and Final Cut. It's a very good format in terms of video quality because it's not heavily compressed. Standard DVDs are encoded with MPEG2, which is not as good as DV footage, but on standard TVs, you'd be hard-pressed to spot the difference.

With HDV, you would be able to capture footage that can fully utilize an HD display. I'm guessing that you can burn HDV movies to standard DVDs, but you'd lose quality going from HD down to MPEG2.

Using Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, would solve that problem. The only thing is that they aren't readily available yet.

ft

Actually, by professional standards, DV is heavily compressed. There are all sorts of issues involving color resolution, artifacts, and dropouts, that are particular to digital video as opposed to analog. And HDV uses MPEG-2 compression. It's a bit simplistic to describe DV as better than MPEG-2 because it's not an exact comparison. It's like saying that Quicktime is better than Windows Media. Well, it can be in a lot of ways.

As far as I know, you won't be able to burn an HDV movie directly to a standard DVD (as I mentioned above) without some kind of down-conversion. DVDs are, by definition, standard-definition.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

I have a SONY DCR-TRV900
Good camera, although it's been replaced with the TRV930 now.

I've used a TRV900 a few times.

It's a nice camera, but it's useless in low-light situations.

 

[Rod Rod]

As for HDV, this is a pretty new standard. It's shot at HD resolution and heavily compressed so that it fits on standard DV cassettes. Some of what I've seen looks really good, but it won't be as good as that Discovery Channel show you saw on the huge plasma screen at Circuit City.

Discovery Channel HD looks bad. There are block artifacts all over the place. I have no doubt that Discovery HD's masters look amazing but by the time the MPEG2 stream makes it to satellite and digital cable receivers, the signal is very degraded. By comparison, HDV looks beautiful.

The industry is still kind of coming to grips with HDV, and the editing software is just getting to the point where it can really edit the new standard. (Without getting too technical, the compression that HDV uses makes it problematic to cut at a particular frame.)

Pick any frame and edit in HDV with Final Cut Pro 5 without problems.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Discovery Channel HD looks bad. There are block artifacts all over the place. I have no doubt that Discovery HD's masters look amazing but by the time the MPEG2 stream makes it to satellite and digital cable receivers, the signal is very degraded. By comparison, HDV looks beautiful.

Wait until HDV gets b'cast. And wasn't that aloofman's point that you can't make blanket statements 'bout MPEG2's quality?

Pick any frame and edit in HDV with Final Cut Pro 5 without problems.

Try doing that w/4.5 or an Avid or pretty much anything over a year old w/o any third party stuff or transcoding. Relatively speaking, there isn't much out there in the workplace that can edit HDV natively (which was aloofman's point). And even the stuff that can tends to feel sluggish (from what I've heard) in comparison to non-HDV material because of the extra CPU overhead it takes to manipulate HDV's PITA GOP structure on the fly. Of course then there is the long wait on output so FCP can rebuild the GOP structure that the editing process decimated. One reviewer said it took 22 minutes for a 1ghz Pb to "conform" (rebuild the GOP structure) of a 30 second HDV clip.
The top end G5 was obviously faster, but still slow (he didn't give a specific amount of time).


Lethal

 

[picodave]

Sony's HDR-FX1 isn't all that compatible with Imovie HD

Be careful buying an HD camera if you are planning on editing with Imovie-HD. I bought a Sony HDR-FX1 and it worked fine at first, but quit working for no apparent reason. I've since visited Apple's technical forum and found this isn't an isolated problem. I can control the camera through Imovie, but can't play HD video through the computer or import it. I can play and import non-HD video from the HDR-FX1, but that sort of defeats the purpose of spending all that money. I'm hoping for a fix, but so far the only "fix" suggested, past checking to see if I actually have the camera on and connected, is to start Garageband which should re-set some parameters. I wouldn't suggest buying an HD camera until Apple address this problem in Imovie-HD

 

[mpstrex]

My favorite cameras:

DV: DVX100a (now b)

HDV: Sony HVR-Z1u

HD: F900 (Sony CineAlta)

Cameras I avoid like the plague: JVC HD1, HD10, HD100; Canon XL1-2; any one chip, non-cmos camera; BetaSP; older flavors of DVCPro and many more.

For editing, avoid iMovie HD--they use the Apple Intermediate Codec, which is bad and darkens the video plus adds artifacting (noise). My old HD10 quit working via firewire with iMovie HD (not anything else, just that program). Or go with www.lumierehd.com and buy an older copy of Final Cut Pro.

mpstrex