High-Def camcorder

[discobay]

I am convinced that I need to replace my mini-DV camcorder which eats batteries and is ugly.

Saw a Sony HD camcorder housing a 30GB hdd but can't remember the model number. Selling for around $73xx. Uses a Carl Zeiss lens and is compact and light. What's the general opinion on high-definition hard drive camcorders and how does the Sony rate?

[Nutta!]

They say Sony and Canon are amongst the best of the small compact HD camcorders.
I have a Sony Sr-8 which is a 100gb HD camcorder.

Its pretty good. You have to set the camcorder picture quality setting to its highest setting (ie HD) in order for the picture to be of good quality. Bear in mind this results in very large file sizes, so I would advise go for minimum 60gb HDD.

Low light shooting quality is poor. Outdoor shooting quality is excellent. Sound is OK (all built in mics on small handheld camcorders are fairly shite).

The menu system is not that intuitive, but once you have worked it out it is pretty good. One thing about HD cameras is you can pick your clip by pressing the thumbnail on the screen which is much better than rewinding a cassette, pressing play etc....

I personally would go for the canon. My friend has the canon hv-10 (i think) and it is better.

[discobay]

I have read that the hv-10 is good too. Is that HD and HDD?

[jaykay]

Canon HV-10 is discontinued in HK, as is the HV-20.

I recently bought a Canon HF10 which is HD but uses flash memory, 16GB onboard and 16GB SD / SDHC card. With no HDD it's certainly lighter and smaller than the competition and I after looking at many what really drove me was the speed of the auto focus on the Canon, it's amazing. Dead easy to use as well.

[Jon.E.Kong]

You asked for general opinion, here it is:

I would never recommend one (hard drive camcorder) to anyone, even if you have no clue how to edit video. Just because it is HD (high-def) does not mean the video is uncompressed onto that hard-drive.

If you want something better get a High-Def camcorder that goes straight to tape so you have an uncompressed master of it.

HDD = High Def Dumbeddown

p.s. I have a Sony HD cam and it's pretty awesome.

[discobay]

I have used tape for years and yes the quality is hard to beat.

What are those little Xacti camcorders like?

[Jon.E.Kong]

I think it's cool how they all look like garden hose attachments.

The waterproof one might be worth a second look, other than that I can't see them being the greatest all around camera for anything other than web video. Highest res is 1080i so you might notice on larger tvs.

Lenses are all quite small, so don't expect them to perform to great at night. I'm guessing they are pretty cheap though.

Also they're not really HD, as they all compress to MPEG4 (which looks so much better than it used to though)

[Nutta!]

You asked for general opinion, here it is:

I would never recommend one (hard drive camcorder) to anyone, even if you have no clue how to edit video. Just because it is HD (high-def) does not mean the video is uncompressed onto that hard-drive.

If you want something better get a High-Def camcorder that goes straight to tape so you have an uncompressed master of it.

HDD = High Def Dumbeddown

p.s. I have a Sony HD cam and it's pretty awesome.

How big are the file sizes for say 20 mins of uncompressed HD video? Would it be really really massive? You would need very powerful hardware to edit, which most home users dont have.

Also native AVCHD is brilliant, and an excellent compromise of compression vs picture quality.

The problem is there isnt any decent home editing software suites which edit in AVCHD. Almost all convert into MPEG which does suck.