Wedding List Camcorder help

[willydagg]

HI,

I have been browsing round this forum trying to work out what to do re: my Camcorder purchase. I am looking for a camcorder that will make it easy to get files to my comp and burn dvd copies to send to friends and family, which have pretty good quality and won't cost a fortune to keep buying lots of media.

The second problem is that this is goign to go on a wedding list and thus i only have the ones on this ( http://www.johnlewis.com/Audio+and+T...oductType.aspx ).

This camera is for my future wife and I so I really want to not regret choosing it

any advice would be most appreciated

thanks

Will

[redsox_mark]

I’ll take a shot…

5 cameras to choose from… 3 different formats (and 3 different manufacturers).

Any of them should be easy to copy to a PC and create a DVD, though the methods will be different.

Quick look at each format:

Mini DV (Sony PC55E, Canon MV880X)

These record in a higher quality DV format than the other options (though the difference to the eye is not great). They take tapes (a tape holds 60-90 minutes, cost around £2.50). You copy to the PC in realtime via Firewire, so you need a Firewire (also called I-link, or IEE1394) connection. In creating a DVD, the software will need to encode to DVD format (MPEG2)… any good editing/DVD software will do that, and will generally result in the highest quality (but take more time).


DVD (Sony DVD202E)

These record to a small DVD, in MPEG2 format. At high quality format you can fit 20 mins on a DVD. Discs are cheap… name brand ones £1 or more, but can get them for as little as 20p. You can copy the files to a PC and edit, though MPEG2 isn’t as good for editing as DV. Copying is faster though. Main advantage of DVD format is you can shoot and immediately watch it, or make copies of the DVD. If you are editing, I’d stick with the Mini DV format. But if you want the fastest way to watch your raw footage on DVD, this is the way to go.

HDD (2 JVC models)

These record in the same format (MPEG2) as DVD. No recording media required here. Similar to DVD in terms of advantages/disadvantages, except of course you can’t instantly play a DVD.

Note if you are looking for the easiest way to edit, regardless of the format, you could use a set top DVD recorder (if you have one).

Having had a Sony DV camera for many years I’m biased.. but I’d recommend the DV option, and specifically the Sony PC55E. It is small and sexy, and will record high quality DV. If you don’t want to edit at all, consider the DVD model.

HDD models sound appealing, as no need to buy media. But I find I want to save all my source recording anyway. For example, I may take 2 or 3 hours of footage, and create a 1 hour DVD of the best bits. But I want to keep that other 2 hours as well.. as there would be some good stuff there too. So with a HDD model, to do this you would need to copy the material to a DVD or something to store it…

Hope this helps. I think any of those 5 will serve you well..

[willydagg]

Thanks for the info redsox_mark!

This is exceptionally useful. I think I wont really be doing any editing and it is more about ease of getting shot images to other ppl and to an easily watchable format. Given how cheap the dvds are i think this might well be a good option and i know my wife to be will really love being able to film then watch with no issues at all rather than having to navigate round pc editing software and dvd burning!

it looks like the dvd option is the best for my needs.

btw where did you find the dvds so cheap?

thanks again

Will

[redsox_mark]

Will,

http://svp.co.uk is a good souce for discs. Their small (camcorder size) discs are here:
http://svp.co.uk/products-list.php?bid=0&cid=117

The 21p Datawrite ones are out of stock...

Verbatium's are generally very high quality, those are 1.19 or 1.29... or other cheaper ones...
The 1.19 Verbatiums are -RW, the others are single use -R.

As I'm sure you have seen, the Sony discs are considerably more expensive.

You can also get good prices on standard size dics from SVP... you can use your PC to make standard size copies from the small DVDs.. Or do some editing/authoring to fit several small DVDs worth of footage on a standard DVD.

I agree, if you don't think you'll do much editing, DVD is the easiest way to go.

Mark

[shoehorn]

Originally Posted by redsox_mark

Having had a Sony DV camera for many years I’m biased.. but I’d recommend the DV option, and specifically the Sony PC55E. It is small and sexy, and will record high quality DV.

Agree with that - great form factor - the sort of thing my Mrs would appreciate!
It's not so difficult to burn DVD's either - and if you get into it you can do produce some great discs with menus to jump to the bits you want (like commercial DVD's)