New to HD

[bobe]

Hi Everyone.
Please can you help.At the moment I edit mini dv tapes standard def on my PC using Premiere Elements 7.I am looking to buy a High Def camcorder which also has standard def facility so that I can still edit.
I will be going 100% high def in the future on my PC, but it is too expensive at the moment.
Can anyone recommend a high def/standard def camcorder.My budget is about £300/£350
Thank you all for your kind assistance.

[Mr Taylor]

Have a look at camcorderinfo.com

At the end of each review it gives all the specs and test results.

At the moment the cameras are going towards flash stick type storage, but Hard drives are still in there.

Tape also.

The big problem is that HD requires massive storage space when compared to SD.

This will also kill a normal computer.

They have tried to squash down the data with a new AVC HD compression code, but it's still fat.

My general feel is that the HD idea is slightly ahead of the storage technology.

It might be another few years before we are going to see the best out of HD.

[twoodley]

I currently have the Sony TG3 and on the highest setting you can get 3 hours of recording on a 16GB stick, which is a lot of video (I have never managed more than 1.5 hours before I have downloaded to a PC).
Also, external Hard Drives are almost free with cornflakes now, so no problem with storage. You can also select to record at much lower settings if you want (more like SD), but remember, you will never be able to get that recording, or memory, in HD in the future.
As far as editing goes it can be a "Problem" with large AVCHD files, but not impossible. Although I now have an i7 PC I used to have a 4 year old P4 which still managed to edit the footage, albeit slowly on render, but I just let it do it while I was in bed sleeping, so no real problem.

My personal opinion is, if you can afford HD then get HD. Even if you only playback in SD now the HD footage is always there for the future.

[bobe]

Thank you for some great advise