Looking for a small camcorder.

[ants]

Hi Guys,

Anyone know anything about the new "tapeless" camcorders ?
I think there's a Panasonic one that uses SD cards (512Mb = 20 mins ?) or the Samsung IT Cam (1.5 hard drive?).

These looks pretty cool ie small, but whats the quality like, comparable to DV ? I think they both use Mpeg4 and supposed to be as good quality as a normal cam but I guess they would say that. And while we're at it would I then be able to use the standard editing software that one sees everywhere ?

Thanks for your thoughts.

[MarkE19]

I've never seen the results of these tapeless cams, but capture to MPEG-4 means that the footage is highly compressed and therefore the quality will NOT be as good as uncompressed DV!
Editing will also be a problem as compressed footage will have a lot of the information missing, so editing will result in further loss of quality. Also I would not expect many of the editing progs to support MPEG-4 editing. I believe the Sony MicroMV cams also capture in MPEG-4 (or similar) and it is incompatable with many editing progs, but some are starting to add this in newer versions of their software.

Mark.