[realitybites]

Just wondering if anyone has one of these or has used one. I know the limitations regarding the length of time you can record, do they compare favourably with lower end DV camcorders or DVD cams?

[MarkE19]

If you mean the camcorders that record video directly to memory cards then no, they are nowhere near as good quality as a DV cam at any cost.
These cams record the video as highly compressed MPEG-4 files that will never be close to the uncompressed (well not very) AVI. DVD cams record to the disk as the much higher quality MPEG-2 format as used on all DVD disks you buy and will still be IMHO far better than the MPEG-4 files.

Mark.

[realitybites]

Thanks for the reply Mark. Apparently the new Panny AV-100 can record 65 mins MPEG-4 and 11 mins MPEG-2. I think the limitations lie with the cards but once decent size cards arrive allowing at least an hour, which must surely be on the horizon, I can see the market turning towards this technology as the domestic recording market is turning towards Hard drive based recording systems.

Sony use an HDD system on their top end cameras, so eventually it will trickle down. At the moment MPEG4 is waaaaaay below AVI, MPEG2 is a fair bit below AVI depending on the compression.

The beneifts will be: reduced size and quicker transfer from cam to pc for editing (no more RT capture required). BBC are developing a system called Jupitor, desinged to let many users edit from the same footage once it has been captured, with the HDD system the potential is there for editors to start work before the take has finished.

The prohibitive factor at the moment is the size of solid state cards.
To keep the current quality you would need a 12GB card for every hour dv tape.

Given that consumer HD is on the horizon, this requirement is bound to increase (the manufacturers consensus has been to store MPEG2 on DV cassettes, mistake!, MPEG2 is too efficient -ie lossy)

ANYBODY BUYING CAMCORDER TODAY, TOMMORROW, PROBABLY EVENT HIS TIME NEXT YEAR BUY miniDV. THERE IS NO BETTER FORMAT IN THE CONSUMER/PROSUMER REALM.

[shoehorn]

Agree with all the above... it's gonna happen one-day though and sooner than we think... just look at the way audio recording has changed... and remember technology advances exponentially!