[Smi1er]

It's time to get a new camcorder.

What do I want? A small, light point and shoot corder with the usual digital effects.

I've been to the shops to get the feel of them and like the Sony.

I quite liked the HC19.

Am I right in saying that the only benefits of the HC22 are the cradle and DV IN? What benefit would DV IN give me?

My next problem is widescreen. How will a HC19/22 play on TV (we have a Sony 32" V series LCD on order)?

We have an old TRV87E (Hi8). Is there an easy way to get the video from the tapes to my PC?

Lastly my PC is a P4 3.0GHz, 512MB. Is it up to the job (once I get a larger HD and firewire card!)?

[MarkE19]

Originally Posted by Smi1er

What benefit would DV IN give me?

DV-in will allow you to copy your edited footage back from the PC to a new DV tape for archiving. The reason this is important is that DVD's are not good for long term archiving as they can get easily damaged.

Originally Posted by Smi1er

My next problem is widescreen. How will a HC19/22 play on TV (we have a Sony 32" V series LCD on order)?

If the cam has 'true widescreen' or whatever they call it then the CCD is in the 16:9 format and should be good played back on a widescreen TV

Originally Posted by Smi1er

We have an old TRV87E (Hi8). Is there an easy way to get the video from the tapes to my PC?

If you get a cam that has AV-in then you can connect the Hi8 cam to the new DV cam and use that to get the analogue footage onto the PC. This type of cam will cost a bit more, but will be cheaper than separate hardware for analogue capture.

Originally Posted by Smi1er

Lastly my PC is a P4 3.0GHz, 512MB. Is it up to the job (once I get a larger HD and firewire card!)?

This is plenty good enough for NLE. If you can afford it then I would suggest getting at least 1Gb RAM as this will speed things up by a fair amount. However 512Mb is still enough to work.

Mark.

[MartinImber]

Hc42

[lex read]

Another vote for the Hc42. It has an excellent true widescreen picture, which to me looks as good as a dvd when watched on my projector (10ft picture!). Also very easy to use.

I wouldn't contemplate buying a non-true widescreen cam nowadays - you would surely regret it down the line. Not sure whether the HC19/22 have true widescreen, but if it is a 4:3 letterbox system, then the resolution will certainly suffer.

It also has DV in and out. There is some transport noise from the tape, but not enough to worry about.

[Smi1er]

It's simply unbelievable that not all camcorders are 16:9 these days.

HC42 only has 12xoptical zoom against the 20x of the 19/22. Does it make a difference?

[MarkE19]

For handheld use then 12x optical zoom is more than enough IMO. Even at 12x full zoom and with optical image stabilisation on the footage is likely to still be moving around a fair bit. At 20x I would think it likely to be unwatchable.
Even on a tripod a high powered zoom can be OTT as any movement of the cam will be vastly exagerated.

Mark.