[o27]

Hi.

I need to buy a DV camcorder ASAP as i became daddy 4 days ago. I´ve been looking at the Sony DV DCR-HCxx series as it´s just going to be point-n-shoot - so that the missus also can use it

So could someone explain to me what the difference is between the cheapest 3 sony models:

DCR-HC17E
DCR-HC19E
DCR-HC22E

I´m leaning towards the 19E but is there any difference according to the 17E?

I know the 22E offers a docking/Handycam station - but does that offer any real advantes opposed to no docking station? I mean is it only useful in order to make the connections easier?

I can get the 17E in a shop around the corner for the same price as the 19E online - only differences is 1-2 days shipping via online store - is the 19E worth that?

Hope you can guide me a little as it´s my first camcorder ever!

[o27]

could use a little quick info/help here guys

[MarkE19]

Well I've just had a look at the Sony Camcorder web site here and only the 19 & 22 are listed, not the 17. Full specs of both of them are listed, but I think the main difference is that the 22 has DV-in which lets you copy video back from a PC via firewire to a new DV tape for archiving. the 19 only has DV-out.

Mark.

[o27]

well i wont be needing the DV in - so if the docking station doesnt offer much of an advantage I probably go for the 19E

[shovon]

Hi O27

I am looking at getting the Sony HC19 too. I see from what Camcorder magazine that it won the Editors Gold Award for best value cam under £250.

The review didn't have a bad thing to say about it and said that even if the cam was priced at nearer £400 that it would still be worth it!

It has I-link DV out (although the firewire cable isn't supplied) its got a USB connection, Widescreen filming ability and a good Carl Zeiss lense. Super steady shot and night filming mode. Review said the colours and quality of the filming were great for the price. Looks easy to operate too.

Best of all, i've found it at Argos selling for £199.99 special offer. That's at least £30 cheaper than any other competitors including online sellers! Also Argos are doing a deal were you can purchase 5 X Sony Mini DV premier tapes for half price thats £10 down from £19.99 when you buy this cam.

If you want one I suggest you reserve one pretty quickly as they're selling fast!

Good Luck.

[o27]

Nice sounds likes it a good choice then - I´m glad to hear as i ordered one earlier this afternoon

Hehe i live in Denmark so i had to pay 280punds for the cam. - unfortunately not many UK resellers are willing to ship abroad.

That review you´re talking about is that a online article? if so i could really use a linky as it would be nice with some reading about my upcoming cam

You mention it has 16:9 widescreen capabilities, so i guess this is not full widescreen capturing? I´m gonna view my stuff on my LE-32R51b so it would definately be nice if the 19E had true widescreen capabilities.

Hopefully i´ll get it tomorrw.

[shovon]

Ok, I have been doing some further research.

Apparently there is the HC19 and the HC19E whch is the later updated model.

Supposedly HC19E does add a widescreen capability in that it uses less of the CCD to produce the widescreen 16:9 look, this in turn reduces the quality of the picture so it is not as good as filming in the the default 4:3. It does not appear to be 'True Widescreen' in other words. Another thing you will notice is that the LCD on the cam is not a widescreen LCD so you will see a letterbox type screen while filming if you choose to record in 16:9 widescreen format.

The review I saw was in 'What Camcorder'. I do not know if that is available where you are. I cannot find any online reproductions of the article.

So it remains for me to see if Argos are doing the HC19E for £199.99 or the older HC19. I hope it is the former as they don't give enough detail in their description.

Let me know how you get on with your cam o27 by adding to this thread

[o27]

sure will do so when i get my hands around it - and it´s the 19E model i´ve ordered.

Now i just need some good fast software for editing and burning

Man this project seems to get more and more complicated - just as i thougth finding the right cam would do the trick i find a lot of threads in here about converting, editing and burning to dvd´s etc.

Seems like i have some long readings ahead!

So far it seems that the best/fastest way to produce a good quality dvd is by using Canupus ProCoder ver. 2 for converting .AVI to MPEG2 and then TMPEnc DVD Author 1.6 for converting the MPEG2 to dvd and using Movie Maker or Nero Vision Express to capture the raw .AVI files to the PC - is that somewhat correct?

[MarkE19]

If ultimate quality is what you are after then you can go the way you describe to create a DVD. However for somebody just starting out with editing it is a long winded & complicate way to do it. IMO you would be much better just getting an all-in-one program to do everything, and the results are still very good. As you seem happy enough to use the search on the forum I'll save the wear & tear on my fingers & keyboard and let you find the programs recommended by myself and others on here. Most of them do everything, or you could use the free Movie Maker 2 to do the capture & editing and get a separate program to create the DVD, such as Ulead DVD Movie Factory or Nero etc.

Mark.

ps, shovon - the nameing of Sony camcorders with an 'E' at the end just means that the model is specifically designed to be sold in Europe. Many retailers just advertise their cams without the 'E' stated in the model number, but as long as it is a UK based company (which Argos obviously is) the camcorder should be the HC19E

[o27]

Ok then i´ll probably just start out with one of the all-in-one programs. Sorry if this means a little wearing of your precious hands Mark But I would appreciate if you could tip me of in the right direction, considering a one-in-all software - as there´s simply just too many programs discussed in here.

But after reading several of your post, it seems that you might know just a tad more about the good software, than i do atm

[MarkE19]

Beer tokens tend to make the pain in my fingers more bearable

OK then, the favourites are:
Adobe Premiere Elements
Sony Vegus Studio

and then:
Ulead Video Studio
Pinnacle Studio (as long as you can get it stable, many can't!)

There are as you say many others and I'm sure users will be on here recommending what they use. The best way is to download the free 30 day trial that AFAIK are available for all of them, and see which one(s) you like best. They all cost around £40 so your best bet is to see which offer the best & easiest workflow for you.

Good luck,
Mark.

[shovon]

Thanks for your suggestions Mark and I stand corrected about the 'E' addage.

Got the Cam from Argos today and it has a widescreen mode ( I know this is not the true widescreen feature as such but it looks OK on my widescreen TV). Was I kind of right about the the fact that in order to produce this fake widescreen that the CCD records at a level of less quality?

I will probably experiment with Windows Movie Maker 2 first and see what i can produce. Am I right in thinking that WMM2 doesn't allow DVD production as standard and there are no plugins available to enable this?

One last thing, what are your thoughts on bags for this cam? I looked at one of the official Sony bags you can get for little DV cams but it doesn't seem that special and comes with another battery and its £79 so a little too expensive for me. If I am going to get a bag I would like a good quality one with padding and a soft lining like a Lowepro 'Edit 100' perhaps. But it also needs to be compact with maybe space for a spare tape thats all. I don't want something that will defeat the whole object of getting a palm sized cam.

[MarkE19]

Originally Posted by shovon

Thanks for your suggestions Mark and I stand corrected about the 'E' addage.

Don't worry, it confuses a lot of people and the question of what it is there for gets asked from time to time.

Originally Posted by shovon

Got the Cam from Argos today and it has a widescreen mode ( I know this is not the true widescreen feature as such but it looks OK on my widescreen TV). Was I kind of right about the the fact that in order to produce this fake widescreen that the CCD records at a level of less quality?

What these cams do is mask off the top & bottom of the CCD to give the widescreen effect. This causes there to be less lines of information recorded, ie lower resolution. If it looks good to you then that is all that matters.

Originally Posted by shovon

I will probably experiment with Windows Movie Maker 2 first and see what i can produce. Am I right in thinking that WMM2 doesn't allow DVD production as standard and there are no plugins available to enable this?

No, MM2 is just a basic editing program and I'm not aware of any plugins for it. However for a freebie it is very good IMO. if you are happy with what you can do with it then just get something like Ulead DVD Movie Factory or Nero etc to create your DVD's. Full help and advice on useing MM2 can be found at www.papajohn.org

Originally Posted by shovon

One last thing, what are your thoughts on bags for this cam? I looked at one of the official Sony bags you can get for little DV cams but it doesn't seem that special and comes with another battery and its £79 so a little too expensive for me. If I am going to get a bag I would like a good quality one with padding and a soft lining like a Lowepro perhaps. But it also needs to be compact with maybe space for a spare tape thats all. I don't want something that will defeat the whole object of getting a palm sized cam.

Official bags are always OTT in price IMO. What I always do when I have new equipment that needs a bag is go along to Jessops or any other camera shop and put the camcorder in a few bags and see what works best. Often the official bags end up holding the cam but leave little or no room for the charger, spare battery and tapes, which is no good for me.

Mark.

[shovon]

Again thanks for your answers Mark, much appreciated!

Have read all your comments.
I'm off to Argos tommorrow.
Dare i suggest. The best basic editing is to get an apple mac and use imovie. With regard to exporting back (after editing) to your camera. You should be able to buy a gadget from Jessops or similar that alters the software of your camcorder to accept back on to tape. Always good to keep a master.
I have what is now a dated Sony DCR-TRV10e and purchased this gadget over 5yrs ago and have never had a problem.

[MarkE19]

Originally Posted by setmac

Dare i suggest. The best basic editing is to get an apple mac and use imovie.

If you know how to use a Mac or are beginning with both Mac & PC then yers Mac is a great way to go. If however like me you have worked in IT for 18+ years and have always used PC's but never Macs then its not such an ideal way to go. PC editing is now very good as long as you stick to SD video. If going to HD video then I believe a Mac is the only way to go ATM.

Originally Posted by setmac

With regard to exporting back (after editing) to your camera. You should be able to buy a gadget from Jessops or similar that alters the software of your camcorder to accept back on to tape. Always good to keep a master.
I have what is now a dated Sony DCR-TRV10e and purchased this gadget over 5yrs ago and have never had a problem.

In the good old days then yes, but not any more. It was just a matter of updating the software in the cam to enable DV-in and sometimes even AV-in, but the good old EU stopped this by stating that if the ports were not hardware disabled then the tax payable on the cam would be as if they were active out of the box. Therfore for the past couple of years any new cam can not have the inputs enabled. But if you do have an old cam then you can still get the 'widgets' to enable the inputs for some of them.

Mark.

[Applespider]

Originally Posted by MarkE19

If you know how to use a Mac or are beginning with both Mac & PC then yers Mac is a great way to go. If however like me you have worked in IT for 18+ years and have always used PC's but never Macs then its not such an ideal way to go.

While I'm not saying Mac is the only way to go, that statement is a little misleading. I'd been using Windows for 10 years before I bought my home Mac a few years ago. It's not a particularly steep learning curve to learn how to use OS X. My mother and sister both switched to Macs too (mainly because they're not tech literate despite using PCs for years and wanted something that was virus/spyware free) and didn't have problems either.

If you've got lots of legacy software that you aren't currently planning on updating, then staying with a PC is sensible. If you're planning on buying new software at the same time as a new computer, then it is worth looking at Macs.

Hello everyone, this looks like a great forum, I'm interested in getting a Sony DCR HC19e as well.
Can anyone confirm if it IS compatible with iMovie (on osx, vers 3.0.3) and also which firewire lead I should look for as well..
I'll get mine from John Lewis tomorrow if all good, where they are matching Argos at £199, but with a two year warranty.
Thanks,T

[MarkE19]

Yes, any DV camcorder can be connected to a Mac for editing with iMovie. You just need a 6 pin (Mac end) to 4 pin (cam end) firewire cable, but best to check the specs of the Mac as there are more versions of firewire ports around now.

Mark.

Thanks Mark

Just a quick note on the Sony 19/22 handycam, I purchased a 22 for my son at christmas and found the camera excellent, however the camera has no firewire out socket, hence the need for the dock. We use G5 Macs at home and this camera is very unreliable when connecting to IMovie despite performing longwinded fixes to achieve recognition, resetting Pram etc, it still gave problems, and ended up being returned for a refund.

Jack I will check it out when my firewire lead comes tomorrow and post findings, the 19 just has a firewire socket on the side. Am using a g3 imac with boosted ram and ext. hard drive, vers 3 of iMovie- so may be simpler than newer versions, I can but hope..
After some wrangling I bought an ex display hc19 for £175 boxed with a two year warranty from JL - a serious bargain in my book!

Finally just to say this camera works fine with the Mac setup described above.

[IAmATeaf]

I've got the HC-39E variant and took around 5 hours of footage during my summer holiday vaction to South India and Dubai. I found the camcorder really easy to use, in fact I received it 2 days prior to my departure and fogot to take the user manual with me but managed to figure out most of the functions by trial and error. The 39E captures in true widescreen in that it actually has a widescreen CCD as opposed to simply chopping the top and bottom off a standard 4:3 CCD which most of the other camcorders I looked do.

The only real problem I've found is transferring the footage across to DVD, what a pain in the rear the entire process is. I tried various packages but the fact that the footage was in widescreen caused some major headaches for some editing/authoring packages. In the end I had to learn how to use Adobe Premiere, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Encore DVD to produce the DVD but luckily there are plenty of sites on the web that offer free tutorials on these packages.

Truth be had I have only produced a single DVD to date much to the annoyance of my family and need to produce the others but things like bitrate settings to acheive the best quality transfer to DVD left me very much in the dark. In the end I settled for a maximum of 90mins of footage per DVD to get the desired quality which means having to edit 1.5 DV tapes into 1 film. I hope 1 day I will get there and can now see why so many people simply don't bother and leave and view their footage from the camcorder.

[shovon]

With regards to choosing the best bit rates when transferring footage to DVD, has anybody got any links to simple online tutorials that might explain this.

Also, online tutorials for using Adobe Premiere pro/elements and Adobe Encore 1.5 would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[vonhosen]

Originally Posted by shovon

With regards to choosing the best bit rates when transferring footage to DVD, has anybody got any links to simple online tutorials that might explain this.

Also, online tutorials for using Adobe Premiere pro/elements and Adobe Encore 1.5 would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

The maximum bitrate is 9.8 Mbps for DVD

You want to use as high a bitrate as you can, but sometimes going to the max can cause problems itself, as some players may choke on the high bitrate as you are right at the limits of performance. (Hollywood DVDs average bitrate is nowhere near max.)

To work out what bitrate you can encode at for a 4.7Gb disc (DVD-5) it is a simple matter of adding up how many minutes of footage you have to go on the disc (if you are adding motion menus add the minutes for them as well).

Then do 600/number of minutes. (For a dual layer 8.5Gb disc (DVD-9) it's 1088/number of minutes)
That will give you the average bitrate you can use for your disc.

i.e.
600/90 minutes = 6.6Mbps
That 6.6Mbps must include the video & audio tracks, so make sure you know when you are encoding exactly what bitrate both the video & audio are being encoded at & if you have more than one audio track (i.e. a AC3 5.1 option & an AC3 2.0 option on the same disc) that you count both of them. (Dolby 5.1 is typically 448kbs , Dolby stereo 192kbs)

That 6.6Mbps is what the "average" maximum bitrate can be. If you use "VBR" (Variable bitrate encode) you can set the average to 6.6Mbps & the encoder will use more than that in complex scenes with high movement & a lower rate in less complex scenes to best utilise the space on the disc.

With "CBR" it will use a constant rate irresepective of how complex the scene is & the space will not be best utilised. However if you say only wanted to fit 45 mins on a 4.7Gb disc (600/45 = 13.3) you couldn't do a 13.3Mbps bitrate to DVD spec so you could encode at say 9.5Mbps CBR (as you can use the maximum rate available because saving space with a VBR encode is not required.)

Generally CBR encoding is quicker than VBR, as with VBR the most efficient encodes require several passes of the file to estimate most effecient bitrate management.

As far as online guides go, they will be very dependent on what parameters are adjustable in your particular encoder.
Here is one that explains TMPGEnc pretty well though.
http://dvd-hq.info/Compression.html



I have a little bitrate utility that when you enter the disc size & the minutes of video etc, it tells you what the optimum average bitrate is for your project.
If you want a copy PM me.

[balb0wa]

ive got that sony camcorder the DCR HC19e.

how do i capture the footage ive recorded in widescreen mode? moviemaker doesnt allow it, only 720x576.

is it possible to capture in widescreen?

thanks

[IAmATeaf]

Originally Posted by balb0wa

ive got that sony camcorder the DCR HC19e.

how do i capture the footage ive recorded in widescreen mode? moviemaker doesnt allow it, only 720x576.

is it possible to capture in widescreen?

thanks

Don't think the HC19E captures in true widescreen. it simply places black bars top and bottom but is still recording in 4:3. If you want to record in this mode then you'll need to crop the results to eliminate the balck bars and then change the aspect ratio to 16:9 before encoding and burning to DVD.

[shovon]

Thanks for getting back to me Vonhosen, that was most helpful. I may just pm you for that ultility you mentioned.

[grilla]

Originally Posted by MarkE19

PC editing is now very good as long as you stick to SD video. If going to HD video then I believe a Mac is the only way to go ATM.
Mark.

Out of interest why would that be?