[Dunkwho]

My 2 new camcorder choices are the Panasonic GS320 or H250 ... from what I can make out pretty much the same "camera" but with DV tape on the 320 or HDD on the 250. My head says go for the cheaper £275 320, my heart can't let go of the funky\new\geekiness of the £375 HDD machine.

Can someone give some insight about transfering movies off to a PC with both machines. I'm pretty clear on the HDD machine ... just connect up to the PC, it'll appear as a drive (true of Panasonics's? Seen it done only on a sony machine), drag and drop the files to the PC's HDD. My home media setup at home uses a MS windows MCE machine to drive all of my TV\DVD\etc so just hooking up a USB lead to the camcorder (ala ipod) and copying off the movies files for native digital playback on the TV\PJ with the existing video file navigate & play MCE user interface sounds like a bit of a winner .
*Is it really that simple?
*What sort of data rates can I reasonably expect for a USB2 PC - how long to copy 30mins or a hour's worth of data for example?

On the flip side we have the DV tape machine. This has USB ... but is that for stills extraction only or can I pipe the video up it? I know that you need to stream the data off in real time so 1hr = 1hr, but I don't have any experience with the mechanisum.
*Whats the process of taking raw, unedited data from the DV machine to a movie file?
*Is USB used to transfer video files, or firewire? I have a firewire card in my home office machine but not the MCE machine.
*Is the transfer s/w included with the camera?

One niggle that I have with a HDD camcorder is the reliability of the drive. I've needed to work with quite a lot of ipods recently and have been struck by the number of machines that are failing for drive problems. For an ipod I'm quite happy opening the unit up to fix\replace the problem ... no intention of getting inside a camcorder in the same way tho! Presumably its the same sort of microdrive in there?

Cheers,
Duncan

[redsox_mark]

from what I can make out pretty much the same "camera" but with DV tape on the 320 or HDD on the 250.

There are similarities, but also differences; the GS320 has a better lens (Leica Dicomar).

*Is it really that simple?
*What sort of data rates can I reasonably expect for a USB2 PC - how long to copy 30mins or a hour's worth of data for example?

Yes, copying a file via USB is that simple. I think the HDD speeds will be the bottleneck, based on the USB speed this would take about 1 minute. In practice it may take longer... but no more than a small number of minutes.


*Whats the process of taking raw, unedited data from the DV machine to a movie file?
*Is USB used to transfer video files, or firewire? I have a firewire card in my home office machine but not the MCE machine.
*Is the transfer s/w included with the camera?

To transfer DV with this camcorder (and most camcorders, there have been a few exceptions) you need to use firewire. It is how the camcorder is designed. It does come with some basic software which will capture and allow you to edit; you can also use Windows Movie Maker… or buy more advanced editing software.

Presumably its the same sort of microdrive in there?

Yes, though I'm not sure how it compares to an ipod in terms of ease of replacement.

[Dunkwho]

Just a quick follow up to my camcorder research last month. I plumped for the H250 HDD camcorder in the end. It took days of agonising between the cheaper, better value for money DV machine or the more expensive HDD. In the end the usefulness of being able to quickly dump movies to my media centre PC by USB was too much to pass up.

Ordered from KK electronics via pricerunner, didn't ship for next day delivery as promised (which was a bit of a letdown as had timed my order to hit a day when SWMBO was in to receive it), but they apologized when I phoned to chase and happily sent it to my office once I'd supplied a fax with the details to confirm.

Getting the camcorder running couldn't have been more simple - a brief play in the menus to play with the options (and pretty much leave them at their defaults), a mode wheel with 4 options (2 options of shoot or view for the 2 main functions - still or movie), an on\off button, and a big record button are the only things to get to grips with.

Once charged I deliberately left it loose on a table for the day to see if it would be played with in my absence (with no training I hasten to add), when I got in low and behold a short movie of our daughter was waiting for me, and a delighted wife eager to see her work on the TV.

Now ... here's the part that I had to spend some time on. The s/w supplied by panasonic to rip the movies via USB displays in 16:9 if previewed but reverted to 4:3 when played back on the PC. It turns out that panasonic don't store the aspect ratio in the raw movie file on the camcorder, and while the details are correctly collected by the panasonic s/w for preview it doesn't apply the parameter to the .mpg that ends up on the PC. Thankfully all is not lost, I found a tool called sdcopy to use instead (which suits my low res TV display much better too) that not only applies the 16:9 ratio but also retrieves the date and time info from the shoot to use in the filename when copying to the PC ... much better than panasonic's 1.mpg format.

I noticed when view some footage quickly shot indoors that some horizontal break up can be seen when panning around, but I understand that's going to be one of the compromises for the price point\quality of unit that I was looking for.

So ... all in all very happy. I'll admit that my research into which unit to buy consisted of forum research\questions only and I didn't have time to get to a shop to try anything out - but we've very happy with our purchase.

[senu]

Thank you for the feedback
Glad to see you are enjoying it

Be aware though that you are not tied to Panasonic's software should you wish to be more adventurous with your footage
The all important WAF is a major deciding factor in many households

For anyone considering, bear in mind the "disadvantage" of tape which is the need to buy the tapes, limited recording time and real time transfer with firewire
The advantage ( PQ apart) is that if you do want to edit the footage, you can use the transfer time to actually watch the footage and decide where you want to shave off trim ect
For simplicity of use they are similar.. just point and shoot!

HDD with Hi def is a different matter though.. It is currently not a piece of cake to play and edit as the SD variety