Best Camcorders for £400 HD or SD?

[sheffieldeagle]

Hi

My Thomson camcorder (don't laugh it took some great footage) has finally given up the ghost and I'm looking to buy a new camera in the Xmas sales. Looking to spend up to £400. Can anyone recommend a few possible buys in either the HD or SD market. Unfortunately I have no idea which format to go for I'm not up to speed on the plus / minus points of each. Will spend sometime this weekend to further my knowledge. I will be using standard MS software and my Acer 5920G laptop for editing.

Any help most welcome!

[A n d r e w]

Panasonic's SD9, Canon's HF100, Sony's TG3 are erstwhile candidates. All three record high definition video in the AVCHD format on memory cards.

If you do a forum search for any of these you'll find each has a dedicated thread in which their pros, cons, and technicalities have been fairly comprehensively cavilled over during the past few months.

Andrew.

[senu]

Standards are Hi definition or standard Definition video resolution
And
Media formats
Tape
SD card
or HDD
Tape can be standard def or Hi def
SD card or HD camcorders : Standard def or High def
The actual types of video files employed are different and use different codec

SD tape= DV AVI .( 13Gb 11Hr)

• Pros: great quality , Easy to edit once down loaded , Best bang for buck
• Cons: huge files , need real time firewire to download on a PC and ultimately compressed to make DVD. This i s a little time consuming too

HDV tape, Mpeg2 (1080i) M2t

• Pros :great quality Easy to edit on PC >3-4 years
• Cons: Big files , firewire real time transfer

With tape you can return edited material to tape. Tape is however perceived to be older and dying out but this perception is nothing to do with quality. It is still around even though models are getting scarce ( at least in the domestic area)

Flash memory card ( Ususally SD card) and HDD : Standard Def
( ususally standard def Mpeg2) 4.7Gb /1Hr
Samsung MX20 H.26 ( Mpeg4) 2Gb 1hr : this varies with quality

• Pros: Small files , video quality varies from OK to great. Easy fast USB transfer to PC , You cam make a DVD without re encoding if no editing
• Cons: Quality degrades more easily with editing compared to DV AVI

SD card HDD : High def; AVCHD

• Pros : very high quality in smaller files than tape. Fast easy USB PC transfer
• Cons; Need very new PCs to play and edit

• Not universally shareable. DVD players dont play them. Not every one has a PS3 or a Core 2 duo PC with 2Gb RAM

How you want o playback matters too; With the HDD and SD card Hi def models: you cannot play back off camcorder once edited;

In all cases the Standard MS Windows software is at most OK for SD tape and even at that there is better
No High Def format is editable by it
You'll need to buy some software .. one way or the other
There is also the issue of Hardware . A c2d PC with at least 2Gb RAM would be the minimum to consider for AVCHD

With £400 you can get a discounted hi def SD/HDD card model , Pretty much all the SD card and HDD Standard def models and Tape SD models> I think the HDV tape models .. just about( if you are interested)

With this in mind you can mull over what you want.
Other than that there are various threads on the current models which can guide you

[sp_harris]

I just bought a Panasonic SD9 from Amazon for £375 including an 8 gb SD card and am very happy with the results. I previously had a Sony mini dv camcorder 5 years old and I find using SD memory cards very handy e.g. plug into the PS3 using a USB convertor and watch straight away or plug into the laptop via USB. A 16gb SD card with a usb convertor cost me £20 so quite reasonable as it should hold nearly 3 hours of high def footage. I've found memory cards much easier to use that DV Tape. I also think that it is cheaper and more flexible to get a camcorder that use the memory cards rather than a built in hard disk.

Good luck.

[sheffieldeagle]

Thanks guys for the replies. It seems my laptop is up to the job of editing any format, so the world is my oyster.

[nordberg]

Originally Posted by sp_harris

I just bought a Panasonic SD9 from Amazon for £375 including an 8 gb SD card and am very happy with the results. I previously had a Sony mini dv camcorder 5 years old and I find using SD memory cards very handy e.g. plug into the PS3 using a USB convertor and watch straight away or plug into the laptop via USB. A 16gb SD card with a usb convertor cost me £20 so quite reasonable as it should hold nearly 3 hours of high def footage. I've found memory cards much easier to use that DV Tape. I also think that it is cheaper and more flexible to get a camcorder that use the memory cards rather than a built in hard disk.

Good luck.

Are you playing back on HD or SD television? I'm after opinions of SD playback from this camera.

[sp_harris]

HD TV at 720p