[MrMogul]

Hello all,

I am doing some travelling at the moment and would love to document my journey with the highest possible quality video. Please help me find a video camera! Easy to say, but my constraints are many -

1) My laptop is somewhat *ahem* underpowered. 440@1.86 ghz, 1gb RAM, Windows Vista, no firewire (although I gather a firewire card is inexpensive)

2) Software - average, I suppose: Sony Vegas Movie Studio 8 Platinum. Oh, and Windows Movie Maker, if that counts.

3) Budget - £400 absolute tops really. Modest, I know, but hopefully not impossible to work with...

From what I can tell, the limitations of my PC mean that HD footage is going to be impossible to edit. However, it is likely that in the future I will get a better computer - is there a camera which will enable me to shoot in SD to make life easier for my sorry old laptop, and then when I am ready will let me step up to HD? (within my budget, roughly)

Should I be looking at the MiniDV route? This is a format I am familiar with, and I like the ease of use - my tapes will be usable with any system etc. Hard disc / SD card solutions scare me a little, because of perceived problems with editing the footage - especially on my current laptop. Although, in theory a tapeless approach would negate the need for me to modify my current PC to have firewire....thoughts?

An mic jack would be great too, but who knows....

I am really keen to shoot in the highest visual quality I can, yet I am realistic - I realise these constraints are pretty significant. Should I abandon all thoughts of HD and go for the best Standard Def camera I can find, bearing in mind my current computer? Or can I have the best of both worlds and get myself up and running now with SD, and move up when I have a better computer?


Apologies for the long post, but this is somewhere where informed opinions are found - hopefully I will be in luck!

Cheers everyone

[Ken42]

Difficult to help with the financial contraint.

If you buy a MiniDV cam (I think only Canon do them these days. They have a mic input but cost around £600) then you can shoot in SD for now, then shoot in HD later when you have a more powerful computer. Tapes are cheap.

Alternatively, you can shoot in HD, and edit down to SD. The editing doesn't require much computing power, its the rendering that requires the power.

I have a Quad core computer, bought specifically for editing, and it takes about twice as long as the footage to render a movie in SD after editing. I use Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9 (less than £50) and find it to be excellent.

I put the edited HiDef recordings back to tape and play back through the TV
from the camera.

Hope this helps

[alpine101]

The Argos clearance place (part of Argos) on Ebay still has new Canon HG10s at £337 plus £10 shipping. HArd disk though. Have a mike input.

I bought one, in my view it's not as good as my Panasonic SD1 but it's quite a good price. Low light noise is much higher than the Panny, and I'm annoyed to find that the viewfinder and LCD are considerably overscanned, so there's more in the recorded picture than shows on the screen. Only has stereo sound compared to the Panny's 5.1. It's a bit heavier and bigger than the SD1, but that, in my view, is not a bad thing since it helps in holding it steady. Having a viewfinder as well as an LCD is also a help in this since you can hold the unit close rather than the arms length posture one tends to adopt with LCD only camcorders.

If you want to do proper editing in HD from these AVCHD camcorders, then you will need a more powerful PC, but maybe that can come later.

[Ken42]

I've just looked in the manual for my Canon HV20. You can output HD video as SD from the Firewire socket. The original HD footage remains on tape and the down-conversion takes place in the camera.

If your computer can edit SD that will be fine, and you can re-edit later in HD if you wish.

I haven't tried it though.

[MrMogul]

Many thanks for the help guys. Definitely gives me some stuff to think about!

[senu]

Originally Posted by Ken42

I've just looked in the manual for my Canon HV20. You can output HD video as SD from the Firewire socket. The original HD footage remains on tape and the down-conversion takes place in the camera.

If your computer can edit SD that will be fine, and you can re-edit later in HD if you wish.

I haven't tried it though.

I have with the Canon and other HDV camcorders.The camera downconverts mpeg2 1080i to DV AVI " on the fly"
It is fine if you dont want to edit HF then convert to SD in software. This can be time consuming however since you can "write" the HDV back to tape edited it may ultimately mean you only edit once
Also it takes far less time to encode HDV from HDV . You can captured the edited HDV ( now back on tape ) as DV AVI and make a SD version far quicker than doing it in software