HD camera for skiing? Lots of questions!

[billston]

Hi all,

Have recently picked up my new Sammy 40" 1080p LCD, which has opened my eyes to the world of HD. I ski twice a year with a bunch of keen skiers, and we usually take 3 Sony miniDV SD cameras and take a load of footage, which one of the group then edits into a holiday DVD.

These cameras have been great, good picture, handled the temperature / vibrations etc, (and me landing on mine whilst in the process of breaking my collarbone).

The thing is, I can't help but wonder what our ski holiday footage would look like in HD....

So, I was thinking of hiring one for a week. Is there any point me doing this, or should I just buy one? I'd rather not spend out another £600 odd at the moment, but hire seems to be around the £150 mark, so a few trips and i may as well have bought one.

Would hard drive based cameras survive the vibrations?
Do any record in 1080p/720p, or are they all interlaced?
How effective are the 5.1 mics?

Would I be limited on playback devices? If I hire one I'd have to get the data off it, and then onto a DVD-R which I understand would hold about 20mins footage. I have a ps3 to play this back on, but would any high definition player be able to handle the format?

Sorry for so many questions, I'm just quite out of touch with HD cameras.

Any info appreciated

 

[senu]

Hi all,

Have recently picked up my new Sammy 40" 1080p LCD, which has opened my eyes to the world of HD. I ski twice a year with a bunch of keen skiers, and we usually take 3 Sony miniDV SD cameras and take a load of footage, which one of the group then edits into a holiday DVD.

These cameras have been great, good picture, handled the temperature / vibrations etc, (and me landing on mine whilst in the process of breaking my collarbone).

The thing is, I can't help but wonder what our ski holiday footage would look like in HD....

Way better on your Sammy as you can imagine

So, I was thinking of hiring one for a week. Is there any point me doing this, or should I just buy one? I'd rather not spend out another £600 odd at the moment, but hire seems to be around the £150 mark, so a few trips and i may as well have bought one.

Depends on which? If you hired a tape ( HDV) you would get a marginally better one for quality, speed and you get your own tape but you wont be able to play if back unless you have an HDV one when you get home. OTOH.You could ( if you did get one later) Have an HDV master but make Normal DVD simply by downconverting on the fly in camera during capture

Would hard drive based cameras survive the vibrations?

Hard to say. The HDDs are well protected but I imagine that they may incorporate circuitry to shut them down for protection if jarring movt is detected. Also I would be wary of relying on the robustess of an HDD in these conditions. If you must use a non tape model there are flash card based models but thier ability with fast movt is questionable, No it is definitely worrying!

Do any record in 1080p/720p, or are they all interlaced?

Not 1080p
Some record in a progressive mode but only a handful ( and not well at all ie the HG 10 in 24p mode... urrrgh!)) and I would suggest this not to be a feature worth bothering about. The 720p models are the Sanyo Xactis but they ( apart from the very latest model) use an Hi def MPeg4 ( not AVCHD at) 30fps)

How effective are the 5.1 mics?

Also not IMHO a "must have". I've found result from them to be a mixed bag and would rather do it in software or let the AV system emulate by using Dolby Digital II

Would I be limited on playback devices?

Yes although having the PS3 as you do is a great help as it is a very good "universal" media player

If I hire one I'd have to get the data off it, and then onto a DVD-R which I understand would hold about 20mins footage. I have a ps3 to play this back on, but would any high definition player be able to handle the format?

No. The PS3 would but a Data DVD disc with Hidef material ( AVCHD or mpeg2 1080i (m2t), is not guaranteed to playback in a Bluray or HD DVD player in its native form unless specifically supported. Certainly on the PC with suitable software or a suitable media playback device

 

[billston]

Thanks for the excellent reply

Way better on your Sammy as you can imagine

Depends on which? If you hired a tape ( HDV) you would get a marginally better one for quality, speed and you get your own tape but you wont be able to play if back unless you have an HDV one when you get home. OTOH.You could ( if you did get one later) Have an HDV master but make Normal DVD simply by downconverting on the fly in camera during capture

I'd be happy to keep a copy on an HDV tape, and make perhaps a DVD to play on the PS3 and an SD DVD for general use, with a view that I'd buy an HD camera in the future. I've got no problem with tape, we've used DV tapes and a bit of rewinding doesn't bother me, so I'd probably try and get a tape version in the future anyway.

Hard to say. The HDDs are well protected but I imagine that they may incorporate circuitry to shut them down for protection if jarring movt is detected. Also I would be wary of relying on the robustess of an HDD in these conditions. If you must use a non tape model there are flash card based models but thier ability with fast movt is questionable, No it is definitely worrying!

Have read this in other threads about flash card cameras also. I can't imagine that a HDD would survive, I was just wondering if some sort of new technology / elaborate suspension mechanisms were in theses cameras. Plus aside from the jolting / vibration, I doubt the disks would like the temp/dampness either.

Not 1080p
Some record in a progressive mode but only a handful ( and not well at all ie the HG 10 in 24p mode... urrrgh!)) and I would suggest this not to be a feature worth bothering about. The 720p models are the Sanyo Xactis but they ( apart from the very latest model) use an Hi def MPeg4 ( not AVCHD at) 30fps)

I thought the point of progressive was that it was much better for panning/fast moving subjects as you avoid the jagged effect of interlacing - which is why I'd be keen on it for skiing footage. So would it essentially just be 1080i as the option?

Is this AVCHD reasonable quality? I've also read its a bit of a pig to edit as it needs serious hardware to cope with it.

Also not IMHO a "must have". I've found result from them to be a mixed bag and would rather do it in software or let the AV system emulate by using Dolby Digital II

I do a fair bit of audio production, hence my scepticism of these mics, so that's pretty much what I was expecting. Might be fun to play with, but not a must have, as you say.

No. The PS3 would but a Data DVD disc with Hidef material ( AVCHD or mpeg2 1080i (m2t), is not guaranteed to playback in a Bluray or HD DVD player in its native form unless specifically supported. Certainly on the PC with suitable software or a suitable media playback device

That's what I understood too. Do blu-ray / HD DVD burners exist for the consumer yet? I'd potentially be interested in a blu-ray writer for the PC, but if they're anything like early DVD writers, it might be more sensible to wait for the technology to mature a bit first.

Presumably also on that basis, I could just copy the entire data file to the ps3 and run it off the hard drive - removing the 20 min limitation of a std DVD?