Confused - which video camera?

[Scott Card]

OK, oh ye experts... I need some advice. I need to replace the old video camera and come into the digital age. My needs are shooting kids/ High School soccer and other sports including indoor basketball in a year or two. The christmas programs and family vacations etc will be filmed I am sure. In other words, general use camera. I would like something good and fairly straight forward. I don't need (nor understand) a lot of the gadgets but good quality video is important. Yes I am willing to learn and experiment to understand different settings for different venues. Suggestions please. Lets start under $1000 and see where that leads. Thanks!

[R]

I have two Canon camcorders and they are both great machines. Keep in mind that paying a lot for a feature like HD on a camera with a sub-par lens is casting pearls before swine. Also, I'm a believer in solid state media now, so think about a cam that records on SD cards.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/

Search for Canon Camcorders. Lots to see.

[Kent K25]

We're also in the market for a camcorder with a new baby on the way.

Would you consider this one of those HD cameras where you're just throwing your pearls before the swine? I have no knowledge when it comes to lens quality.

http://www.amazon.com/Canon-VIXIA-Me...e=UTF8&s=photo

[moab mark]

Scott,

I have had very poor success with HD video cameras. I bought a jvc last year for christmas. Sam's $600. It takes amazing video and if you just want to go from camera to TV and then delete it is awes. But if you want to download to your computer it SUCKS. It takes hours to download hours. The software is poor and their format will not let you convert to other software. Cannot download to Youtube. I even ended up spending $400 to upgrade my computer, this helped some but haven't used that camera since Jan. My brother has a sanyo? his experience has been the same? I would research this problem before dropping coin.
I am currently looking for one of the cheaper helmet cams. It will be interesting how it works out.

Mark

[CarpeyBiggs]

Scott,

I have had very poor success with HD video cameras. I bought a jvc last year for christmas. Sam's $600. It takes amazing video and if you just want to go from camera to TV and then delete it is awes. But if you want to download to your computer it SUCKS. It takes hours to download hours. The software is poor and their format will not let you convert to other software. Cannot download to Youtube. I even ended up spending $400 to upgrade my computer, this helped some but haven't used that camera since Jan. My brother has a sanyo? his experience has been the same? I would research this problem before dropping coin.
I am currently looking for one of the cheaper helmet cams. It will be interesting how it works out.

Mark

mark, there are some workarounds for this, but yes, nothing will happen in real time with hd conversion, it's too processor intensive. you can, however, easily convert it to an editable format using MPEG Streamclip (which is free.) I have a JVC camcorder, and that is what I do. I plug it in at night, and let the computer transcode the files onto my harddrive, so it does the two tasks at once. Might work for you.

btw, i got the gopro HD last night. i'll go play with it and let you know. looks awesome though.

[R]

One serious drawback to the Vixia line is the lack of an optical viewfinder, with which you would shoot if you hold the camera up to your eye. I don't know why holding a camera or camcorder at arms length got so popular - maybe because it's like watching TV - but it's not a very ergonomic way to shoot stills or video, and it's difficult to hold a camera still in that position, so despite Image Stabilization, you might want to shoot from a tripod when you can. As a sidebar, I would add that 99% or home video should be shot with a tripod, and as a sidebar sidebar, 99% of home video should never be shot in the first place, since it's usually just plain awful.

That said, the better Vixias do have decent lenses and features. I've never had any trouble with editing from Canon camcorders; I import to iMovie or Final Cut Express.

[moab mark]

I wish my JVC had an eye piece. When shooting skiing or if really bright out I cannot even see my screen.

Mark

[moab mark]

Scott,

I have had very poor success with HD video cameras. I bought a jvc last year for christmas. Sam's $600. It takes amazing video and if you just want to go from camera to TV and then delete it is awes. But if you want to download to your computer it SUCKS. It takes hours to download hours. The software is poor and their format will not let you convert to other software. Cannot download to Youtube. I even ended up spending $400 to upgrade my computer, this helped some but haven't used that camera since Jan. My brother has a sanyo? his experience has been the same? I would research this problem before dropping coin.
I am currently looking for one of the cheaper helmet cams. It will be interesting how it works out.

Mark

mark, there are some workarounds for this, but yes, nothing will happen in real time with hd conversion, it's too processor intensive. you can, however, easily convert it to an editable format using MPEG Streamclip (which is free.) I have a JVC camcorder, and that is what I do. I plug it in at night, and let the computer transcode the files onto my harddrive, so it does the two tasks at once. Might work for you.

btw, i got the gopro HD last night. i'll go play with it and let you know. looks awesome though.

So are you downloading to the JVC software and then converting it with Streamclip? After doing this how long does it take to burn a dvd with say 30 minutes of video? I ask this because not only does it take hours to download but it take hours to burn to a dvd.
Will the gopro have these same problems, what if you shoot in reg and not HD?
Mark

[ScoutColorado]

I have the Canon HV-30, now discountinued. It's my 3rd HV series cam.
They have excellent picture, better than Sony, which hurts me since I've always been a Sony man. All my professional camcorders that I use at work are Sony.
But Canon has the sub$1000 market as far as picture quality.
Sorry, I disagree about SD card or hardrive cams. First, you have to have a lot of cards in the field, or you have to download. I can carry a slew of $3 tapes and not have to worry.
Also, the compression to HDV on tapes is much less than compression used on cards. Real big difference in picture quality.
Third, your hard drive crashes, and you lose all your footage. Better have backups. I have a shelf of tapes I can always go back to, and they last forever. Well, almost....
The tape version of the Canon also has an optical viewfinder. Nice, but it doesn't tilt, so makes it awkward in some situations. But better than LCD only.
Downside is the audio - they put the mics on top, pointing up instead of forward, so it's easy to get a lot of you breathing, making it sound like perv videos. But excellent quality, and they do have an external input with mics that fit on the hotshoe.
I've been shooting them for 4 years since the HV-20 came out, and in the right situations they rival my $20K Sony.
New model is the HV-40
Hope that helps
RR

[ScoutColorado]

Oh, and one more thing.
None of them have a wide enough lens. especially for canyon or indoor work.
I recommend getting a wide adapter, I've tried a few, starting with the Canons, which were REALLY soft on the edges. Almost looked like a vignette effect. I've also tried several others without success.
I'm using a Century .5x now, which is really crisp. Century makes great hight end lenses, but this one was surprisingly cheap at B&H.
Problem, it's not zoom through, so you have to take it off for zooms. Part of the trade off for price and crispness.
But a wide lens acts like a stablizer, and you can hand hold much more successfully. In a canyon (and the other recreation I shoot) you don't have much time or place for a tripod.
RR

[CarpeyBiggs]

Scott,

I have had very poor success with HD video cameras. I bought a jvc last year for christmas. Sam's $600. It takes amazing video and if you just want to go from camera to TV and then delete it is awes. But if you want to download to your computer it SUCKS. It takes hours to download hours. The software is poor and their format will not let you convert to other software. Cannot download to Youtube. I even ended up spending $400 to upgrade my computer, this helped some but haven't used that camera since Jan. My brother has a sanyo? his experience has been the same? I would research this problem before dropping coin.
I am currently looking for one of the cheaper helmet cams. It will be interesting how it works out.

Mark

mark, there are some workarounds for this, but yes, nothing will happen in real time with hd conversion, it's too processor intensive. you can, however, easily convert it to an editable format using MPEG Streamclip (which is free.) I have a JVC camcorder, and that is what I do. I plug it in at night, and let the computer transcode the files onto my harddrive, so it does the two tasks at once. Might work for you.

btw, i got the gopro HD last night. i'll go play with it and let you know. looks awesome though.

So are you downloading to the JVC software and then converting it with Streamclip? After doing this how long does it take to burn a dvd with say 30 minutes of video? I ask this because not only does it take hours to download but it take hours to burn to a dvd.
Will the gopro have these same problems, what if you shoot in reg and not HD?
Mark

first off, is it really necessary to shoot in HD? there are still very few ways to output to HD, unless you have a burner that can support it.

so, I shoot the important stuff in HD, but I still edit in standard. on my JVC, i hook the camera up to my computer, it registers as a hard drive. then, i use MPEG streamclip to pick all the files on the camera, and convert them to the flavor i need to edit with (usually .avi). this takes usually 2-3 times realtime. so if i shoot 1 hour of footage, it takes 3 hours to get it into a format i can convert.

the gopro is way easier. SD i can edit immediately in vegas. HD i can as well, but my computer is not powerful enough to do it. so i shoot the gopro in widescreen, 60fps. 848 by 480, which is plenty for everything i do. only exception is the smiling cricket video, which was shot in 1080p, just in case i decide to re-edit it some day.

clear as mud?

[CarpeyBiggs]

Third, your hard drive crashes, and you lose all your footage. Better have backups. I have a shelf of tapes I can always go back to, and they last forever. Well, almost....

what does it cost to have redundant hard drives? way less than buying a bunch of tapes, i'd guess. one hour on tapes = 7gb right? i can buy a hardrive for $100 that is 1TB.

tapes don't last forever. i've lost a handful of DV tapes from my glory days at the editing desk. they are usually pretty reliable, but they fail occasionally. plus, you have to have a tape deck to record them from, or put more wear on your camera by playing video from them. either way, in consumer cameras, i don't think tapes are all that reliable.

i've been tapeless for awhile, and i would never look back... plus, i love that all the files in my tapeless systems are already all cut up for me, and i can find exactly what i want in seconds. bueno!

[ScoutColorado]

what does it cost to have redundant hard drives? way less than buying a bunch of tapes, i'd guess. one hour on tapes = 7gb right? i can buy a hardrive for $100 that is 1TB.

tapes don't last forever. i've lost a handful of DV tapes from my glory days at the editing desk. they are usually pretty reliable, but they fail occasionally. plus, you have to have a tape deck to record them from, or put more wear on your camera by playing video from them. either way, in consumer cameras, i don't think tapes are all that reliable.

i've been tapeless for awhile, and i would never look back... plus, i love that all the files in my tapeless systems are already all cut up for me, and i can find exactly what i want in seconds. bueno!

You still have the cost of having a lot of big SD cards in the field, so that has to be added to the cost. And I'm out for days without a way to download, so tapes are easier.
Tapes don't last forever, but losing one tape versus a full hard drive is 2 different things. I've never lost a whole tape, just some dropouts here and there. But I'm not editing from tapes.
Don't get me wrong, The first thing I do when I get back is download to hardrive, 1:1 capture time, and using FinalCutPro all the clips are already divided up by shot, same as yours, and I have the same instant access, with less transfer time. Already in QT format h264. I can drag-n-drop to SD card and play on my plasma, since it converts. But off course, I'm editing....
And using flip4mac or Handbrake I can easily go to any other format, in about 1:1 time, still less than your download.
So not much wear and tear on the camera - once to shoot, once to download.
And, still better compression ratio. I get more like 11gb/hr at a lesser compression. But better picture. Or I can choose ProRes for the real important projects for the bigscreen, not quite uncompressed, but eats a LOT of hardrive.
So I guess I'm more of a hybrid workflow - best of both worlds.
RR

[CarpeyBiggs]

You still have the cost of having a lot of big SD cards in the field, so that has to be added to the cost. And I'm out for days without a way to download, so tapes are easier.

Don't get me wrong, The first thing I do when I get back is download to hardrive, 1:1 capture time, and using FinalCutPro all the clips are already divided up by shot, same as yours, and I have the same instant access, with less transfer time. Already in QT format h264. I can drag-n-drop to SD card and play on my plasma, since it converts. But off course, I'm editing....

actually, the download time on the SD cards and hard drive cams is much faster than 1 to 1. in fact, i can edit immediately from my SD cards, and could copy to my computer from my hard drive cam at many times faster than real time.

the loss in time is if you have to transcode the files depending on your editing format. that's the issue with the 7d. not so with the gopro, however. i can edit from that immediately. copying from an SD card to the hard drive will always be faster than tape. tape is 1:1. i can copy from an sd card at between 1 and 2 gb a minute, which is probably 10 times real time, or more?

of course, with a faster computer (mine is a couple years old) the actual conversion times would be faster (not to be confused with download times). many people report faster than 1:1 times, just not me

sd cards are relatively cheap. and there are tons of workarounds for dumping to hard drive while in the field, so you don't have to capture back at home at real time. (like taking a small laptop.)

ultimately though, i suppose it's all about making it work, for you. and for most consumers, there is no "perfect" product or workflow, because of all the proprietary codecs that lock stuff up. if the consumer cams would wrap their information in a universal codec, those things would be undeniably improved. some of them do work that way, you just have to convert the file extension. JVC, unfortunately doesn't work like that. at least, not the camera i have. it's 2 years old though, so perhaps there are some new improved ones out there.

[ScoutColorado]

Carpey, all your points are well taken.
I'm sorry, and I apologize, i know this discussion started fading into home vs professional.
But I still stand by the tape statement for home use.
1- Is the average home user going to maintain a robust hard drive backup system. Probably not.
So if things go down, you lose everything.
2 - Having to convert formats is something else the average home user is not going to want to have to do.
3 - if Mark wants to take his latest graduation/sports event/holiday celebration over to a friends house to show on his plasma, with tape he takes a handful of tapes, his camera and a hdmi cable. With his stuff on hardrive, he has to download, or take his laptop and deal with that connection mess. Or download to a card.
Wear and tear on his camera is probably not an issue.
4 - I though you said the conversion was something that took hours, and you did it overnight. I'm sorry if I misunderstood that.
5 - I know that most folks won't be using FCP.
6 - Going to YouTube? Much better to have on hardrive.

You were very correct in your other post, HD is not a format that is very portable right now - even if you invest in a BlueRay Disk burner and authoring software, do they have a player? probably not. Just like the pain I felt in the early days of DVD. I usually take my camera and final edits on tapes to friends houses - what a pain.

My hope for the future is really cheap SDHC cards, and they are coming. When there are 1GB SDHC, cards, say about $100, all these issues go away. More reliable backup, less space, plug into anything. Then it's a no brainer.
It's not an issue in the still photo world - as you of all people know, they achieved this long ago. I have about $25K of Hasselblad EQ that is obsolete. A 20MP camera is about the same quality as 2 1/4", a 12mp probably equal to the best 35mm, infinitely easier to deal with, and your darkroom is Photoshop. No Brainer.
We'll be there soon with Video.
For me tape still is the best option. I have seen the future, and occasionally I get to do the Varicam/Viper to hardrive uncompressed project in video, but that is still REALLY expensive. And again, not pertinent to the home discussion.
You're right again, get CODECs together! Way too many fomats, codecs, wrappers, etc.
Carpey, a pleasure to discuss this with you. It's nice to converse with someone who knows his stuff. We probably lost the original posters - sorry.
Look forward to stereo HeroCams at FreezeFest. Between the 2 of us, we should have it covered and well documented.
RR

[moab mark]

Which software do you guys suggest for basic editing etc?

Mark

[R]

The "new" iMovie is beyond lame. I like Final Cut Express.

[ScoutColorado]

Totally agree Richard. I don't know what they were thinking when the designed the new iMovie. It's more confusing than any other editor. The old one was a least serviceable.
Final Cut Express it great - a lot of bang for the buck also.
RR

[moab mark]

Isn't it just for mac?

[ScoutColorado]

Isn't it just for mac?

Yeah, sorry.