so far from what i read in my research its the best bang for the buck being a hd cam. what your thoughts on this cam. im gonna be filming mostly racing footages and editing later. but i read that its editing capabilities are limited. your inputs people thanks

The fx1 was at the time it came out the best hdv camera in it's pricerange and was very popular amongst wedding videographers, it was a pitty that they never really could use the full potential of this camera because they all had to downconvert to sd so it fitted a regular dvd.
I have seen downconverted fx1 footage and it looked OK, not better then what a sd camera in the same quality range could produce though. Only it's not nearly as light sensitive as a vx2100 f.i.
What I read from review is that the fx1 has become a bit outdated and that the new generation of hd cams are just a bit more expensive but deliver better image quality. I think you have to be carefull with action scenes such as racing events, hdv cameras don't cope well with fast cameramovements because of the compressed gop structure. From what I heared you get choppy movement in your picture in that case. As long you pan or tilt slowly or with any stationary shot the fx1 will produce a great looking footage, even if it's not up to the new generation of hd cams.
Editing can be a pain in the *** if your pc is not up to the task, you need a fast dual core pc with at least 2 gig of memory, because of the gop structure your pc has to "read between the lines" to work with it and that takes processing power. just google a bit to find out more about hdv in general, there are tons of sites who have published reviews about that.

Maybe some other people have other ideas about this?

The FX1 is already a classic and will be around fo years. Sure you can buy cams with more features and marginally better image quality but they will all cost you more.
If you want the voice of experience, let me tell you that in two and a half years I've shot weddings, documentaries, stage shows and numerous holidays and family events with my FX1 and it has always deliverd stunnig results with very few disappointments.

In theory HDV shouldn't work, and there are plenty of naysayers happy to quote the numbers to 'prove' it, but in fact it works extraordinarily well.

I edit on a 3 year old 3GHz Pentium 4 using Cineform Aspect HD and Premiere Pro and its as quick as editing standard def.

Take my advice - don't get too hung up on the numbers - just buy an HDV cam and enjoy the HD experience.

I find that very hard to believe, no way you can handle HDV material on a single core 3gig processor with the same ease as SD material.

He Said Cineform, not HDV, Cineform is an intermediate codec used to take a load off the CPU by doing all the "Reading between the lines" for the cpu while the footage is being captured rather than the CPU having to decode all the macroblocks individually while it's being edited, it has been reported that Cineform has actually ran on a 1.3Ghz machine at some points.


That said, as for fast motion being a problem for HDV, this problem is less notable on lower resolutions and framerates, however obviously the sampling is not as high then also as video processors become better then the problem starts to become less notable... What you really have to watch out for are Linear sensors...


Quite a few of the "Cheaper" Sony HDV cams scan the sensors from top to bottom in order, this isn't too bad on 50 or 60fps however if you film at or deinterlace to 24/25/30fps it looks horrible and there is an obvious lag on fast whip pans or zooms between the top and bottom of the screen.

__________________
It's not about what camera you use or how much it cost.

It's about what you shoot,
how you shot it,
and how you edit it :P

Ok so far stationary shot with the fx1 Is crap? There is a guy locally selling em for 2,500. Pretty brand new condition too. Actually was gonna start filming drift events and editing on to a dvd. Like those Option videos. Really appreciate the replies fellas. As for my budget it would range to 2500 to 3000. What other cameras should I be looking at.

You're ok with the FX1, I was just talking about other sony cameras,


Motion shots on the FX1 are nice and solid... the 3CCDs on it are top notch stuff, none of that skewing crap you see going on in their so called "Clearvid CMOS" range of sensors.

Stationary and Motion should be ideal for you on the FX1, if you're exporting to DVD it wont even be notable that there was compression on the final DVD discs as it will be getting recompressed at a much lower resolution which will probably mask everything (Albeit making it look crapper lol)

__________________
It's not about what camera you use or how much it cost.

It's about what you shoot,
how you shot it,
and how you edit it :P

I use the same combination of s/w and it's true. I still use a 3GHz P3 and it's the same experience as I remember editting SD in - often better. They claim real-time anbd sometimes it is but it;s easy to step outside of hte bounds of what's possible real-time.

Anyone with type of camera using Premiere Pro should download and try out the trial of Cineform Aspect HD. In my opinion ity's very well worth factoring in to your startup costs.

But back to the FX1. I've had mine since they came out and it's top-notch. Arguably the only thing to let it down for me is the lack of balanced XLR inpu8ts for audio but that's easily solved with a beechbox.

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I'm not young enough to know everything!

The moment the FX1 appeared on the market it became my dream camera. I must have clocked up 100 hours surfing time researching it, and I know it's a great camera.

I started saving my pennies big time.

By the the time I had saved enough Canon had released the XH A1. Only that stopped me buying an FX1. I'm really happy with the XH A1.

I still pine for that lovely top-mounted LCD though. If only Canon had copied Sony's idea....

Hahaha, slightly unrelated but in response to the above post my Ideal camera setup is a Canon XL H1 and two XH A1s to keep ot company, however, when I win the lottery eh :p

__________________
It's not about what camera you use or how much it cost.

It's about what you shoot,
how you shot it,
and how you edit it :P