hi all

im looking to buy a hard drive camcorder for filming Thai and cage fighting so i need something with good quality to capture it on good zoom, possibly a sony for the night shot plus as the areas i will be filming will be dark and something light weight i have a budget between 400-600


any ideas welcome

cheers

Do you intend editing your movies at a later stage? If you do, then don't purchase a HDD camcorder. I've just come from another section of the forum where a number of members are pulling their hair out in large clumps at their disapointment at not being able to edit their HDD footage. These camcorders use the .mpeg recording format and the files (video clips they generate) are notoriously difficult to open up in any of the video editing applications currently available. Personally, I would forget about HDD and look at a Mini DV camcorder instead.

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Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

Please see Adobe Premiere, Premiere Elements and After Effects->Please help with Sony HDD & Premiere...

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Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

Nikosony cheers for the reply i will be looking to edit afterwards but i didnt relise it would cause problems editing, ive used pinnacle and such and movie maker and had no real problems what if i changed the format of the file once its on my pc would this help.

the reason i want a hdd is because of space saving and ive been told better quality is better is this true

so what mini dv camcorder would be best to get for a budget of up to £600

I can understand about the space saving but you won't get better quality. Mini DV and the £600 budget will give you much better quality, I don't think you will need to spend the entire amount, maybe keep a little back for some accessories such as a camera bag, tape head cleaner, a tape rewinder (it will prolong the life of a Mini DV camcorder immensly - I got one from Hama two years ago and it's a great help). Many forum members including myself have tried to convert one video format to another and the results are not great. Jumpy playback, missing frames, repeated frames, audio out of synch with the video, more trouble than enough. It would be better to start with a user friendly format at the beginning and then either record back to tape, post on the web or make DVD's. I haven't been following the current models of camcorder and it's general policy on the forum not to recommend specific models. But you won't go wrong with some of the Canon's, Sony's or my own favourite Panasonics, if you can get one with 3CCD all the better as it will improve picture quality. An external mic socket is always useful, a viewfinder you can move up and down, although you do have the LCD but on a sunny day can be difficult to view.

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Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

thanks Nikosony you have kind of open my eyes to what is best used as you hear about hdd camcorders being the best and simple when in fact there not, well i guess when the weekend comes ill have a good look for a mini dv

cheers

what about hdv is that format any good?

I bought a Sony DCR-SR62 HDD handycam this year for my trip through Laos and Cambodia and found it brilliant. Many people shy away from HDD camcorders for the reason of footage being difficult to edit,,I find the opposite. The trick is to shoot short sequences of no more than 30 seconds then piece all the sequences together in an editing programme,,it is as simple as click and drag. I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio 8. Treat each scene as you would an individual still image. Each scene (file) is numbered chronologically so continuity won't be a problem but each scene can be placed on the timeline of your editing programme where you like. It can be a tad messy when you have dozens even hundreds of individual scenes to wade through to make up a production. What I tend to do is go through all the scenes delete the ones I don't want and renumber each scene from 1 to whatever in what order I want to put them on my timeline. I put them in a separate folder on my desktop and pull each scene onto my timeline from there. Can be time consuming but with a little thought and organisation you will produce good results.

The wonderful thing about HDD camcoders is there is no capturing process involved and footage you don't want can easily be deleted. Image quality is great too. Also my Sony is small enough to slip into my little shoulder bag.

SONY - Australia

Jurgen
Australia

yogestee when you only do 30 seconds sequences and your filming for 10minutes would't you get the whole film when put together it would start jumping when it goes into the new sequences, is there anychance you could put one together and post it so we can see how you do it.

cheers