Some help please..

will · #1 (**permalink**) 11-25-2004, 11:47 AM

Hi there,

Im looking for a basic DV camera, i've been looking at the JVC GR-DC53 roughly around £279.

My pc is an athlon 2500, 512gb ram, 64mb voodoo card (quite an old card now) I have 2 HDs one thats quite old (20gb, nearly full of junk) and a newish one that i got for £69 which is 80gb.

Why i need the camera? I just want the camera to record some of the things i do!

I dont want to professional edit the videos, but i will wish to do some basic editing, i.e. delete a few frames, include music etc.

I will mostly be using the camera in an aircraft enviroment as im a private/commerical pilot, i want to record some aerobatic routines aswell as the odd scenery flight and some trips. I dont know how the propeller of the aircrafts that i fly will affect the camera.

Please note most of the aircraft i fly have 1 propellor with 2 blades with the propellor turning at around 2500RPM. Will this distort the camera in any way? or will the JVC capture it?

I'm a bit worried about the size of my HDs on the editing part, I hear some people say on these forums that id require 60GB plus? (is this for professional editing?)

Yous guys are probably the experts, so if the JVC GR-53 has a few problems, then please let me know!

Will.

will · #2 (**permalink**) 11-25-2004, 12:42 PM

found this link to include - http://www.jvc.co.uk/product.php?id=...11&sub=feature

Alan Mills · #3 (**permalink**) 11-25-2004, 01:11 PM

MiniDV is genarally considered the best format to go for if any editing is to be performed. You'll capture your footage to your PC via firewqire with that camera so get your sefl a cheapc firewire card if you don't have any firewire ports on the PC. I'm not familiar with the particular camera and so I'm not in th eknow on any foibles it may or may not have. However, it is the right sort of spec.

You didn't mention any s/w for editing. I'm a fan of Adobe and so would recommend Premiere Elements, whcih will allow you to build a DVD of your movie as well as perform the edits you want and is very reasonably priced to the home market.

As for disk space. Capturing your footage to your hard drive will gobble up space at the rate of 1Gb per five minutes of raw footage. Basically the more disk space you have free the better. With the disks you mentioned you might find that you have to work on one project at a time before archiving and then starting the next one, depending on how much of hte 80Gb is free. Just remember to perform good housekeeping on your drive regularly i.e,. defrag, remove old files etc.

Can't comment about how a prop will affect footage. No more or less than any hollywood production is my bet, at least visually. I can imagine you'll want to play with the sound though depending on how noisy the engines are on an average flight.

Hopefully, this answers some of your questions.

will · #4 (**permalink**) 11-25-2004, 01:39 PM

Hi Millsy thanks for replying.

I know nothing about editing software at present, so perhaps ill be asking a few questions when i get my camera about this area.

It is quite noisy, so I reckon most of my videos will have sound turned off and perhaps I will be able to add a music track or two to the recording when in the editing stage. Hopefully there will be some parts out there that will enable me to link the cameras audio to the aircrafts comms.

I've just done a quick search on ebay for firewire, whats a respectable card? not looking for anything fancy, just looking for something that wont kill the quality at a high rate.

Marc Peters · #5 (**permalink**) 11-25-2004, 02:35 PM

All firewire cards are created equal. It's one of the axims of video editing

Mike Thorpe · #6 (**permalink**) 11-25-2004, 02:44 PM

Although I would recommend one with a VIA chip, as we have had a bit of trouble with Texas Instruments chip based ones.

But yeah, premiere elephants for me too.

LJR · #7 (**permalink**) 11-25-2004, 02:44 PM

All firewire cards are created equal. It's one of the axims of video editing

But some are more equal than others

Alan Mills · #8 (**permalink**) 11-25-2004, 06:53 PM

Originally Posted by LJR

All firewire cards are created equal. It's one of the axims of video editing

But some are more equal than others

They certainly are. Didn't someone on here have problems with the firewire port on their graphics card not performing the same as firewide on a PCI card?

LJR · #9 (**permalink**) 11-25-2004, 08:59 PM

I experienced pixel drop outs when capturing through my Audigy firewire port, but not through a native firewire port on the m'board.