want to upgrade to a new camcorder

[MR]

Hi-I have a 1995 sharp camcorder that,of course, uses the little 8mm
cassettes. and I want to upgrade and get a dig.camcorder. I have a
dig.camera so I know a little about digital stuff. But know nothing about
camcorders. My questions are these:
Do the camcorders that are digital require those SD or MM or CF type tiny
cards?? Or can they still use the cassette type? Or both?? I dont need a
fancy one nor do I want to spend a fortune on a camcorder. Need one for
filming my kids sports activities,events,etc
But I would like one better in quality than the camcorder I now have.
what size memory card do you suggest?? ALso, does the battery last long
enough to record an event of lets say 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Can I transfer the
images on a cd rom /cd-rw or does it have to be in the dvr/dvrw disks.
Opinions are appreciated

 

[Guest]

Hi MR

If you are upgrading to a digital camcorder they record on a variety of
formats-

Mini Dv (a small tape- quite common)
Micro DV (an even smaller tape, common on Sony video, found also on one or
two other makes)
DVD - low recording times at the moment

Given comments on your budget, you will find a wde range of camers available
in the mini dv sector.

Digital cameras typically use a Firewire connection to transfer video to
your pc. You will need to make sure your pc has such a connection. If not you
will need to install a firewire card. Also, when looking at new cameras, try
and choose one with DV IN/Out. This means that you can upload to your pc, and
download to your camera. Forget a lot of the fancy stuff that the
manufacturers advertise eg special effects. You will be much better of with
an editing package such as Pinnacle. Finally- digital zoom is not much good,
use sparingly. As with any type of camera go for the best optical lens in
your price range.

With regard to memory cards such as SD, MM etc, whilst small amounts of
video can be recorded on them, typically they are used to record still photos
with the video camera. As such go with the type that your chosen video camera
uses. A 256 card should prove more than enough. Photos are typically
transferred to the pc using a USB connector supplied with the camera.

 

[Yves Alarie]

1. Camcorder cannot use digital camera memory cards, not enough memory.
2. Most popular models for digital are using the MiniDV tape cassette
format. These models come with a "Fire wire" (i.Link or IEEE 1394) cable to
transfer the video from the tape to your hard drive. If you have a recent
computer you probably already have a Fire wire port for the connection. If
not, you will need to purchase and install a card with this port (fairly
cheap). Some will use the USB2 cable connection. Same here, you need a UBS2
port on your computer or add a card with this port. USB1 is not good enough,
too slow to transfer video.
3. On XP you already have Movie Maker software. You just connect the
camcorder, start Movie Maker and download the tape to your hard drive for
editing.
Be aware that this takes a lot of memory on your hard drive. One hour of
video will make a 12 GB file on your hard drive.
Once on your hard drive, you can copy to CD-R or CD-RW for storage (but
remember that you will only have 700 MB of storage on this) and if you want
to play it on your TV using a DVD player you should save it on a DVD-R
because the quality is so much better (but Movie Maker cannot copy to DVD,
you will need other software to do this and remember that a DVD still has a
limit of only 4.7 GB, although the software use to copy to DVD will greatly
compress your original file which is an advantage). The other option, after
editing your movie, you can transfer it back on a tape in your camcorder and
now use it to play the edited movie and there is no loss in quality using
this method.
4. A newer option is to use a mini DVD for recording in camcorder. Visit the
Sony site for this. More convenient since all you have to do is place the
DVD in your DVD drive. Will also work directly in your DVD player if you
have a recent one. Major limitation is time for recording is limited to 20
min per disk at high quality and the miniDVD-RW disks are not cheap. Very
tempting but still relatively new and you pay a high price for the highest
quality model. The tape gives you 60 min of recording at very high quality.
5. For battery, nobody beats Sony. The battery sold with the MiniDV tape
camcorder will last for about 1 hour of recording and the time remaining
will be displayed on the LCD screen (Sony). You can upgrade to a larger
battery and have a recording time of almost 5 hours (Sony).