So I purchased a Sony SR10. I did a ton of research, and would like to provide assistance in answering any questions people have in regards to this unit. I have one, and can tell you anything technically you would like to know.
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Sometimes I hate the amount of information that is available for a product. I come here frequently in regards to almost anything Photogrpahy, but I had some money laying around, and thought I would spend it on some consumer grade Cinemetography stuff. So I purchased a Sony SR10. I did a ton of research, and would like to provide assistance in answering any questions people have in regards to this unit. I have one, and can tell you anything technically you would like to know.
Cool! I have a few questions about it. I need to buy something before this summer and the sooner I decide the sooner I can start using it.
What led you to pick the SR10 instead of the SR11 or SR12? Which other cameras did you seriously consider?
Compared to the SR10, the SR11 and SR12 have: larger sensors (1/3" instead of 1/5"), better low light performance (5 Lux instead of 8 Lux), more storage (60GB and 120GB instead of 40GB) a little less zoom (12x instead of 15x - probably because of the larger sensor) and they cost more ($1399 and $1199 vs. $999).
Do it capture video in AVCHD? What are you using to edit the video you capture? How long does it take to transfer an hour of video from the camera's hard drive to your PC over USB2?
When you show the video on a large HD TV screen, does it look high quality? Do you see any compression artifacts?
How's the sound quality? I'm always amazed at cameras that have the microphone on the top of the camera.
Can you point us to any videos you've uploaded on Smugmug?
What led you to pick the SR10 instead of the SR11 or SR12?
Which other cameras did you seriously consider?
Do it capture video in AVCHD?
Does it look high quality?
How's the sound quality?
Can you point us to any videos you've uploaded on Smugmug?
Holy Cow.
A Few Samples
(Smugmug Downsizes from 1440x1080. I'll have to check if it downsizes 1900x1080...)
(Smugmug also converts them as well - not sure what process they use)
I was debating between Sony, Canon, and Panasonic. Panasonic's had respectable features, but the sensor killed me. Canon has the best Sensor at the 1000 Price range, but it wasn't avialable until April, and it has a SSD drive instead of a HDD (Which is actually great!) So Canon would have been the only reason I would have waited, but the compromise for Sony was relavant because of the 'steady shot' features. Once I saw an IS lens, I could never shoot anything but IS....
Workflow consists of iMovie --> Quicktime --> Upload. iMovie inflates the files from their 5-17 Mbps form to about 50-170 Mbps using an awkward Apple Interlaced Codec. The AVCHD raw file is in an MT2S file format which I am unfamiliar with. It is an underlying H.264 codec, but Apple doesn't recognize the files. Once imported to iMovie they inflate 100 MB to 900 MB, and then I promptly recompress them to MP4 H.264 codec which puts them back down to 100 MB. I'm sure there's a better workflow, but I haven't found it yet.
iMovie only can export a 'project' to a format less than 1080 (can't remember what, because once I saw it was less, I was convinced not to use it.) So Quicktime has been my editor of choice until I can get the workflow for Final Cut worked out.
The sound quality is impressive. Microphone on the top but it is a 5.1 ch microphone. Sound editing could be really fun, because you have an audio source location aware file. The Rear Microphone pics up the Cinemetographer, and thus in my theory would allow you to isolate those sounds and limit their decible volume. The other channels would pick it up as well, but I think the 5.1 was a great feature over Canon's 2ch sound capabilities.
It is HiDef - but the inhibiting factor is that it records interpolated (View Gallery and find examples...) 60i is the frame rate. So it records 540 scan lines every 1/60th of a second. Put them together and you get 30p, but it's a little bit different because the two frames are 1/60th apart, so you can get some funky aberations due to the 1/60th of a second jump.
Overall I'm impressed, and the driving factor for the SOny decision was the Steady Shot feature. Larger Senser is great but I would kill for something to take the shake out of my footage. Gimmicky features like Night Shot, Black and White, Sepia, etc. etc. are nice, but I looked long and hard at the Optical Zoom capabilities, Frame Rates, Lens Specifications, Stabilization Mechanisms, and Storage Format. All of the camera's within a price range offer 5-17 Mbps recording, and as such I think the caliber of video file that comes out is then determined by the attached hardware.
Mine: Canon 20D, 50 f1.8 II, 28-105 II, 70-200 f2.8L, T 70-300 Macro, T 2X expander, 12-24 Sigma Hers: Sony SR10, (Soon Canon 5D MKII), 85 f1.8, 28-135 USM, Stroboframe, Manfrotto NeoTec Ours: Pair of 580 EX, Lensbaby, Studio Alien Bees, Son & TWO Daughters
The FireStore is interesting.... but really shouldn't be necessary. My raw AVI dumps for a 60min MiniDV tape are only about 13 Gig. So give me a 160 Gig laptop disk on a camera and I'm good to go. Or make it a Flash disk at 40 Gig and I'd be even happier.
For what its worth, MiniDV video is compressed - and pretty significantly.
If you;re talking uncompressed, lets do some maths here.
one uncompressed SD frame is 720x480 pixels in NTSC. Roughly 345kb per frame.
30 fps x 60 seconds per minute = 622 megs per minute. Still doable if you had a 160 gb laptop drive. provided you never considered HD. There youd need an assistant pushing a RAID to all of your shoots.
there's good compression and bad compression - and the good stuff is really great.
For what its worth, MiniDV video is compressed - and pretty significantly.
If you;re talking uncompressed, lets do some maths here.
one uncompressed SD frame is 720x480 pixels in NTSC. Roughly 345kb per frame.
30 fps x 60 seconds per minute = 622 megs per minute. Still doable if you had a 160 gb laptop drive. provided you never considered HD. There youd need an assistant pushing a RAID to all of your shoots.
there's good compression and bad compression - and the good stuff is really great.
A Few Samples
(Smugmug Downsizes from 1440x1080. I'll have to check if it downsizes 1900x1080...)
(Smugmug also converts them as well - not sure what process they use)
I was debating between Sony, Canon, and Panasonic. Panasonic's had respectable features, but the sensor killed me. Canon has the best Sensor at the 1000 Price range, but it wasn't avialable until April, and it has a SSD drive instead of a HDD (Which is actually great!) So Canon would have been the only reason I would have waited, but the compromise for Sony was relavant because of the 'steady shot' features. Once I saw an IS lens, I could never shoot anything but IS....
Workflow consists of iMovie --> Quicktime --> Upload. iMovie inflates the files from their 5-17 Mbps form to about 50-170 Mbps using an awkward Apple Interlaced Codec. The AVCHD raw file is in an MT2S file format which I am unfamiliar with. It is an underlying H.264 codec, but Apple doesn't recognize the files. Once imported to iMovie they inflate 100 MB to 900 MB, and then I promptly recompress them to MP4 H.264 codec which puts them back down to 100 MB. I'm sure there's a better workflow, but I haven't found it yet.
iMovie only can export a 'project' to a format less than 1080 (can't remember what, because once I saw it was less, I was convinced not to use it.) So Quicktime has been my editor of choice until I can get the workflow for Final Cut worked out.
The sound quality is impressive. Microphone on the top but it is a 5.1 ch microphone. Sound editing could be really fun, because you have an audio source location aware file. The Rear Microphone pics up the Cinemetographer, and thus in my theory would allow you to isolate those sounds and limit their decible volume. The other channels would pick it up as well, but I think the 5.1 was a great feature over Canon's 2ch sound capabilities.
It is HiDef - but the inhibiting factor is that it records interpolated (View Gallery and find examples...) 60i is the frame rate. So it records 540 scan lines every 1/60th of a second. Put them together and you get 30p, but it's a little bit different because the two frames are 1/60th apart, so you can get some funky aberations due to the 1/60th of a second jump.
Overall I'm impressed, and the driving factor for the SOny decision was the Steady Shot feature. Larger Senser is great but I would kill for something to take the shake out of my footage. Gimmicky features like Night Shot, Black and White, Sepia, etc. etc. are nice, but I looked long and hard at the Optical Zoom capabilities, Frame Rates, Lens Specifications, Stabilization Mechanisms, and Storage Format. All of the camera's within a price range offer 5-17 Mbps recording, and as such I think the caliber of video file that comes out is then determined by the attached hardware.
Workflow consists of iMovie --> Quicktime --> Upload. iMovie inflates the files from their 5-17 Mbps form to about 50-170 Mbps using an awkward Apple Interlaced Codec. The AVCHD raw file is in an MT2S file format which I am unfamiliar with. It is an underlying H.264 codec, but Apple doesn't recognize the files. Once imported to iMovie they inflate 100 MB to 900 MB, and then I promptly recompress them to MP4 H.264 codec which puts them back down to 100 MB. I'm sure there's a better workflow, but I haven't found it yet.
That should be "apple intermediary codec" which is a huge chunky beast. But it's also designed solely for editing. Every frame has all the information for it right there. Think of it as camera raw in the still photo world. Would you spend hours tweaking a heavily compressed jpeg export in photoshop if you had the original raw available? Same deal here. Use AIC for editing and only export to H.264 when you're done.
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Can anybody point me to video camera sites?
I know it's not still photography, but I'm searching for advice in buying my first digital video camera.
Last time I used a camera, 8mm film was the medium. That was YEARS ago.
I have no clue about what to look for in a camera--recording medium, sensor type, whatever.
I'm looking for something under $500, with the main job of the camera to be recording the progress of my motorcycle rebuilds, especially when I get them to start up again. It may find use after that, as I learn to use and enjoy it more.
Can you guys show me some review sites (kind of like www.dpreview.com for still cameras) or anecdotal advice?
Advice sought on a new video camera
I have an old Canon GL1 that is on the fritz. This is a 10 year old 3 chip camera that cost about $2000. it is not too different than the current offering, the GL2 I have it in for repair, but wonder about sinking money into a 10 year old camera. I was very pleased with the quality of the video.
i am thinking of something like the new Canon Vixia hf 100 or hf10. This is a cheaper (about 1000) one chip, (but much bigger chip) high def camera.
would anyone venture a guess as to how the video quality might compare?
I can't comment on the cameras you listed, but I can say that I had 3 GL1s and have since replaced 2 of them with the Panasonic DVX100B. You can find used DVX around $2000 right now. I love the DVX(s) and will probably end up replacing my last GL1 with an HVX at some point (that is the HD version of a DVX).
Of course, just like with still cameras it all depends on how much you want to spend and what features you need.
If it were me, I would not pay anything to have the GL1 fixed as the repair will cost you more than the worth of the camera. Better to upgrade to a new cam be it 3-chip SD or 1-chip HD. Dunno if this helps, but I hope it does.
Sony HDR-sr10 and 11
They both have hard drive as well as smart stick to capture your vids. A stupid question....Obviously one can play back the footage and watch what you've captured on your camcorder right? I just don't have HD TV yet. I just want to purchase a good HD hard drive and flash memory card camcorder now before my vacation. Or if you don't have any intensions of down loading it to your computer, just plug in your camcorder to your HD TV and watch it, right? I'm so new to this. My current camcorder is sony 950 3 chipper. thanx heythere
They both have hard drive as well as smart stick to capture your vids. A stupid question....Obviously one can play back the footage and watch what you've captured on your camcorder right? I just don't have HD TV yet. I just want to purchase a good HD hard drive and flash memory card camcorder now before my vacation. Or if you don't have any intensions of down loading it to your computer, just plug in your camcorder to your HD TV and watch it, right? I'm so new to this. My current camcorder is sony 950 3 chipper. thanx heythere
I was in the same boat and just bought the HDR-SR11. Great camcorder, and you can plug it into any SD or HD TV. If your TV is 4:3, it does a great job at letterboxing for you to view, so no worries.
The biggest word of caution is extreme lack of good video editing tools for the new AVCHD codec, especially if on Windows. I played around for several days to find a decent tool to convert my HD video into DVD-size to upload to SmugMug, and still it looks kind of poor compared to how the original look (take a look here). I ended up going with Sony Vegas 8 for video editing until I bother to by a MacBook Pro - and still I had to play around with many of the encoding advanced options to get the video to look as good as it does in the above link.
Also note that some video editing tools require the original file/directory structure from the camcorder when importing, so if backing up to a home harddrive, you may want to just copy the entire directory structure from the camcorder for archiving, rather than the standalone video files.
Just a little update. I just got Canon HG10. It is aobut $700 at Amazon and BH. HD, Hard Drive based. It is great. Well saturated, clear. Manual white balance works like a charm. I ordered a second one last night to do weddings.
Just a little update. I just got Canon HG10. It is aobut $700 at Amazon and BH. HD, Hard Drive based. It is great. Well saturated, clear. Manual white balance works like a charm. I ordered a second one last night to do weddings.
Low light performance; that is always the test, isn't it? Have not tested that yet. I will repost when I get moe experience.
I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum (the "Elements" of Vegas) it works great. I have used the non-patinum (does not do HD) version for years. I like it because it is fast. you are not having to constantly wait on it to render. i feared, an assumed that with HD it would be slow. I am runing it on a middle of the line (but new) laptop--2 gig of ram with Vista. I was amazed how snappy it is editing HD.
I'm thinking pretty seriously about getting the Sony HDR-SR12. It's full HD (1920 x 1080 at 15Mbps bit rate and 60i fps). According to the detailed review I read here, It sounds like Sony made a really good step forward in low light performance with a new sensor design and noise reduction system and also really improved the performance and artifacting of the AVCHD storage format which is what has been holding me back from buying an HDD video camera so far. I really want a non-tape (HDD or Flash) machine so that I can more easily transfer the data to a computer, but they have all been AVCHD and the first revisions really weren't up to the quality of the tape recorders. This review makes it sound like Sony really improved the AVCHD recording in this new model and it's now neck and neck with tape, but with the convenience of easier data transfer.
The SR12 has 120GB of hard drive storage which gives you 8 hours of full HD recording. You will need multiple batteries to use all that storage without a charge.
The weaknesses cited are that there's still some ghosting on fast moving objects and you need more computer horsepower and 2008 versions of video software to do editing on the AVCHD format.
Sound and video quality are supposed to be real good for this size video camera. B&H has it in stock for $1299. I'll probably pull the trigger and order one later this week if my research doesn't find something better by then.
I was in the same boat and just bought the HDR-SR11. Great camcorder, and you can plug it into any SD or HD TV. If your TV is 4:3, it does a great job at letterboxing for you to view, so no worries.
Hey there Braian and everyone. So I got a sony sr-11 and love it to the max. A dumb queston: There are 4 speed in which to record in HD and SD. The slower speed in HD SP on a 8 gig smart stick takes around 3 hours of footage I believe. As with the SD mode there are 3 speeds in which to record-tape! There's a SD-SP speed which takes around 3 hours of footage at 5 bit rate or something. Is it always better to tape in HD mode regardless of speed right? I mean it defeats the purpose of getting this HD cam. Why do they even have a SD mode? Wide angle lenz? I have a wide angle lens from TRV 950 3 chip and to my surprise it fits perfectly on this sr-11. Except for the fact that it blocks the sensor of the FLASH so I can't use it for photo-stills pics. I've seen sony selling a HD wide angle for this cam for $200 bucks. My question is I can continue to use the one I have right? "if if fits, you must USE." Thank you heynow
Personally, I hate built-in HD cameras. Where the heck are you going to archive them? Burn them to DVD? Dump them back to miniDV or DVCAM?
I am in love with the SONY's XDCAM line up
You can archive to hard disk, to DVD or to Blu-Ray disks. It's now possible to put HD video on regular DVDs that you can then play in a blu-ray player (it just has less capacity because it's a normal DVD).
I absolutely love that I can transfer 30 minutes of video to my PC in a few minutes and don't have to wait the length of the video (my big issue with tape). I love that my video is already broken up into scenes and separate files for me by the camera. I love that I can easily play back any scene on the camera (for viewing on the camera LCD or on an attached TV) without any rewinding - it's all random access. The camera gives me a thumbnail for each scene right on the camera and I just tap on the one I want to play.
I absolutely love that I can transfer 30 minutes of video to my PC in a few minutes and don't have to wait the length of the video (my big issue with tape).
i totally agree. If you do much editing, this is huge. Not only does capturing from tape take a long time, it is prone to error--droped frames. To be safe, you can not use your computer while it is capturing and pray that your antivirus does not decide this would be a good time to do a scan
I recently bought a 500 gig external hd from $100. That will hold more HD video that I will shoot in a few years. Long live hard drive cameras.
My personal opinion is, I'm not buying into AVCHD until:
A. Most software can edit the raw files without transcoding. Yes, folks. The transferred video you get from your AVCHD camera (which is compressed already) is compressed again when it comes off the camera into your computer, unlike tape. To me, this is double lossy & defeats the purpose of the format's ease of use factor. The reason it does this is because AVCHD files take a lot of processing power to edit in their native state. No thanks.
B. High capacity SD cards get cheap enough to be treated like DV tape. Meaning you use a card only once then keep it as an archive instead of having to make your own backups. Trust me, if you do a lot of shooting with AVCHD & you plan to back those native files up to a hard drive, the space fills up QUICK, especially with family stuff. You can now get 2GB cards cheap as hell (like $8), so I imagine this wont take long to catchup & become a reality.
C. The quality matches HDV, which will probably happen when we see reason "A". Ask anyone who knows, its not as good...yet. But its closing fast.
Until then, its tape for me. I don't wanna shoot now & edit later. I'll shoot now & edit now, without the shortcomings.
My personal opinion is, I'm not buying into AVCHD until:
A. Most software can edit the raw files without transcoding. Yes, folks. The transferred video you get from your AVCHD camera (which is compressed already) is compressed again when it comes off the camera into your computer, unlike tape. To me, this is double lossy & defeats the purpose of the format's ease of use factor. The reason it does this is because AVCHD files take a lot of processing power to edit in their native state. No thanks.
B. High capacity SD cards get cheap enough to be treated like DV tape. Meaning you use a card only once then keep it as an archive instead of having to make your own backups. Trust me, if you do a lot of shooting with AVCHD & you plan to back those native files up to a hard drive, the space fills up QUICK, especially with family stuff. You can now get 2GB cards cheap as hell (like $8), so I imagine this wont take long to catchup & become a reality.
C. The quality matches HDV, which will probably happen when we see reason "A". Ask anyone who knows, its not as good...yet. But its closing fast.
Until then, its tape for me. I don't wanna shoot now & edit later. I'll shoot now & edit now, without the shortcomings.
I bought an AVCHD camera recently for several reasons:
1) The reviews said that Sony had finally improved the AVCHD IQ significantly and it was now pretty close to tape.
2) There are several video editing programs that can handle AVCHD now without any transcoding step. Obviously, you have to decide if your preferred video editing program can handle the flavor from your camera, but there are now several to choose from. This was not true last year when these cameras first came out, but the situation has already improved.
3) It takes me minutes to transfer an hour of video from my camera to my PC's hard disk for editing. It would take an hour to transfer an hour of video from a tape to my PC.
4) The ability to see all the scenes I shot in a menu on the camera and playback any single scene or all of the scenes is really handy. The ability to delete any individual scene in camera is also useful. All of this happens instantly too with no time waiting for the tape to seek to the right spot. Hard drives are random access, tape drives are sequential access.
5) I bought a 160GB hard drive model HD video camera which gives me over 14 hours of video storage.
6) Hard drives for storing your video (even some external USB drives) are down to about 25¢ per GB and dropping continually. Your example above has flash cards at $4 per GB (16x more expensive). While flash cards are more durable, they aren't likely to pass hard drives in price any time soon.
6) Hard drives for storing your video (even some external USB drives) are down to about 25¢ per GB and dropping continually. Your example above has flash cards at $4 per GB (16x more expensive). While flash cards are more durable, they aren't likely to pass hard drives in price any time soon.
Ahh, but thats the kicker. Spinnig hard drives fail all the time, unlike solid state SD cards. So, that means anyone who doesn't wanna possibly lose all their archived AVCHD files in a blink of an eye will want to make a "backup of your backup", which is hard to do considering the sizes these files are. So, its a big commitment & more upfront costs when going AVCHD right now for most people.
I do admit its less of a hassle than tape, but there's no way I would trust all my original footage to a single spinning hard drive.
Not trying to stir the pot... but I have had more SD card problems than HD problems :-) I have a friend right now that is bringing over a card that corrupted on a trip. Hopefully the card recovery software will work or the photos are gone.
My FS-4 records in 9 minute chunks. So depending on how the drive corrupts, it is possible that part of the video will be salvageable. You must weigh the risk/benefits on everything you do or use with technology. For me the benefits of the HD storage are the priority.
Ahh, but thats the kicker. Spinnig hard drives fail all the time, unlike solid state SD cards. So, that means anyone who doesn't wanna possibly lose all their archived AVCHD files in a blink of an eye will want to make a "backup of your backup", which is hard to do considering the sizes these files are. So, its a big commitment & more upfront costs when going AVCHD right now for most people.
I do admit its less of a hassle than tape, but there's no way I would trust all my original footage to a single spinning hard drive.
I have double hard drive backups with a fully automated system to make the backups. OK, the double hard drives makes it only 8x less expensive than flash instead of 16x.
I have double hard drive backups with a fully automated system to make the backups. OK, the double hard drives makes it only 8x less expensive than flash instead of 16x.
any media can fail--flash or hard drive. So, your original 16x savings is probably closer to right. to say nothing of the eas of oganization. Let's say you have 500 gig of video one one hard drive. How many flash cards is that to keep up with?
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Cool! I have a few questions about it. I need to buy something before this summer and the sooner I decide the sooner I can start using it.
What led you to pick the SR10 instead of the SR11 or SR12? Which other cameras did you seriously consider?
Compared to the SR10, the SR11 and SR12 have: larger sensors (1/3" instead of 1/5"), better low light performance (5 Lux instead of 8 Lux), more storage (60GB and 120GB instead of 40GB) a little less zoom (12x instead of 15x - probably because of the larger sensor) and they cost more ($1399 and $1199 vs. $999).
Do it capture video in AVCHD? What are you using to edit the video you capture? How long does it take to transfer an hour of video from the camera's hard drive to your PC over USB2?
When you show the video on a large HD TV screen, does it look high quality? Do you see any compression artifacts?
How's the sound quality? I'm always amazed at cameras that have the microphone on the top of the camera.
Can you point us to any videos you've uploaded on Smugmug?
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Holy Cow.
A Few Samples
(Smugmug Downsizes from 1440x1080. I'll have to check if it downsizes 1900x1080...)
(Smugmug also converts them as well - not sure what process they use)
I was debating between Sony, Canon, and Panasonic. Panasonic's had respectable features, but the sensor killed me. Canon has the best Sensor at the 1000 Price range, but it wasn't avialable until April, and it has a SSD drive instead of a HDD (Which is actually great!) So Canon would have been the only reason I would have waited, but the compromise for Sony was relavant because of the 'steady shot' features. Once I saw an IS lens, I could never shoot anything but IS....
Workflow consists of iMovie --> Quicktime --> Upload. iMovie inflates the files from their 5-17 Mbps form to about 50-170 Mbps using an awkward Apple Interlaced Codec. The AVCHD raw file is in an MT2S file format which I am unfamiliar with. It is an underlying H.264 codec, but Apple doesn't recognize the files. Once imported to iMovie they inflate 100 MB to 900 MB, and then I promptly recompress them to MP4 H.264 codec which puts them back down to 100 MB. I'm sure there's a better workflow, but I haven't found it yet.
Mbps / 8 = MBps
(Record Rate/8 * Length = File Size :: [17 Mbps / 8] * 60 Seconds = 128 MB per Minute)
iMovie only can export a 'project' to a format less than 1080 (can't remember what, because once I saw it was less, I was convinced not to use it.) So Quicktime has been my editor of choice until I can get the workflow for Final Cut worked out.
The sound quality is impressive. Microphone on the top but it is a 5.1 ch microphone. Sound editing could be really fun, because you have an audio source location aware file. The Rear Microphone pics up the Cinemetographer, and thus in my theory would allow you to isolate those sounds and limit their decible volume. The other channels would pick it up as well, but I think the 5.1 was a great feature over Canon's 2ch sound capabilities.
It is HiDef - but the inhibiting factor is that it records interpolated (View Gallery and find examples...) 60i is the frame rate. So it records 540 scan lines every 1/60th of a second. Put them together and you get 30p, but it's a little bit different because the two frames are 1/60th apart, so you can get some funky aberations due to the 1/60th of a second jump.
Overall I'm impressed, and the driving factor for the SOny decision was the Steady Shot feature. Larger Senser is great but I would kill for something to take the shake out of my footage. Gimmicky features like Night Shot, Black and White, Sepia, etc. etc. are nice, but I looked long and hard at the Optical Zoom capabilities, Frame Rates, Lens Specifications, Stabilization Mechanisms, and Storage Format. All of the camera's within a price range offer 5-17 Mbps recording, and as such I think the caliber of video file that comes out is then determined by the attached hardware.
Hers: Sony SR10, (Soon Canon 5D MKII), 85 f1.8, 28-135 USM, Stroboframe, Manfrotto NeoTec
Ours: Pair of 580 EX, Lensbaby, Studio Alien Bees, Son & TWO Daughters
For what its worth, MiniDV video is compressed - and pretty significantly.
If you;re talking uncompressed, lets do some maths here.
one uncompressed SD frame is 720x480 pixels in NTSC. Roughly 345kb per frame.
30 fps x 60 seconds per minute = 622 megs per minute. Still doable if you had a 160 gb laptop drive. provided you never considered HD. There youd need an assistant pushing a RAID to all of your shoots.
there's good compression and bad compression - and the good stuff is really great.
Canon 40d | Canon 17-40 f/4L | Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 | Canon 50mm f/1.8 | Canon 70-200mm f/4 L
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Thanks for the info.
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That should be "apple intermediary codec" which is a huge chunky beast. But it's also designed solely for editing. Every frame has all the information for it right there. Think of it as camera raw in the still photo world. Would you spend hours tweaking a heavily compressed jpeg export in photoshop if you had the original raw available? Same deal here. Use AIC for editing and only export to H.264 when you're done.
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
I know it's not still photography, but I'm searching for advice in buying my first digital video camera.
Last time I used a camera, 8mm film was the medium. That was YEARS ago.
I have no clue about what to look for in a camera--recording medium, sensor type, whatever.
I'm looking for something under $500, with the main job of the camera to be recording the progress of my motorcycle rebuilds, especially when I get them to start up again. It may find use after that, as I learn to use and enjoy it more.
Can you guys show me some review sites (kind of like www.dpreview.com for still cameras) or anecdotal advice?
Thanks!
Brad
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http://www.camcorderinfo.com/
You can get breakdowns by manufacturer and by format.
Another source for good reviews:
http://www.videomaker.com/learn/product-reviews/digital-camcorder-reviews/
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I have an old Canon GL1 that is on the fritz. This is a 10 year old 3 chip camera that cost about $2000. it is not too different than the current offering, the GL2 I have it in for repair, but wonder about sinking money into a 10 year old camera. I was very pleased with the quality of the video.
i am thinking of something like the new Canon Vixia hf 100 or hf10. This is a cheaper (about 1000) one chip, (but much bigger chip) high def camera.
would anyone venture a guess as to how the video quality might compare?
Anyone have any other suggestions?
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Of course, just like with still cameras it all depends on how much you want to spend and what features you need.
If it were me, I would not pay anything to have the GL1 fixed as the repair will cost you more than the worth of the camera. Better to upgrade to a new cam be it 3-chip SD or 1-chip HD. Dunno if this helps, but I hope it does.
I am in love with the SONY's XDCAM line up
http://smugmug.uservoice.com/pages/17723-smugmug/suggestions/342479-multiple-sub-accounts-w-seperate-passwords
The Sony PDW-530 XDCAM is just amazing.
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They both have hard drive as well as smart stick to capture your vids. A stupid question....Obviously one can play back the footage and watch what you've captured on your camcorder right? I just don't have HD TV yet. I just want to purchase a good HD hard drive and flash memory card camcorder now before my vacation. Or if you don't have any intensions of down loading it to your computer, just plug in your camcorder to your HD TV and watch it, right? I'm so new to this. My current camcorder is sony 950 3 chipper. thanx heythere
I was in the same boat and just bought the HDR-SR11. Great camcorder, and you can plug it into any SD or HD TV. If your TV is 4:3, it does a great job at letterboxing for you to view, so no worries.
The biggest word of caution is extreme lack of good video editing tools for the new AVCHD codec, especially if on Windows. I played around for several days to find a decent tool to convert my HD video into DVD-size to upload to SmugMug, and still it looks kind of poor compared to how the original look (take a look here). I ended up going with Sony Vegas 8 for video editing until I bother to by a MacBook Pro - and still I had to play around with many of the encoding advanced options to get the video to look as good as it does in the above link.
Also note that some video editing tools require the original file/directory structure from the camcorder when importing, so if backing up to a home harddrive, you may want to just copy the entire directory structure from the camcorder for archiving, rather than the standalone video files.
Best of luck!
-Brian
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Sounds cool.
How is the low-light performance?
What video editing software works with the files?
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Low light performance; that is always the test, isn't it? Have not tested that yet. I will repost when I get moe experience.
I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum (the "Elements" of Vegas) it works great. I have used the non-patinum (does not do HD) version for years. I like it because it is fast. you are not having to constantly wait on it to render. i feared, an assumed that with HD it would be slow. I am runing it on a middle of the line (but new) laptop--2 gig of ram with Vista. I was amazed how snappy it is editing HD.
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The SR12 has 120GB of hard drive storage which gives you 8 hours of full HD recording. You will need multiple batteries to use all that storage without a charge.
The weaknesses cited are that there's still some ghosting on fast moving objects and you need more computer horsepower and 2008 versions of video software to do editing on the AVCHD format.
Sound and video quality are supposed to be real good for this size video camera. B&H has it in stock for $1299. I'll probably pull the trigger and order one later this week if my research doesn't find something better by then.
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I want me one of them... or two... but I can't afford them :cry
So I still shoot with my trusty Sony DSR-PD170 on DVCam tapes instead of MiniDV...
Just my two cents...
www.kabestudios.com
I use a little bit of everything gear wise...
Nikon/Canon/Sony/GoPro/Insta360º/Mavic 2 Pro
You can archive to hard disk, to DVD or to Blu-Ray disks. It's now possible to put HD video on regular DVDs that you can then play in a blu-ray player (it just has less capacity because it's a normal DVD).
I absolutely love that I can transfer 30 minutes of video to my PC in a few minutes and don't have to wait the length of the video (my big issue with tape). I love that my video is already broken up into scenes and separate files for me by the camera. I love that I can easily play back any scene on the camera (for viewing on the camera LCD or on an attached TV) without any rewinding - it's all random access. The camera gives me a thumbnail for each scene right on the camera and I just tap on the one I want to play.
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i totally agree. If you do much editing, this is huge. Not only does capturing from tape take a long time, it is prone to error--droped frames. To be safe, you can not use your computer while it is capturing and pray that your antivirus does not decide this would be a good time to do a scan
I recently bought a 500 gig external hd from $100. That will hold more HD video that I will shoot in a few years. Long live hard drive cameras.
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A. Most software can edit the raw files without transcoding. Yes, folks. The transferred video you get from your AVCHD camera (which is compressed already) is compressed again when it comes off the camera into your computer, unlike tape. To me, this is double lossy & defeats the purpose of the format's ease of use factor. The reason it does this is because AVCHD files take a lot of processing power to edit in their native state. No thanks.
B. High capacity SD cards get cheap enough to be treated like DV tape. Meaning you use a card only once then keep it as an archive instead of having to make your own backups. Trust me, if you do a lot of shooting with AVCHD & you plan to back those native files up to a hard drive, the space fills up QUICK, especially with family stuff. You can now get 2GB cards cheap as hell (like $8), so I imagine this wont take long to catchup & become a reality.
C. The quality matches HDV, which will probably happen when we see reason "A". Ask anyone who knows, its not as good...yet. But its closing fast.
Until then, its tape for me. I don't wanna shoot now & edit later. I'll shoot now & edit now, without the shortcomings.
I bought an AVCHD camera recently for several reasons:
1) The reviews said that Sony had finally improved the AVCHD IQ significantly and it was now pretty close to tape.
2) There are several video editing programs that can handle AVCHD now without any transcoding step. Obviously, you have to decide if your preferred video editing program can handle the flavor from your camera, but there are now several to choose from. This was not true last year when these cameras first came out, but the situation has already improved.
3) It takes me minutes to transfer an hour of video from my camera to my PC's hard disk for editing. It would take an hour to transfer an hour of video from a tape to my PC.
4) The ability to see all the scenes I shot in a menu on the camera and playback any single scene or all of the scenes is really handy. The ability to delete any individual scene in camera is also useful. All of this happens instantly too with no time waiting for the tape to seek to the right spot. Hard drives are random access, tape drives are sequential access.
5) I bought a 160GB hard drive model HD video camera which gives me over 14 hours of video storage.
6) Hard drives for storing your video (even some external USB drives) are down to about 25¢ per GB and dropping continually. Your example above has flash cards at $4 per GB (16x more expensive). While flash cards are more durable, they aren't likely to pass hard drives in price any time soon.
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I do admit its less of a hassle than tape, but there's no way I would trust all my original footage to a single spinning hard drive.
My FS-4 records in 9 minute chunks. So depending on how the drive corrupts, it is possible that part of the video will be salvageable. You must weigh the risk/benefits on everything you do or use with technology. For me the benefits of the HD storage are the priority.
http://help.smugmug.com
I have double hard drive backups with a fully automated system to make the backups. OK, the double hard drives makes it only 8x less expensive than flash instead of 16x.
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any media can fail--flash or hard drive. So, your original 16x savings is probably closer to right. to say nothing of the eas of oganization. Let's say you have 500 gig of video one one hard drive. How many flash cards is that to keep up with?
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