Video camera suggestions?

[Tj Bassi]

This is about as off topic as it gets but worth an ask. My wife wants to get a new video camera; she picked up a Sony DVD handicam a few years back when our son was born and we have had continous difficulty preparing the discs for use in a home DVD player. The problem is not so much with the camera itself as with the software it came with...."Nero", which runs on my PC at the office but has never worked on either of our home computers. We can finalize the discs in the camera itself but have never been able to edit or do any post production.
So, she is addiment about getting a new camera and wanted me to research the current market offerings. What I want is a video camera that is as easy to use as an iPod. Has anyone on this forum found an easy to use camera? Disc or memory card based?

Thanks-
Tj

 

[HopelessDFilms]

Video Camera Q's

First off let me say I am sorry..... The sony dvdcam camcorders are notorious for issues, especially when editing is the topic. Because of their nature the editing is not as simple as they or the clowns at best buy would have told you it is. Think of it this way.....


Put a Dvd movie in your computers dvd drive...... got it? Now try to get that footage from the dvd movie onto an editing program...... Not so simple....this is because there are not editing programs which will edit footage in the format which is put on a dvd. Usually mpeg2.

So you have a few options.... none of them are easy and quick. They simply boil down to getting a program such as dvd decrypter, dvd fabdecrypter, mediacoder, and possibly some others to 'rip' the dvd footage to the computer then transcode it from dvd files, which are not media files as they are more data files. Then taking the transcoded media file and finally being able to edit it in a NLE (non linear editing) program then putting it back into nero to burn as a dvd movie again.


Bottom line its probably not worth the time or the effort. As you had said you are looking for a new camera. My recommendation to you is look at anything that is based on a miniDv tape format. Let me explain... The videocameras that utilize flash media or memory cards are generally not good quality, as memory cards are in general small in capacity. Let me explain.

1 hour of miniDv footage in its rawest form = roughly 14 gigs of space

1 hour of footage on a flash media videocam = roughly 2 gigs or so, depending on the model. This is because it records video at a quality not much better than that of a cell phone. Hence the drastic reduction in space that is taken up from the video.

as for another dvd cam, well I think you have already got my opinion on those.



MiniDv is and has been a standard for recording for many years. What makes it so simple and easy is that the transfer to a computer is very easy and both platforms pc and mac have included free software that allows you to do the txfr and simple editing on your machine. Pc is called windows movie maker *on xp* and the mac is called imovie.

All you need to use these programs is a firewire cable. Don't get scammed by the best buy clowns or circuitshitty fools on the cable for 40$ monoprice has them for a few bucks. There are two types of connectors for firewire, a 4pin very small usually found on minidv camcorders and most laptops *mac excluded* and a 6pin which is slightly larger than a usb and found on desktops as well as some laptops *mac*

Hope these tips help you out, if you have any further questions or need clarification on my ramblings, pm me or just reply.

:cheers: and good luck!

 

[Tj Bassi]

You guessed correct. Wife walks into best buy and salesman says, "this is the camera you should get". I've spent *COUNTLESS* hours trying to put together a dvd project only to have Nero fail at some point or another. The camera is simple enough, but so far the only way we can view the discs is in the camera itself. Blahhhhhhhhhhhhhh......

Wife says to me "But people upload thousands of videos to YouTube and other sites each day. How are they taking and sharing them?"

Thanks for your input. The MiniDv is worth a look....

Tj

 

[captain_tinker]

FWIW, I have a MiniDV camera, and I find it absolutely totally simple to just "capture" or rather download the video information from the tape to the hard drive using a free utility called WinDV to my PC over the firewire. I believe you can find it over at www.videohelp.com. There is also an article as to how to set the settings properly on the program. Once you set it, just hit the capture button, tell it where to save the file, and boom, after an hour, you have your video, all ready to do stuff with it. There are a lot of great programs out there to do videos with, but tell you the truth, if you want something simple, but that will give you a lot of good useful features, I've been using TMPGEnc DVD Author tool. It is so easy, and the most recent version has a lot of neat features that I really like, and it's really not that expensive. You won't even need Nero to burn them to DVD, though you could if you wanted to I guess. I actually happen to like Nero quite a bit. Version 7 has a lot of quirks, but some neat features. Version 6 was totally solid and never had a problem. I mainly do this for my family home videos. I have been able to get the videos into Dolby Digital 2.0 and using Nero, I have done them in 5.1 surround too. Kind of unnecessary for a home video, but it was fun to try it out anyway. PM me if you have any questions.

-capT