Newbie - advice re: new HD camcorder purchase

Dhiammara

Hi everyone,

My first post on these forums, so be gentle please.

We have a 1080P HD TV, and PS3 in the house, but still have a standard definition camcorder. We're heading off on holiday next week (special vacation with my parents which is liable to be the last family vacation abroad that we all take together). Our existing camcorder is standard definition, and having checked last night the end product looks less than spectacular on the HD TV. Methinks it's time to take the plunge to a high def camcorder.

I've had a look around at the various options available, and apart from seeking recommendations, I'm mostly concerned about playback in high def. Obviously the intention is not to keep the end product on the camcorder but to keep it on some kind of storage medium. I would presume that burning to DVD would result in standard def only thus defeating the purpose of shooting in high def at all. What are the options for permanent storage?

Also, I don't intend taking my laptop when on vacation so need capacity of at least 10-15 hours capture on high def.

Can anyone recommend a solution?

acgold7

With your PS3 you can play brilliant HD off of regular DVDs if you burn your finished HDV projects as m2t, mts or m2ts files. You're limited to short projects of under 20 min or so but it looks spectacular.

You don't even need a PC to do this. You could burn direct from a Sony SR AVCHD cam (SR1-12) to the Sony MC5 disc burner and create and AVCHD disc that will play in HD on your PS3 connected to an HDTV. Or you can do what I do, which is shoot with and HDV tape cam, edit in HD on the PC, then burn the finished project in one of the file types listed above to standard DVD and enjoy full HD glory from regular discs. And by shooting on tape you have the perfect long-term archival medium.

Your PS3 manual lists what file types the thing will play.

Dhiammara

Thankyou very much for your response.

Fantastic - 20 minute projects would be fine for us. Am I right in assuming that the workflow you described is using a normal DVD burner (ie. non-BD)? I ask as that is what I had gleaned from reading this and other forums, but have received conflicting information on the high street where they indicated that a HD burner would be required (and didn't know of any!)

You've given me some food for thought re: type of camcorder to choose. I had initially been looking at HDV as I do like the idea of tape archives. However, I did read elsewhere that importing HDV to XP is more problematic than with Vista. I have a very high spec notebook I use for graphic/video work, but was a little concerned about this as we use XP Pro in our house (can't shift to Vista yet for some technical reasons involving compatibility of other products and educational courses). Am I correct in saying that the only option for XP and HDV is to import a whole tape at once?

Of the HDV options, I was leaning towards the Canon HV20 or HV30. Would you say the quality of the HDV tape cams is as good as the other format options?

On the HDD side I have been leaning towards the Sony range (the SR12 is tempting for the HDD size). For both the Sony cams and Canon HDV cams do these come with software that allow you to burn as m2t, mts or m2ts? If not, what software is recommended for this process?

Sorry for all the questions - I need to buy soon to ensure delivery in time but obviously want to make the right choice.

acgold7

Yes, regular burner, regular disc, BD player or PS3.

No, it's the other way around. Vista is the problem. XP works fine.

No. Scene Detect works differently in HDV than in DV, but that's not to say it can't be done. I believe Vegas does it, HDV Split does it and Adobe Premiere elements does it, but in a different way. And of course you can always split scenes manually.
It's better.
They don't come with decent software. But either Vegas or Premiere will do the job for you.