Currently preferred Video Cameras?

[David Sparkes]

What hand-held video cameras are people using (or desiring to use) nowadays?

I suppose that could also be translated to say 'which features have been found to be desirable, and which undesirable?'.

For Example

Image stabilisation seems desirable.

A High Definition format which demands too much of laptop PC graphics, and so won't play back on anything less than a Home Cinema type set up, seems undesirable.

File format seems important, I'm told that some of the latest cannot easily be edited once removed from the camera. Conversion to a more standard AVI / MP4 or similar format may be possible, but it's yet another time and cost consuming overhead, so scores an undesirable with me.

Any others?

I do have price points, over £1,000 is laughable.

Over £500 is a no.

Over £300 is extremely unlikely.

£200-ish is possible, but if the results are going to be so cheap as to be not worthwhile watching twice, then I'll perhaps buy a better still camera, or rely on the Mark 1 Eyeballs and biological memory card I already have in stock.

Cheers.

[FridgeFreezer]

A lot of the editing problems depend on the software - Windows Movie maker is absolutely awful with anything other than a perfect AVI file. I'm using VideoPad now which is free and seems to load anything, and VLC player which is also free and miles ahead of Windows Media Player.

The way to find out is to search the net for "editing video from XYZ camera" and see how many pages come up of people having problems.

Also "will play back on a laptop" is a how long is a piece of string type question. What's the laptop? Are you expecting to edit the video on it or just play it?

[David Sparkes]

FF, some good tips there, suitable to use against any camera that takes my eye.

Also "will play back on a laptop" is a how long is a piece of string type question. What's the laptop? Are you expecting to edit the video on it or just play it?

The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite R10-101 convertible (laptop or tablet). 1.70GHz processor, 1.98GB memory

Operating System is XP Tablet 2005, Version 2002, SP3 installed. (Honestly, 2005, Version 2002 is what it says!!)

It also says Graphics are Intel Extreme Graphics 2M. I can pull more detail from the Control panel it it helps, I see it quotes Video memory available etc.

I'd expect to edit on it as well as view any finished product.

At the moment I envisage my editing to be simple stuff, eg. 'cut this repetitive bit of lane'.

Cheers

[Aragorn]

The problem with trying to play back HD material on ANY PC is it requires a lot of CPU power. I dont think i own a single PC thats capable of playing back H264 encoded 1080p in realtime, and i would think even 720p would be out of reach.

I've tried playing h264-720p back on my mates Athlon64-3000 and it couldnt manage it, so i'd guess you're looking at dualcore chips or newer before HD playback is possible if its encoded with h264. If its in MPEG2 then its much easier on the CPU, but results in much larger file sizes.

That however isnt too much of an issue as long as your editing software can rescale and re-encode the video into a smaller format, it just means it wont do it realtime. Ie you'd load the video on, do the cutting and shutting you need to do and press save. Give it a while to encode the new file and then you should be able to watch the new file without any problems.

To be perfectly honest, i think the jump to DVD-R/Hard Disk/Memory Card Cameras was premature. The older tape DV cameras outputed crystal clear MPEG2 with very little in the way of artefacting and suchlike, the solid state ones just seem to be a big mess of compromises, although i will admit i havent seen any recent ones in action.

[Aragorn]

Just thaught i'd try a little test.

My laptop (Core Duo 1.2GHZ) manages to play 720p h264, and is floating between 80 and 100% CPU when doing so.

It also drops the odd frame if you do something in the background, so its pretty close to the limit.

Dawns Laptop is a P4-1.8Ghz (ie much older) and it doesnt even manage more than about 3 frames.

Your Laptops got a P-M 1.7 "Dothan" Core, which is much newer than the aforementioned P4, and only is a generation older than the chip in mine, however given that mine has two (albeit slower) cores, and yours only has a single, i suspect it will struggle with 720p and 1080p is a no-go!

[Ryan]

Unless you want to be tied to Cyberlink PowerDirector, don't get a JVC. They produce their films in some kind of proprietary mpeg4 format that only PowerDirector can edit. There are some conversion programs out there (like Prism) to turn it into something that can be edited by all programs, however, in my experience I lose all audio and some of the video. I can't speak for other editing programs, but PowerDirector is very processor hungry and crashes a lot if you try to do things quickly - I've just lost almost 2 hours of edited footage that I spent 3 days on.

[Bull Bar Cowboy]

The problem with trying to play back HD material on ANY PC is it requires a lot of CPU power. I dont think i own a single PC thats capable of playing back H264 encoded 1080p in realtime, and i would think even 720p would be out of reach.

I've tried playing h264-720p back on my mates Athlon64-3000 and it couldnt manage it, so i'd guess you're looking at dualcore chips or newer before HD playback is possible if its encoded with h264. If its in MPEG2 then its much easier on the CPU, but results in much larger file sizes.

I can play HD without too many issues, however, you do need a lot of processsing power.............

I am currently using a quad core Phenom II linked to 16GB of on board memory............. also twin Radeon HD graphics cards.

To stop ease the bottlenecks I use an Intel X25E solid state drive for streaming and 3 Hitachi Ultrastar 450GB (15000rpm) drives for general use.

Playing is not often the issue ......... live editing is.........

[lansalot]

On the simplistic front, any Mini-DV camera tends to be capturable by Windows Movie Maker (or Premiere, if you're feeling flash). As Fridge says, line up some possible suspects and go from there.

I'd also caution away from the static-storage versions, you just know there's all sorts of compression going on in there.. Maybe that's a little unfair, just a view I have.

Grab one of the magazines and see which are the best buys. Buying a camera will typically get you some bundled software to get you going.

My JVC (5 years old) is still going strong and with Mini-DV it's never given me a moment's trouble. Works with WMM and Premiere, no problem.

[FridgeFreezer]

Ryan - I can open & edit all your videos straight from the camera with VideoPad & VLC, as I said Windows video stuff just sucks the spicy sausage.

All the video I've seen from Ryan's JVC, Jez's Samsung & Ash's whatever (all SD or HD solid-state cameras) is comparable with a DV cam. At the end of the day, it's no good taking super HD cinema quality video if you can't do anything with it. I'd sooner have a small cheap camcorder that's adequate and I'm not afraid to use than something all singing but useless. Ultimately most footage either gets uploaded to YouTube or stuck on DVD.

Be aware HD (hard drive) cameras don't like vibration and will shut down. DV ones can also suffer from vibration, dust, etc. IMHO SD cameras are a pretty good bet these days.

[santalars]

Canon FS200 is the best you can get for £200-250 at the moment.