formats pro & prosumer

Bob Greaves wrote on 1/29/2009, 6:04 AM
Greetings. I've been basically out of circulation since June 2006 when my project recording studio was fully submerged and destroyed and my home was filled with water 4 feet shy of the roof. So I spent 2 1/2 years rebuilding my home while teaching at two area colleges part time. Now the rebuild is complete and I am getting ready to rebuild my studio and get back to work full time. Unfortunately this will mean working for someone else as the assets I used when self employed are gone. It was an uninsured loss as I was not located in a flood plane and was not covered for flood.

Things have changed and I feel I am way out of the loop. I've been teaching digital audio recording and I am up to date on the audio. In my studio I was deeply engaged in digital audio recording but I was a mere dabbler in video. I used mini DV which was awesome for my purposes but today not as widely available. Plus everything is moving toward both High Def and wide-screen. I've tried a few HD camcorders and they were absolute crap. This did not surprise me because with mini DV 4GB would get me less than 20 minutes of editable video, and many HD camcorders are boasting long times with mere 4GB cards.

So what are the formats that are of high quality and ideal for the prosumer who is not a full time videographer but occasionally needs to create well edited material for high quality community broadcast or low budget documentaries, etc?

I would greatly appreciate any web sites or books you would recommend that discuss advantages/disadvantages and costs of the various formats compatible with NLE video editing of HD Wide for both professional and prosumer markets.

Thanks.

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 1/29/2009, 8:56 AM
The Sony HDV prosumer camcorders (and Canon makes some as well) would be what I would look at, if I were you. There are many long threads currently in this forum about AVCHD camcorders, so we don't need another one here. Wade through this thread, and I think you'll get some ideas of the pros and cons. Whether the quality of the picture is better or worse depends on a lot of things beyond just the format (HDV vs. AVCHD). However, given how you describe your needs, if you don't mind using tape (which is the main disadvantage of HDV), it has the advantage of being faster (on the timeline) to edit, and if any of your tapes survived the flood, it will be compatible with those as well.

Also, most of the discussions about HDV vs. AVCHD talk about whether AVCHD is as good as HDV, not whether HDV is as good as AVCHD. Because both use high compression, they have issues that DV did not, although on the plus side, they both use a colorspace that for most things is superior to DV.

I am in a similar situation to you, and have never regretted the purchase of my Sony FX1. I would suggest you look at either this camcorder (I think it is still available) or whichever Sony HDV camcorder is closest to that (I haven't kept track in the last two years because I'm not in the market).
Jeff9329 wrote on 1/29/2009, 9:42 AM
Bob:

Here is a link to the website of Panasonic comparing the HDV and AVCHD capture codecs used by prosumer camcorders. Be sure to click on the links to look at the still photo captures.
http://www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/avccam-features.asp

Where HDV is a single standard, AVCHD is a broader range of standards you have to study to understand. HDV and AVCHD cameras also have intrinsic differences, such as HDV outputting digital via 1394 and AVCHD outputting digital via HDMI.

Pro cameras usually use capture formats other than HDV or AVCHD. What price range and sensor block size camera are you considering?
Bob Greaves wrote on 1/29/2009, 2:44 PM
Thanks, I'll be checking them out.
craftech wrote on 1/30/2009, 5:22 AM
In my studio I was deeply engaged in digital audio recording but I was a mere dabbler in video. I used mini DV which was awesome for my purposes but today not as widely available. Plus everything is moving toward both High Def and wide-screen. I've tried a few HD camcorders and they were absolute crap. This did not surprise me because with mini DV 4GB would get me less than 20 minutes of editable video, and many HD camcorders are boasting long times with mere 4GB cards.
=================
First,

Are you still planning to be "a mere dabbler in video"?

The HD camcorders you probably tried that "were absolute crap" were probably because the trend in the industry hasn't change. That trend over the years has been steadily toward smaller imagers in the cameras to lower the production cost and more useless bells and whistles to sell them to people.

Also keep in mind that the final product most in demand today is still SD DVD and it doesn't look like that will change any time soon. 16:9 over 4:3 will fit today's televisions better however.

I would look for whatever widescreen camera you can afford that has the largest imagers in your price range regardless of format. Then try to figure out how well you can make the best looking SD video from it.

John