Hard Drive Camcorders

Jeff_Smith wrote on 12/13/2007, 9:06 PM
I am gearing up for a hard drive HD camcorder (Is that the correct term, I have seen Hard Disk used as well?) I have not shot or edited in HD. I have checked Sony's site for the HDR-SR8 and I want something that works well with Vegas. I may be a bit slow, but I am having a hard time finding comparisons for HD hardrive camcorders, any suggestions would be appreciated.
Jeff

Comments

UlfLaursen wrote on 12/13/2007, 9:45 PM
Hi Jeff,

Not sure about the editing part - have never tried one. I think the harddrive cameras are using what is called AVCHD that is a bid different in compression than HDV that goes to tape.

You should be abale to find info and tests on http://www.camcorderinfo.com/ - it seems like a good site for reviews.
Maybe some others can talk about the editing part for AVCHD

/Ulf
Spot|DSE wrote on 12/13/2007, 9:47 PM
Almost all the HDD (Hard Disk Drive) camcorders are either AVCHD or MPEG 2.
The AVCHD camcorders are all very good for the price points and who they're intended for. The MPEG 2 cams...some are decent, most are not.
Vegas does as well with AVCHD as any NLE and better than most. Even though you *can* edit from the HDD in the camera, it's best not to try.
The SR8 is a great little cam for the buck. Menus are a little challenging, but once it's set up, you should be quite pleased.
The little Panny SD5 is pretty good too. Canon's AVCHD is sweet, in some ways the best of the bunch, but it feels cheap, IMO.
Sidecar wrote on 12/14/2007, 9:08 PM
We rented a Panasonic AG-HSC1U to hand to a pilot for aerial work. Really tiny. About one pound in weight and about 3" in diameter. Records to a 4GB SDHC memory card. That card will lock up your computer if you put it into a normal SD card reader, by the way. The camera has no internal hard drive but does come with an external card reader/40gb hard drive for transferring the 40 minutes of video per card to a "video wallet" so you don't have to have multiple cards in the field.

I downloaded some test files last night just before leaving but didn't have time to see if they import into Vegas 8a. They are AVCHD. Talking to the Panasonic guy at the recent LA DV Expo, he said Panasonic's flavor of AVCHD is all I-frames (intraframe) or "Initial" frames. That decreases recording time but helps editing. He also said there was no way to edit it yet but that patches for FCP were on the way.

I have my hopes that Vegas is up to it.
Sz wrote on 12/15/2007, 7:21 PM
I have a Sony SR-100- hard drive camcorder that does widescreen. It's a nice little camera that I been happy with. I down load to computer. Import to Vegas and I have had no problems with using Vegas 7 for editing, awesome. There us a however, with vegas 8 when importing into vegas, sometimes the audio is there and most of the time it is not.
FritzG wrote on 12/16/2007, 12:05 PM
I've been shooting videos with a AVCHD (the Sony SR8) for two months, and I am very satisfied with the editing in 8a (Vegas 8 has some bugs relating to managing AVC). You can burn very unexpensive standard DVD-Rs for 35' of video, or dual-layer discs for 70'. You can watch them with your pc, after installing the codec and software that come with the camera, or in your HD tvset with a BD/HD.-DVD reader. At the moment, I am using a PS3, both for DVD-Rs and AVCHD files copied to the disk inside. The result on a Pioneer Kuro 50' plasma is simply gorgeous (not speaking of the director's skills , of course...). Actually, the people at the shop asked me for a demo DVD...
The main problems with shooting AVCHD videos are: 1) every take results as a single file, so the 13 and more hours you can fill in the 100 GB hd are actually fractioned in a huge amount of single files, small and large (I think that the 60 Gb SR5 could be a good choice, anyway); 2) you have to wait some seconds for the filming to stop after pushing the red button to close your take, so there is always something you didn't want to film at the very end of single files, like your feet and the ground.