OT: Tapeless HD low-end camcorders - good ones?

ken c wrote on 4/5/2008, 2:24 PM
Hi -

In a current magazine (this month's Event DV?), I recall reading something by the editor saying there was a $1K Panasonic tapeless camcorder... w/16gig memory stick.. or something like that.

Do any of you know of any decent camcorders, under $1500 or so, that are tapeless, eg just record straight to some kind of memory stick/usb etc ? or anything on the horizon? I welcome the day when I can go shoot my footage and just copy it from a virtual usb memory stick in high-def if possible, to one of my pc drives ...

You guys are all on top of this stuff - anything out there worth getting, or on the way?

thanks,

Ken

p.s. I'm trying one of those focus external drives (though I'll likely get a sony/better one eventually if need be), that does this, but I'm talking about a camcorder that natively writes good footage to some kind of memory stick/card that I can just unplug from the camcorder when done with shooting and plug into a pc usb/firewire port and transfer the avis to the pc ...

the whole idea of still using vidcap gets less and less appealing w/new technology on the way, particularly when it comes to saving time by not having to realtime-capture footage, which takes hours. and the earlier prosumer camcorders sounded really bad, the ones that wrote to a dvd, since vibration etc and low quality... I'd like to have some way to natively write uncompressed avi (if possible, or at least a much-better-than-mpg-compression codec) to built-in dockable memory sticks etc

Comments

John_Cline wrote on 4/5/2008, 2:31 PM
Well, there's a lot of stuff on the horizon, most of them are AVCHD which still has some editing issues. There is a new, small Panasonic model that records true 1920x1080 to SD/SDHC cards using 17Mbps AVC and it's well under $1k. Here's a review:

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Panasonic-HDC-SD9-Camcorder-Review-34650.htm

John
Laurence wrote on 4/5/2008, 5:31 PM
I love my little Sony CX-7.

Be aware however that he video preview is only about 4 or 5 fps with footage from any AVCHD camera. I get around this by using VASST Gearshift to generate proxies. Another option is to transcode the footage to HDV or Cineform. Render takes a while as well from the AVCHD footage.
riredale wrote on 4/5/2008, 11:10 PM
Just read a review of the new Sony HDR-SR12 today. 120GB hard drive, AVCHD format, much improved CMOS sensor. The review was over at camcorderinfo.com, and if you read their stuff you know that they tend to be Canon people, but they really seemed to like the new Sony. $1,400 retail.

AVCHD is improving; some say it's very nearly a match for HDV quality.
ken c wrote on 4/7/2008, 7:58 AM
Thanks for the resources/links; I'll take a look. I'd like to save time, and these look like a promising new technology, if they capture well and are reliable and have 3-ccd color capability for bright, clean footage... thanks for letting me know the acronym too for this, AVCHD.. anyone try that panasonic, or the sony? I'd like to hear your guys' take on it, eg esp. compared to what I'm using which is a panasonic gs120.. (one day yes I'll spring for a $3K decent higher end one, but for now, small is good)

Amazon reviews for the panasonic not so good, though probably good for consumer use only (like a high end iflip):
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B0011FTKFY/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?%5Fencoding=UTF8&coliid=&showViewpoints=1&colid=&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

This one looks interesting, the Canon VIXIA HF10 , will look into it, new release:
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-HF10-Definition-Camcorder-Stabilized/dp/B001144JQU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=photo&qid=1207583805&sr=1-1
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=116567

Agree too the SR12 is the other one, to look at closely; I've never regretted buying Sony hardware... HF10 vs SR12 vs GZ-HD6, that looks like the choices for now.

And thanks for the dvinfo forum link, I hadn't checked out that forum before, here's the AVCHD thread, lots of posts:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?f=133

SR 12 review:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Sony-HDR-SR12-Camcorder-Review-34809.htm

There's also the JVC Everio GZ-HD6:
http://www.amazon.com/JVC-GZ-HD6-Definition-Camcorder-Stabilized/dp/B001284CA8/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1207585292&sr=8-1

Overall I trust Sony best for hardware, so I think I'll probably get the SR12. Question - does the footage from the SR 12 drop easily into Vegas, without any transcoding or other hassle? That would be why I'd buy one, is to save time, so I'd need to be able to plug it into the pc and transfer files to my local hd, then just edit away, without having to transcode/re-encode for it to be usable in Vegas... any SR12 users who use Vegas, too?

(also, it looks like a lower-capacity alternate to the SR-12, the SR11, is available, which has about half the recording time (still, 430 mins at top resolution for the SR11), which is more than enough for my shoots...

Here's a good comparison, conclusion page on all the current AVCHDs:

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Sony-HDR-SR12-Camcorder-Review-34809/Comparisons--Conclusion.htm

Ken