Question about hard drive camera recording times

dibbkd wrote on 8/30/2008, 3:46 AM

I'm looking at the HDR-SR11, it has a 60GB hard drive, and says the recording time is 7 hours. (at the highest quality)

I'm used to my DV tapes and the ~1 hour limit they have.

Is this correct, or am I reading it wrong.

It's a single 1/3" CMOS chip, for consumer use (which is what I am).

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 8/30/2008, 5:08 AM

60GB of DV should last a little over 4 hours and that's about 25mbps. To get 7 hours they must be using about 15mbps which seems a little low for 'highest' quality. It's in the ballpark though.

dibbkd wrote on 8/30/2008, 5:33 AM

Thanks Kelly, it's a consumer cam, so the mbps are probably lower than the high-end cams, but I just wanted to make sure I was reading it correctly.

The other specs on it look great compared to the cheapy camera I have now.

birdcat wrote on 9/2/2008, 8:56 AM

I have the SR11 and haven't come close to filling it up - I do keep the drive fairly clean (move raw video to data DVD and PC HD as soon as I can) but have had a few hours of MTS files and it still says there's plenty of room for more.

Can't complain about the quality, but then my last camera was a HC40 so I guess any move up from five year old SD would look good.

I will say that I love the camera - Just wish it had two additional features the HC40 has - Time Lapse and A/D Passthru (digital recording from external analog source).

Tim L wrote on 9/2/2008, 9:23 AM

Kelly -- the SR11 is an AVCHD cam, so 15-16 mbps is pretty typical for consumer cameras