seeking advice and information on camcorders

dogwalker wrote on 1/24/2008, 3:37 PM

I have Vegas Pro 8, and need to replace my old camcorder (Sony TRV-460), because the firewire no longer works. I mainly want to capture home videos on to my computer for editing and then burning dvds for watching and sharing with my family. My son does a little more, with green screens, all sorts of effects and all, and creates videos for simply watching on the computer.

Moreover, I have many old home movies of my parents and others, on VHS (from my first camcorder, long ago), which I'd like to capture, edit, and use in dvds. So I need to either purchase something like a Canopus or have video passthrough on my next camcorder.

Now, I've done so much reading and browsing that my eyes are burning, and I get conflicting information regarding HD formats and storage options, and just today I read another thread here which indicates that firewire ports are frequently a problems, and that perhaps we should use USB 2.0 (with AVCHD).

I've thought, until recently, that there simply is no better option than tape, and so I was looking into purchasing an SD or HD miniDV based camcorder (harder and harder to find), probably the HV20.

However, now I'm reading that AVCHD is much improved over a year ago, and the new SD-card based camcorders (HF10, I think?) are good.

Basically, my desires:
(a) capture good quality, including in fairly low light
(b) capture to my computer and be able to edit in Vegas Pro
(c) create DVDs with the result
(d) somehow archive the original footage and the project. I'm fine with tape, hard drive, whatever
(e) it might be helpful if the camcorder can downconvert to SD, since I have no way of creating or watching HD dvds at this time
(f) video passthrough would be really great, saving me having to purchase a separate unit for capturing my VHS and earlier Hi8 tapes

My computer is a core 2 duo (E6300), but my son's is much lighter - a 2400+. I will be upgrading both our computers this year, probably giving him my machine and upgrading mine to a quad core.

Now, the convenience of a card-based camcorder sounds great, but only if I can really edit the result. And that other thread does make me wonder about whether I really want another firewire-based camcorder.

Sorry this is so long. Thanks for any input. :-)

Comments

skiltrip wrote on 1/28/2008, 10:26 AM

The HV20 sounds perfect for what you want to do.
The quality of HDV is better than AVCHD these days. Even some people don't like the linear format of tape, it's still capable of storing high quality video.

It has video passthru, so you can run your analog video sources into it, VCRs, other camcorders, etc.

You can force the HV20 to have it's HDV footage captured as regular DV, or you can just render it however you want in Vegas (that would be the better option).

Low light is going to be more or less of an issue on any consumer camcorder, even high end ones. I can say that the HV20 is pretty darn good in low light relatively speaking. Of course, a video chip needs light in order to do it's job, so low light is always going to introduce grain and loss of color. it's the nature of the beast.

the video quality on the HV20 has to be seen to be believed. I'm really happy with it.

dogwalker wrote on 1/28/2008, 2:37 PM

Thanks, Skiltrip. The HV20 definitely sounds like the best option. I'm a little concerned about firewire now, just because it went out on my Sony Digital8 and another thread here says that firewire is notorious for dying. OTOH, I went for a few years with no problems, and I don't hear a lot of people here having that problem.

The more I read, the more I'm certain that the HV20 is right for me. It does seem that the industry is moving from tape and even from HDV, but the quality and ease of editing just aren't there yet with AVCHD.

Thanks again for sharing.

craftech wrote on 1/29/2008, 6:09 AM

I am not sure what you price range is. The Canon HV20 has a 1/2.7 CMOS sensor so it will be a big improvement in low light compared to your TRV-460 with it's 1/6 CCD imager.

For a little more money (which will be under $1000 when it comes out in Feb.) there is the relatively new Canon HV30.

While the 30p feature is probably not going to be useful to you unless you do web video, the HV30 has a much better LCD screen which I assume you will mostly use. That will matter when shooting in bright sun. On the HV20 you can barely see it in sunlight.

Another big improvement is in the sucky zoom that is on the HV20. The toggle zoom is much better on the HV30. You can also use a larger battery pack on it.

John

Dach wrote on 1/29/2008, 6:47 AM

Jon,

You pointed out a few things on the HV30 I was unaware of... thanks. What is the benefit that 30p provides to web video?

Thanks

Chad

Radio Guy wrote on 1/29/2008, 7:08 AM

Another bonus of the HV20 it has a mini sd slot so you can capture still images in pretty good rez while shooting in HDV. No hickups with firewire and VegasPro8 not one dropped frame.

Cheers

craftech wrote on 1/29/2008, 7:33 AM

Jon,

You pointed out a few things on the HV30 I was unaware of... thanks. What is the benefit that 30p provides to web video?

Thanks

Chad
====================
You don't tend to get the motion judder or as much blur when you pan the camera. Less artifacts. If you chose to make a web video at a lower framerate you can go with 15 fps for slow moving content. Still high enough to work well.

John

riredale wrote on 1/29/2008, 8:39 AM

The Canon HV20 is a fine camera, but if Sony is more to your liking then you can get a number of tape-based HDV cameras for not much money these days. Much of the time I carry around a tiny little HC-3 and love it. The thing is built like a tank, too, which is something also mentioned by Spot in a very recent thread here. I recall he said that his HV20's were not aging gracefully, while the HC3's were.

EDIT:
Don't think the HC-3 does video pass-through. You could certainly record to tape and then pull off from tape, but that's twice the work.

dogwalker wrote on 1/31/2008, 11:33 AM

I'd like to thank everyone for the tremendous input. I was away a few days, but am now catching up.

Well, I was all set to purchase the HV20, but now I'm going to at least investigate the HV30 and the new Sony camcorders. I'd like to stay below $1000, which is very feasible with these.

I also want to find out more about the newer Canon AVCHD camcorders, but for now I still plan to go with the HV20. I like tape as a backup medium, and HDV is still better for editing in the near term.

One question. I assume I can write movies back to the HV20. Do you know what formats I can write back? DV, HDV, etc?

thanks again!

skiltrip wrote on 2/1/2008, 9:16 AM

For any and all questions regarding the HV20, www.hv20.com is an excellent forum of all HV20 users.

Anything you want to know, it's there. Stop on by.

dogwalker wrote on 2/1/2008, 2:37 PM

Thanks! Heading there now.