Mod uncles and aunty, I didn’t know whether to open this thread here or in computer, feel free to move it if you wish. Thanks.
I need to buy a camcorder. I am thinking about buying the one that records on the hard drive. I know a few of you already have camcorders, what kind do you have? I have tried the mini-dvd in the past but I hate it with all my guts because it would only record up to 30 minutes on each mini dvd and then I had trouble copying more than 1 mini dvd on to the full size dvd.
Also, I want to be able to take the video and perhaps take out a few seconds/minutes to share with family and friends. i.e. keep adding to the video but transfer only the new portion on to the computer or DVD.
What have your experiences been? What would you recommend?
First, it should go in Bazaar forum. Second, people usually buy/upgrade camcorders when they are expecting their first-born (so are congrats in order here?) and lastly, I have no personal experience in hard disk camcorders. But your "want-to-be-able-to" list seems more like a software issue than a camcorder/hardware issue. Even with my ancient (I don't use it much) miniDV camcorder, I can connect it to a PC and only upload a part of the recorded film to my computer and share with friends/family.
Anyway, my stock advice on camcorders is to stick with Sony, Canon or Panasonic. They are top-tier brands for a reason. Sustained good build quality. Sony is my least favorite though, because it pushes you for proprietary memory card (memory stick) rather than more open ways of storing stuff, and for generally being pricier for the same feature set. But you can't beat its great optics.
I have a DVD camcorder , absolutely love it. I use rewritable DVD’s though for recording purposes and then I transfer the video on the full size DVD’s.
The only concern I have , for HD camcorder, is that , if for any reason a HD is dropped or given a jerk as simple as dropping it from your work desk to carpet it gets ruined and is hard to recover .You end up buying a new one. I have ruined more than a couple of HD’s that way. If the video is recorded on a DVD then it is safe from this kind of loss.
Now there is another alternative to DVD recorder , Hitachi has come up with Blue Ray recorder they have two models read the introduction here: http://av.hitachi.com/camcorder/blu-ray/index.html
It has one hour recoding capacity , that is more than enough for an enthusiast.
This isnt related but something that happened last friday on the bus. This girl was on the phone talking to her friend. Part of the conversation that i overheard went like this
Friend: _____
Girl: What? Camcorder?
Friend: _____
Girl: Ha ha...
Friend:_____
Girl: Oh nothing, it was just funny how you said camcorder. Cuz you know no one really says camcorder anymore. It just like.. you know, sounds so 80s!
People people people, as you know, I used to live with parents and I have recently moved to my own place in a different city. I left all electronics behind with my brothers so they ca use it. That’s why I have to buy everything new, from TVs, to DVD players to digital cameras, and now the video camera. **Angel eyes
Faisal bhai & Mirch** Thank you for your insight. I will def. stick with a good brand. The DVD recorder that I had (now family has) is a Sony and it’s a pretty good one. I tried a couple of different software but I couldn’t figure out how to burn the darn mini DVDs on to a big one (i.e. 2 or 3 (60 - 90 min) on to a single DVD). Then I finally gave up.
I guess I have to do more research or perhaps try friends’ cameras before I buy my own.
Shikra..i bough canon HG10 recently .Its darn gud. It is a High definition camcorder and it has 40GB hard disk. The clearity is very very gud. on youtube u will find some gud reviews about this camcorder.
Daagh bhai, how do you find it in terms of ease of use? What about quality and the ease of burning movies on to DVD? Also, can you just transfer as much length as you want or do you have to transfer the entire clip/piece on to the computer? I'll check out the camera.
Plz let me know too abt a camcorder.....we want to buy Sony, but if other brands r better plz let me know. We want something that is easy to use and easily transfers to dvd or video..
I bought Sony SR-42 in last yr’s black friday sale for 300 bucks. Cool gadget in that price :k:, can hold up 7 hrs of video. I did bought n xtra battery thou. I like it’s 1 touch DVD burning feature
^ Thanks.............How does the dvd burning work? You must burn the entire video or you can select the portion? i.e. from 4 min 3 seconds to 10 min 16 seconds?
Daagh bhai, how do you find it in terms of ease of use? What about quality and the ease of burning movies on to DVD? Also, can you just transfer as much length as you want or do you have to transfer the entire clip/piece on to the computer? I'll check out the camera.
it is very compact, light and very easy to use. It comes with a docking station, that has a dvd burn button, connect the station to your pc/laptop and press the button. it is as simple as that.
dvd burning application is very simple enough and quality wise it is wonderful, sony afterall
oh haan, you can select the complete video clip and also you can cut the clip as you need
Last week we went Camcorder hunting, after my baby turned 2 .. this time we said we will come home with one. I wanted the DVD one and first we decided for a SONY, about to buy it, that the sales person said, the touch screen is very bad, it gets defects quite often, he himself had a sony digi camera and as his screen got defect, they said its your fault as u have been using it too much. And the parts are expensive, u need the SONY flash card for pics .. so we went for a PANASONIC that was on sale at that time, its seems to be good, we are still learning the features yet.
Daagh bhai Thanks for the insight. That sounds good. I am thinking about delaying my purchase til June because that's when the fathers day is in the US and they have sale on electronic items. So hopefully the prices will go down a little by then.
Saadia Which model of panasonic did you go for? In panasonic, I like the SDR H200 and SDR H60. Out of these two, I am leaning towards H200.
Pick where/for what you’re going to use the camcorder. If it’s for making homemade videos, a hard drive will be fine. If it’s for travel stay away from hard disk and go with MiniDV.
Then pick if you want high definition or not. I’d really advise you go high def if you can afford it + have the setup at home to handle it.
My family wanted a camera to travel with AND 1080 high definition. Hard disk was out of the picture because having just 40/60gb (just 7 hours of footage on high def) is a pain in the ass when you’re on a trip. They do have 120gb hard disk models, but that’s still only 15hours on high def.
Seriously consider a high definition… especially if it’s in the same price range as the SDR H200. There is absolutely no way to describe how good high def looks. If you want to see the type of stuff the HDRHC3 outputs, send me a PM and i’ll forward you a short clip.
Shikra…mabrook!
