Page 1 of help with first camcorder

as the title says, i am looking to buy my first camcorder in the coming days. i have been looking on and off for a year or two and have finally decided to get one, otherwise i could be looking for another year.

i dont have that much to spend, around £350. i have seen a few around that price, including a jvc at jessops, which is £340 for this week, i have seen it cheaper elsewhere so i could see if jessops would price match, or at least take something off. i buy quite a bit online but for this sort of thing i would rather buy from a store.

obviously for the money its not going to be brilliant but i want a decent camcorder that i can hook upto my p.c. and edit then put onto dvd or vcd, because im invloved in some short films so it would come in handy, rather than paying for editing studios. i have had some experience of editing on a computer but that never worked out too well so some advice would be ideal, aswell as what mini dv is all about, thats what the jvc camera is i think. i want the best camera for the money and have to think about what i will do to the footage after shooting, how it will be presented.

cheers.

I`ve plumped for the Sony DCR-HC18. Dixons have it for about £499...amazon £329! Only DV-OUT - but that`s fine if you are planning on making DVDs/VCDs. Lightweight, small. Looks good. Detailed review of HC20 here:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/sony-dcr-hc20-camcorder-review.htm
That is the same camera except it has the DV IN enabled.

i only mentioned the jvc camcorder, as it was on offer. i have been looking at several sites over the last few days and trying to read some reviews, but i am even more confused i think. there is just too much info. as i only have around £350 to spend that rules out a lot of cameras, but i still want a good one that can allow me to edit on a p.c. and then put the work onto either a vcd or dvd. as i am going to be buying from the highstreet i was wondering if john lewis or jessops do a price match, because each camcorder ive seen thats in my price range is a few quid cheaper online.

cheers.

With £350 to spend on the high street you still should have enough choice to do what you want. Basically you need a mini DV, which start around £300 in the shops. For that you will get DV out, but unlikely to get DV in which allows you to transfer edited recordings back to your mini dv tape. As you are intending to transfer to dvd/vcd this shouldn`t be a problem.

The best advice i would give is get as good an optical zoom as you can. Most Sony`s, Panny`s and Samsungs have 10x which is not great. JVC and Cannon have more. I`ve just bought a Cannon MV700 which has 18X which is about as high as you will get at this price. An image stabiliser is essential but i haven`t seen a mini DV without it for a while now

Don`t worry about getting one with a memory card cos even though you can take stills and easily transfer them to a pc, the quality is not great.

Final point is get a spare battery cos the ones supplied are usually only good for about 45 minutes of shooting (using the lcd screen). If you go for a branded one they are pricey but unbranded ones are less than half price (or even less on ebay)

thanks for that.

for the money i have to spend, and the fact im getting it from a shop does limit me down to 2 or 3. but as i said i still want to get the best one i can, so i will have a look which has the best features.

are the tapes you use standard for all mini dv camcorders? can you get them anywhere?

someone mentioned about usb not being the best for transferring over to the p.c. they mentioned fire something, does it mean i would need to get a card for the p.c. like a graphics card? if so are they standard cards? that would be something i would get at a later date, but i would like to know before i buy the camcorder.

and when i put the finished edit onto cd/dvd do i just use nero or something similar?

although i wont be doing editing just yet i want to have the info before i buy.

cheers.

Mini DV tapes are now fairly cheap. You should be able to get 5 tapes for £10 if you look online (try 7 day shop). USB is not the normal connection for a DV camcorder, only those that have a separate memory card has a USB option and for the money you`ve got available a camcorder with a memory card as well is over your budget.

The normal connection from Mini DV to pc is firewire. This is a digital connection which means you transfer the same quality of your recording to your pc. You will need a IEEE1394 (firewire) connection which may mean adding a card to your pc if it hasn`t already got one. You are going to need a pretty big hard disk, mine is only 20 GB with about 10 GB free space. This means I can only transfer about 40 minutes of footage before filling the hard disk. If you are going to edit your footage you will then need editing software, something like Pinnacle Studio 7. It`s not the most advanced software but it works okay, and is pretty easy to master.

The editing software will convert your finished footage to whatever format you want i.e. mpeg, windows streaming media (wmv) divx etc and it`s then a simple case of using Nero to burn it to disk. If you`ve got a dvd burner you should be able to burn the raw footage in full dvd quality straight to dvd, though I don`t own a dvd burner yet myself so I`m not sure of the procedure.

hope this helps

John

Quote:
Most Sony`s, Panny`s and Samsungs have 10x which is not great. JVC and Cannon have more.

Not if you shop around ;) , I will be buying a Panasonic NVGS11B very soon it has 24 X optical zoom and is available online from around £280 upwards or Comet store price £399.
If you need software you can get a free trial cd of Pinnacle Studio 9 from their website here or you could look around for a firewire card that comes with software included from somewhere like Ebuyer or Ebay , I have also been looking around a couple of places for tapes and so far I have got to agree with atc on 7 day shop £11.49 for 5 X 60 minute tapes.

P.s.
Quote:
You are going to need a pretty big hard disk, mine is only 20 GB with about 10 GB free space. This means I can only transfer about 40 minutes of footage before filling the hard disk.

A mate has given me a copy of Digital video made easy and in there they recommend to try capturing from a DV camcorder to MPEG - 2 format as the files are smaller than raw DV AVI which saves on disk space and they can be burned to Dvd or Cd quicker as less rendering is required, something I will try when I get the camcorder and firewire card sorted and see if there is any noticable loss of quality .
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Wayne

This item was edited on Wednesday, 28th April 2004, 00:42

thats a great help. most of what i needed to know is for later, the firewire and how i burn the disks, but they are things i needed to know now incase it affected which camcorder i get. i have a digital camera, not a dear one but its fine for me, so i wouldnt use the camcorder for that.

this firewire lead/card, are they dear, i wouldnt be getting it just yet but its good to no. i have a 40gb hard drive at the moment so that should be ok. i will just have to have some cd-rw standing by to store the footage on!!!!!

thanks again.

The cards ( and cable included ) are £6.99 buy it now on Ebay , just checked some settings on Studio 8 and on my pc which currently has 28 GB free I can capture 2 hours of raw DV or 10 hours of " high quality Dvd @ 720 x 576 "

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Wayne

that sounds good, cheers.

will have to get rid of some of my games from the hard drive, i have a few that are still there from last year, should be able to free up a few gb.