Ducati Sporting Club UK > General > Idle Chat > Digital Camcorder Video Thingies - Advice needed

[MJS]

Been doing a bit of thinking and come to the conclusion that it's about time I bought myself a video camera...

So, done a bit of digging around and I'm now far more confused than when I started...

So, what should I be looking for? All the websites I've seen so far ask 'what type of user are you?' - well that's a dumb question - I'm not any type of user...!

Basically, I want something that's easy to use and that I can download videos straight onto my laptop, and maybe chop them up into smaller bits, but that's about it - don't think I want to do anything else...

So, questions are - what should I look for, what do these things record onto? Is it a disc, or memory card, or something like that?

What about if I wanted to mount a camera on the bike - bulletcam? I need a special input for that? (Where does the camera go also?)

Any help and advice, or suggestions of where to go look for it will be welcome, specific recommendations will be even more welcome

Thanks
Martin

[JPM]

No guru to be honest, and don't know and awful lot about them but if you were going for something you can use on the bike also you'll need one with AV-IN not common on most cameras so make sure you ask first. Also for bike use I'd stick with MiniDV rather than HD/DVD cameras

[chris.p]

Originally Posted by JPM

No guru to be honest, and don't know and awful lot about them but if you were going for something you can use on the bike also you'll need one with AV-IN not common on most cameras so make sure you ask first. Also for bike use I'd stick with MiniDV rather than HD/DVD cameras

Spot on JPM, both my brother & myself use Cannon MV730i,s with bullit cams. You can now get smaller versions so the smaller the better as the vid camera sits in a foam basket on top of the ecu on my 748, gord only knows where you would put it on a 749/999 series bike.

Some onboard footage from Oscherslaben this year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGIKw3tzIjM


Bullit cams from here


http://www.dogcamsport.co.uk/


Good cheap source of Cannon products from here


http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Canon-Outle...eNameZl4QQtZkm


hope this helps you out.


Chris

[Guido]

I'm not too sure how the DVD (i.e. your taken footage is burnt straight onto a DVD disc) cameras work in terms of being able to 'extract' the footage off the camera into your PC in order to edit it. As such I can't really advice on this aspect if you are keen to do your own editing.

With MiniDV it's fairly simple. You'll need appropriate video editing software on your PC that is compatible with your camcorder. You'll also need a firewire card on your laptop/PC. With MiniDV you just 'play' the footage on your tape via your camcorder down the firewire cable and into the software on your PC. You 're-record' the segments of the tape footage you want with the software (i.e. into the chunks you want to keep or piece togther into a proper edited video).

I'm not sure if you can do this stage with the DVD cameras. I'm guessing you can but it's worth checking before you buy.

The good thing about the MiniDV tapes is that you can then record your final edited video back onto your MiniDV tape from your PC via the firewire cable
without losing any of the digital quality.

As already said, AV-in is importrant if you want to use bullet cams or record off the TV.

[phillc]

I have a JVC Everio hard disk recording camerawith a 30GB drive. The highest quality setting is for MPEG2 at 720 x 576 and 8Mbps. This is approximately DVD quality and fine for watching on TV. In fact the one thing I have found is that the raw MPEG2 files look better played back on a TV, than on my laptop screen.

The camera is small and light, with a good zoom.

Overall I'm pretty happy with it, but it does not have AV in, so you can't record from a bullet camera.

Personal media players (PMP), like those made by Archos for example, with AV-in are available which means you can connect a bullet camera or other external recording source to them. While it's been noted tha MiniDV may provide better recording quality when used with such devices, this isn't always necessarily the case.

Unfortunately most PMPs or portable Digital Video Recorder (DVR) have a highest record setting of MPEG4 at 480 x 360 and 25 or 30 frames per second (fps) (many are only 15fps!). This is kind of OK if you only ever want to watch your files on a computer screen or for uploading to the Internet. It is not DVD quality. You need to find something that does the 720 x 576, 30fps and at a bitrate of 4Mbps and upwards for really decent TV/DVD results.

Decent hard disk recorders are still commanding a top price if you want one that records at high quality. On a lower budget, perhaps indeed MiniDV is a more affordable solution.

[900MAN]

I'll keep it simple.
Get Dv-in and Dv-out and defo go for a 3CCD (three separate colour sensors instead of one compromised sensor) The picture is streets ahead, Panasonic do some good value jobbies.
Good luck.
PS Please go for the 3CCD thing

[MJS]

Ok, loads of good info as ever...

So to summarise a bit:

AV-In is a must if I want to use a bullet-cam - not sure that I do, but good to have the option to do it

3CCD is much better than a single censor

MiniDV is probably the better bet than HD or DVD as a recording format - then I just play the footage down the cable into the laptop - does the appropriate video editing software for any given camcorder come with it, or is that something that needs sourcing separately?

What is DV-in and DV-out?

Cheers

[Guido]

Originally Posted by Urban996

Ok, loads of good info as ever...

So to summarise a bit:

AV-In is a must if I want to use a bullet-cam - not sure that I do, but good to have the option to do it

3CCD is much better than a single censor

MiniDV is probably the better bet than HD or DVD as a recording format - then I just play the footage down the cable into the laptop - does the appropriate video editing software for any given camcorder come with it, or is that something that needs sourcing separately?

What is DV-in and DV-out?

Cheers

The editing software normally has to be sourced separately....I'd say anything supplied with a camera will be fairly basic.

DV-in DV-out just means you have both input and output for your video. You need 'INput' if you want to attach 3rd party items to your camera to source the video rather than using the camcorder's own lens to do it (e.g. bullet cam or recording from the TV)

Regarding 3CCD.....I have it on mine and it is superb but you do have to pay for it... Costs may have come down from when I bought mine so you may be ok on your budget.

[Bionicle]

Originally Posted by Urban996

does the appropriate video editing software for any given camcorder come with it, or is that something that needs sourcing separately?

What is DV-in and DV-out?

Cheers

I have found that Pinnacle Studio 10.5 is one of the better softwares for this, and comes with the nessesary card and cable for your PC http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSit...I+version+10_5
But i believe they also do a USB version cost for 10.5 is around 50 squid most likely you can pick it up at PC world.

DV-IN
Only a minority of camcorders have the reverse ability whereby you can send digital video back from the computer to the camcorder and record back onto tape. This is essential as you will want to take a video from the camera to the computer, edit it and then send the results back to the camera to store the final result on tape (perhaps the cheapest archiving method). "DV in" is not essential and many camcorders do not have it. (In fact all camcorders do contain the electronics for DVin but the manufacturer disables it for "commercial reasons". There are 3rd party widgets on the market to activate this function if you have already bought your camcorder as it doesn't have DV in but there may be guarantee problems). Increasingly manufacturers are including DVin as standard.

DV-OUT
All digital camcorders send their data into a computer using an identical firewire connector. This will be described as DVout and all camcorders have one. Sony call this an i-link and others refer to IEEE1394. They are all the same. Although firewire was the standard method of connecting your camcorder to a computer, USB2 is now as fast and camcorders are appearing, some with both firewire and USB2 and others with just USB2. It may be that the days of firewire are numbered. However, you must remember that your computer must have USB2 as well and most computers sold today are USB 1 which is 10 times slower. If you connect your USB2 camcorder to a USB1 computer it will only transfer at the slower speed.