Is this in the right forum? Sony mini-DV camcorders & mp

[sleazy_frank]

Hi all - not sure if this is in the right place but I'm looking to buy a mini-dv Sony camcorder to go with my start up digital editing suite and it's just now a matter of which one. Obviously all come with firewire out and mostly in as well, but some also have memory sticks to record MPEGs. Am I missing something, but what is the point of this if the camera records digital video anyhow? Is it that the mpeg is already recorded digitally on to solid state memory, where as the video is recorded digitally to tape? I hope I haven't just embarressed myself - miniDV still uses tape right?

From what I understand the firewire is for transfering large amounts of data at high speed to a pc, so this comes straight from the camera to the computer and then has to be encoded into mpeg? Which sounds like what you have to do with analogue video. Okay, now I'm lost. Can someone help me with this so that I can get a better idea of what I should be looking for in a camcorder when it comes to buy it?

cheers

frank

[Richard_G]

The memory stick on Sony mini-DV camcorders is used to store digital photographs, usually in mjpeg format (not mpeg). All of them can take stills and double up as a digital camera (albeit usually in pretty low resolution). The videothat you shoot is recorded onto tape and does not use the memory stick. The Firewire output is used to output the video stream from the tape, and most have a USB connection to output the stills from the memory stick. The USB connection can usually also be used for low resolution webcam type video too.

When you use Firewire to 'capture' video from a mini-DV camcorder, you don't actually capture the video. The video is a data stream which is stored on a convenient medium, in this case it just happens to be a tape. All you do is copy that datastream onto your hard drive. It is no different to copying files from a CD to your hard drive. The format that this data is saved in (by the camcorder) is DV which gives a .avi file. Once on your hard drive you can do as you wish with it and convert it into whatever format you need. If you want to turn it into VCD, SVCD or DVD format you will need to convert it to mpeg. Alternatively, you could leave it as avi and just play the files back on your computer.

Because of the way mpeg is compressed, it is not a good idea to try and edit mpeg files. If you want to edit video that you have shot, you will get far better quality by editing the avi and then converting once you are happy with the result.

[sleazy_frank]

Excellent! Thank you very much for clearing that up. Now I just have to choose from the dcr trv 18 (£399 online), 19 (About mid-£400) or the 22.

One final question: I understand you can get up to 2hrs of mpeg2 on to a DVD, which is high quality dv, but what about mpeg1, as I am going to be converting about 10 vhs home movie tapes to dvd soon, just to get an idea of how many dvds I should get hold of.

cheers once again

frank

[Richard_G]

DVD is always mpeg 2, VCD and SVCD are mpeg 1. Have a look at the file comparison chart on this site (click the What Is DVDR at top left and scroll down). You can get up to 2 hours very good quality per DVD disk, more if you want to sacrifice quality. You can also save as what is known as half D1 which is 352 x 576 instead of full D1 of 720 x 576. A full D1 file with a bitrate of 6Mbs will give you almost DVD quality and about 2 hours per disk. A half D1 file with a bitrate of 3Mbs will give hardly any noticable loss in quality but 4 hours per disk. Although the quality is lower, it is no worse than broadcast TV and easily as good as VHS.

You'll need some software to convert the avi files that you get from your camcorder into something that can be read by a DVD player. You can do everything with lots of freeware tools if you are prepared to spend a lot of time experimenting or reading the guides. Alternatively, download the trial of Ulead DVD Factory and try that. It does everything in one package.

As you are talking real money for the camcorder (not these strange $ things), I assume you are in the UK. In which case, your best bet for media is www.blankdiscshop.co.uk.

Good luck and welcome to the bottom of a very steep learning curve.....

Richard