Mini DVD

[didikai]

I have been looking at the JVC D750 mini DVD camcorder.

1. I want to be able to edit my camcorder movies. Does this model film in MPeg? Which I believe is not so easy to edit.

2. Is this JVC a tape or disc model?

3. If I have to look for a different model of camcorder, which is best format for loading onto PC and editting.

Thanks

[kadzbiz]

There's a few issues here. It depends on what video editing software you have and what file types it accepts for editing. I have a Sony Handycam that records to mini DVD and it saves the movie to a VOB format. VOB is an mpeg format that has more video and audio streams, but most video editing software will accept the VOB format. If not, you can simply rename the file extension from VOB to MPG. I don't find any problems working with MPG files. FYI I use Womble Video Wizard and recently have started using Video Studio 11+. I still burn with Nero and doing my authoring with DVD Author Pro.

[redwudz]

I would stick with a DV tape camcorder myself. You do need a FireWire card for computer transfer, but the files are much easier to edit. Of course the other downside is that you would need to encode and author to get to a playable DVD.

I suppose if you don't need to edit and you want DVD player ready video, recording directly to a DVD would be OK. Sure, you can read the disc on the computer and edit it that way, but it seems just another unwanted step. And you are stuck with the DVD minidisc quality, depending on how good that looks.

To me it's unfortunate that hard drive camcorders seem to all encode to MPEG or a few to MPEG-4. I would love to have a camcorder with a 200GB hard drive that recorded to DV-AVI format, then transfered over a SATA connection to my computer hard drive.

[edDV]

The GR-D750 is a MiniDV (DV tape) camcorder not a DVD model.
http://camcorder.jvc.com/product.jsp?pathId=26&modelId=MODL027852

DV format is higher quality @25Mb/s vs. 4-8Mb/s for DVD Mpeg2. DV also has editing advantages since all frames are recorded.

DVD MPeg2 records one full frame every 15 frames and motion difference data for the remaining frames. MPeg2 can be editied with special software such as Womble that can cut between I frames with generation loss only for the 15 GOP frames. Normal editors decode MPeg2 to RGB for editing thus losing a generation.

[didikai]

Do I gather that the mini dv tape is what I am looking for?
And that the JVC it a good bet?

I use Pinnacle Studio 9 for editting.
What format does mini dv transfer to PC as? Is it AVI?

It doesn't bother me about re-authoring, as it is the procedure I have ben using when transferring my old analogue tapes from analogue camcorder

[edDV]

Do I gather that the mini dv tape is what I am looking for?
And that the JVC it a good bet?

I use Pinnacle Studio 9 for editting.
What format does mini dv transfer to PC as? Is it AVI?

It doesn't bother me about re-authoring, as it is the procedure I have ben using when transferring my old analogue tapes from analogue camcorder

Here is a camcorderinfo's rankings of best camcorders
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/ratings.php

DV format is 25Mb/s (plus PCM uncompressed audio), 720x480i/29.97fps, 8bit, 4:1:1. You play the tape to the IEEE-1394 port and capture the data at the computer using a program like WinDV or your edit program. The captured data is identical to the data on the tape. There is no generation loss. Unlike MPeg2, DV format includes all frames and for PC is contained in an avi wrapper. DirectShow handles DV from within XP/Vista. Most edit programs are designed to work with DV camcorder input files.

DV format is very good quality and in the same family of formats used by broadcasters and budget TV series producers (e.g. DV, DVCAM, DVCPro). THe main disadvantage is file size at 13GB/hr. Best to edit in DV format and then encode to MPeg2 for DVD authoring.

[didikai]

Thaks you guys.
Very helpful

Didikai