Camcorder questions

[roscoe]

All I have been doing so far burning VCD's from AVI clips. I think I would like to buy a digital camcorder, but don't know where to start. Here are a few of my questions:

USB and firewire. Which is best and why (I have a PC)?

How many MB's of data is (or are) on a mini dv tape?

Does anyone know where I can find professional camcorder reviews on the net?

Thanks in advance for any help or advise you may give me.

Roscoe - The Old Crumudgeon.

[Tommyknocker]

USB and firewire. Which is best and why (I have a PC)?

The prevailing wisdom here is firewire. DV has the best resolution for capturing for now. USB will have you thinking you can do better, and you would be right.

How many MB's of data is (or are) on a mini dv tape?

'Penzon. Use this chart for comparisons for the formats you can capture and/or convert video to.

Does anyone know where I can find professional camcorder reviews on the net?

Here are two I subscribe to that often feature professional camera reviews:

www.dv.com
http://www.videomaker.com/scripts/index.cfm

[Will Hay]

I seem to remember the data rate for digital tapes is around 12/13gb per hour, and as the tapes are 60mins there's your answer!
I went from an analogue camcorder (captured via my superb ATI Radeon card) to a Sony DV via firewire and trust me, the whole process is superb.
From your post I can't tell if you've any experience in capturing anaolgue footage but the comparison is miles apart.
Firewire is superb and the quality jump from analogue to digital is incredible.
I spent a month or two checking out the reviews and went with either a Panasonic or Sony TRV-14 (I can't remember the Panasonic model but they were both around the £400 mark, both MiniDV).
I went with Sony as I love Sony, although I'm not impressed with the amount of wind noise I pick up
I was thinking of getting the TRV-19 (same as the 14 but with passthrough) but didn't want to put my camcorder through so much torture and use it so much.
Will

[roscoe]

I was hoping that someone had had transfered a tape to the PC and saw how much disk space it took.

Maybe I have it all wrong. I assumed that a digital camcorder tape would be transfered as is (like a JPEG file from a digital camera). When I download 64 MB of memory from my digital camera I use up 64 MB of disk space.

The more I read the less I understand about all this stuff. But, I'm not giving up.

[bugster]

I was hoping that someone had had transfered a tape to the PC and saw how much disk space it took.

Isn' t that what Will Hay just told you? 13Gb per hour of movie approx.

[Will Hay]

I was hoping that someone had had transfered a tape to the PC and saw how much disk space it took.

Maybe I have it all wrong. I assumed that a digital camcorder tape would be transfered as is (like a JPEG file from a digital camera). When I download 64 MB of memory from my digital camera I use up 64 MB of disk space.

The more I read the less I understand about all this stuff. But, I'm not giving up.

It is confusing when you first start out, but unless I'm mistaken I think I've answered this question

I seem to remember the data rate for digital tapes is around 12/13gb per hour, and as the tapes are 60mins there's your answer!

It's transferred at say 13gb per hour, therefore if you transfer 15 minutes of DV footage from yoru digital camcorder tape you'll use up 3.25gb of your HDD storage space.
Will

[Will Hay]

Just one last thing...
You don't appear to have a dvdr burner so consider that whilst you will be transferring dvd quality footage to your PC you will then have to encode it to a lesser quality format (eith vcd or svcd) to copy it to a cdr (700mb) disk.
A shame, as you'll be creating dvd quality home movies and watching them on your dvd player, when compared to dvd, in totally shite quality.
Anything else you're not familiar with just shout it out here, don't be afraid to look dumb, I was (and still am) there once.
Will Hay

[rallynavvie]

Well the tape itself doesn't really have memory. It stores video on it just like an analog tape would but in 0s and 1s. Now that data has to be brought onto a PC by capturing, same as an analog camcorder but in better quality because there's more data in a lossless format. You can capture as whatever format you like depending on the programs you use to capture. Most capture at DV AVI which takes up a lot of room but is the best format for editing/production. You could also capture to MPEG1 or MPEG2 with the proper program/hardware. That would obviously take up less space. You'd think you'd be able to capture digital video at higher speeds than 1:1 since it's digital, but as far as I know you can't. Anyone know why this is?

Most home digital camcorders need a FireWire cable to be remotely controlled by your capture software. Yes, the capture software can play/pause/stop/ff/rewind your camcorder just by buttons on screen. This becomes a greater advantage when setting up batch captures in apps like Premiere Pro to capture just what you want from the tape (as long as you have a frame-accurate device). I'm not sure if USB 2.0 has overcome this yet or not.

I have a Sony TRV-25 MiniDV camcorder. It does plenty well for what I use it for, but it is not professional. Professional digital camcorders have 3 CCDs (one for each RGB channel I'm assuming) which gives them far better images. Problem is they're pricey, a Canon XL-1 runs ~$3500 and is a good entry-level pro camera. I'm looking at a Sony DSR-250 for $5300 as my next big purchase as it comes with all the options for that price. You can find some camera packages at www.saferseas.com .

[bugster]

Well the tape itself doesn't really have memory. It stores video on it just like an analog tape would but in 0s and 1s. Now that data has to be brought onto a PC by capturing, same as an analog camcorder but in better quality because there's more data in a lossless format. .

I would like to put you right on a couple of points here rallynavvie, just to make sure there is no confusion.

1) As to wether or not the tape has 'memory', thats down to interpretation. Its a magnetic tape and stores digital data just like a HD or floppy. Is that memory?

2) You don't capture DV same as an analog camcorder. The digital data on the tape is transferred directly, usually via firewire, to the PC.

3) The DV format is not lossless. Each frame is encoded using a mthod similiar in technique to jpeg stills. The actual compression achieved is somewhere in the region of 5:1 over completley lossless encoding I believe. So not highly compressed, but compressed nontheless.

[rallynavvie]

I referred to taking video of a digital format as "capturing" as it's so similar to taking video from an analog source. It seems you can only do it 1:1 whereas if it were more like a disk of some sort you would be able to take the data from it as fast as the interface would let you. That's why I asked if anyone knew why we couldn't take video off a MiniDV or DVCAM tape at higher speeds than realtime. You would think this would be completely possible if the DV tapes were more like other digital media. Who knows, maybe the interface just isn't capable of sustained transfers of whatever the data rate the video would have to be to be transferred at greater than realtime speeds. Can you imagine how much time you'd save if you could do high-speed transfers? Set up Premiere to batch capture off a DVCAM so that you can grab your 2 hours of footage from the 3 hour tape in maybe 30 minutes? Are any of the Sony VTRs capable of this perhaps?