What Camera?

[astro4travel]

I need a video DV camera that records to tape for video editing puposes. What is a "good" model to go with that would be moderately priced? I have a Canon Hi-8 now, and want to move away from analog. Help please. Michael

[JimboS]

Look here and decide,,,

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/d/blog.htm

On the left on the screen is camcorder reviews...
Personnally I would stay with Canon...I own one
But there are other makes that are resonnably priced that are good..

[123fish123]

I have one of the panasonic 3ccd models and LOVE it!!!

[dwill123]

You'll be wanting to take a look at the Panasonic GS500. It's going to give you more than you probably are looking for but everything you want. The successor to the GS400 (which is not made any longer).

[astro4travel]

How does hard drive vs. tape dv systems compare for video editing? Is the recording to hard drive mpeg 2 or AVI? thanks

[SingSing]

Compare miniDV tape, minDsic, and harddisk. the miniDV tape still come up as the best on cost, video quality, recording time. The other two have more cool factors.

[edDV]

How does hard drive vs. tape dv systems compare for video editing? Is the recording to hard drive mpeg 2 or AVI? thanks

Current DVD and hard drive models encode to DVD bitrate MPeg2 in the camera and save as MPeg2 to the DVD or hard disk. This is much lower quality (as an archive) than DV format. Also, editing in DV format is much easier and does not require a decode generation loss that most editors will do to MPeg2. Also, non-realtime software MPeg2 encoding from a DV input will get better quality than the hardware MPeg2 encoders in these camcorders.

So, in summary, DV format has quality and editing advantages.

[astro4travel]

Thanks for the input everyone!