Camcorder - DV? MiniDV? DVD? HD? - What?

[MarineMom]

Ok, I'll start by apologizing. I'm about as green as a person can get when it comes to some technology. I'm fairly smart, but I've gotten behind in the world of electronics (still don't know what Farouja technology implies on my HDTV! All I know is the darn thing freezes all the time and it's brand new!)

My eyes are crossing right now from all the reading and researching I've been doing. My son - a US MARINE and the apple of my eye - is going on deployment to Japan in March. I decided that for Christmas I wanted to get him a camcorder. I want him to be able to record what he is seeing for his own future viewing, but I want to see it, too. I'm hoping this will be some small way we can keep in touch. At first, I thought I would - automatically - get him a DVD camcorder. Simple, right? Just put in a DVD and go. But then I read that you have to cart around a lot of DVDs and that each one only lasts 20 minutes or something like that. Then I thought hard drive (and maybe one with HD). But those seem to have issues, too, like not the best picture and the possibility of losing everything if it's dropped, etc. Then most of these camcorders have touch screens, which at first I thought was neat, but then I read about small, annoying buttons and fingerprint smears. So there was also flash readers (if that is the correct name) but then I thought that sounds pretty limited and if you lose those things you're SOL.

I'm not so concerned about price, what I want is something my son will find easy to use and cart around, footage that can EASILY be burned to a disk (as well as stored on his computer), sturdy (he's 24).

I almost bought the Sony SR7 (was an editor's choice at CNET) but then this AVCHD (or whatever it is called) was being talked about as potentially washing out and all sorts of difficulty with conversion.

Again, I'm as newbie as newbie can get. I just want to get a good reliable camcorder with great video and top notch performance and ease of use.

Any advice?

Thanks!

[MJA]

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic341359.html#1781091

[redwudz]

Mini-DV should suit you fine. You can have him mail back the tapes. Do him a favor and buy a bunch of them and send them along with him. Try to stick to just one brand of tape to avoid clogging the record heads with different tape formulations. A extra battery and some voltage adapters for the areas he may be stationed in would also be helpful.

When you get the tapes, you will probably need a second camcorder to transfer them to your computer with a FireWire link and edit. DV is 'made' to edit, so that is fairly easy. Then you can burn them to DVD for your viewing. Save the tapes in a cool, dry storage place and they should be good to go when he comes back and wants to work with them himself. A second camcorder you purchase can give him some 'shots of home' that may be nice for him also, even if he has to play them back with his camcorder hooked to a TV. Or convert them to DVD if he has that playback capability.

You can convert DV to MPEG-2 for DVD with most MPEG-2 encoders. I use ConvertXToDVD for quick and easy, but there are many other programs for higher quality conversions, though not as easy.

And welcome to our forums.

[thecoalman]

footage that can EASILY be burned to a disk (as well as stored on his computer), sturdy (he's 24).

I'd suggest mini-dv too. The only issue is it can't be burned directly to disc and takes up about 14 GB's per hour. However there are simple programs for converting to DVD and if you want to store on a computer you can always convert to highly compressed format like WMV. Just make sure to keep the tapes as any of these conversions will degrade the quality, not so much for creating DVD but definitely for WMV.

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As far as sharing them if he is going to have access to broadband a simple solution is purchase a hosting package. For example the host I was at was offering 16GB of disc space for $10 a month. He could compress to WMV and upload to the server, you only need to download it. 16GB will easily fit about 16 hours of high quality WMV, this video is not suitable for DVD. There's a lot of other benefits, you could even take it step a further and install something like Coppermine Photo Gallery which is web based file management system. This will allow you to create albums for photos, videos etc. It's user based like this forum so your entire family could enjoy them if they wanted. You can even leave comments for images etc. I know that's the route I would take, probably sounds a little complicated but with a little instruction you could have something like that set up in an hour.

[MarineMom]

Hi guys - and thanks for the welcome . So you think mini DV, huh? I guess my issue with that was that my son would have to transport these tapes around and with being in the marines he might lose something (he's going to three different marine bases in 7 months) so I want to keep it as simple as possible.

So what are your general thoughts about "hard drive" camcorders? And/or "hard drive high-definition" camcorders?

Can you recommend some really good (but not too difficult to use) camcorders? I don't care (so much) about the price - though $4000 for the pro-cams is not in the list. I saw that Sony got good marks for both their hard drive camcorder (the SR7) and their flash stick (?) camcorder (CX7)

Thanks!

[MJA]

users here will recomend the Canon HV-20. it shoots in both HD, and SD mode

http://www.amazon.com/Canon-HV20-Definition-Camcorder-Stabilized/dp/B000MUV6BA

one of my favorite oneline store is onecall.com. good customer service.

http://www.onecall.com/ProductDetails.aspx?id=86932

4 year extended warranty is only $139

[thecoalman]

Can you recommend some really good (but not too difficult to use) camcorders?

Most if not all are going to have a point and shoot mode, the higher end cams just allow for more options if you want to manually set things like the exposure. they are generally going to produce a better video as well because they will have larger censors, better glass and a plethora of other features your average consumer is not going to use. They are genrally twice the size of consumer model, most likely to house the larger lense.

A $300 mini-DV cam is sufficient for the needs of most consumers.

[redwudz]

A couple of problems with HDD camcorders and flash card recorders as far as 'data' portability':

With a HDD camcorder, you have to get the data off the camcorder, and that usually takes a computer. Then you would have to convert/burn it to a different media/format and mail it off.

A camcorder with a flash card still needs a computer to convert to other media formats. And even the large flash cards don't hold many minutes of video. And flash cards are a lot easier to lose than DV tapes.

The availability of military mail is common about anywhere in the world, even in the field. Sturdy mailers for the DV tapes would be a good idea, preprinted with the address, even easier. Just tell him to drop the finished tape in the mailer and send it off. Send him a 'care package' of tapes and mailers on occasion. When he gets back, he should have it all waiting for him. Unless he is in a security zone or has a job that requires higher clearances, they shouldn't have any problems with 'home video' tapes being mailed.

I would look for a fairly compact camcorder that's not fragile and get a padded case that the camcorder can fit securely into in case his luggage gets thrown around or dropped. Military Air Transport often has worse baggage handlers than commercial airlines. If he has a duffel, have him put it in the center with clothing around it. They are usually pretty tough, even if dropped when they are in a padded case.

[MarineMom]

REDWUDZ Wrote: "A couple of problems with HDD camcorders and flash card recorders as far as 'data' portability':

With a HDD camcorder, you have to get the data off the camcorder, and that usually takes a computer. Then you would have to convert/burn it to a different media/format and mail it off."

A camcorder with a flash card still needs a computer to convert to other media formats. And even the large flash cards don't hold many minutes of video. And flash cards are a lot easier to lose than DV tapes."
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OK, so stay away from the Hard Drive camcorders, correct? The lean here is toward MiniDV. Any brand/model you would recommend? What size "DV" should I get? The biggest?

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REDWUDZ wrote: "The availability of military mail is common about anywhere in the world, even in the field. Sturdy mailers for the DV tapes would be a good idea, preprinted with the address, even easier. Just tell him to drop the finished tape in the mailer and send it off. "

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BIG QUESTION ....... if the information is on this MiniDV and he mails the MiniDV to me, what will he have? He does have a computer (Toshiba), fairly good model, but I don't know any of the programs. Any he should have?

And I still have to wonder, listening to everything here, if a DVD camcorder might be the best option. I don't want him to have to go through too many steps. But I know those DVDs are easily broken and you have to always have one.

Can you explain again why I should stay away from the DVD camcorders? What about these HYBRID camcorders?

THANKS!

[edDV]

Problem here is he will have to have expertise to use any of these formats. He also has a high probalility of losing or destroying the camcorder so a BX replacement should be able to allow picking up where he left off.

Unless he is a computer guru and can figure out all the conversion and backup issues with HDD and DVD camcorders, avoid those. If he is up with all this he will tell you what he wants.

MiniDV by definition records to tape. Any MiniDV camcorder can read that tape and be used to load the tape to a computer. The issue here is the tape must be preserved. The camcorder can be stolen or destroyed but the tape contains the data. Any BX will sell 8mm tape and a replacement MiniDV camcorder.

There is no ideal solution. MiniDV is the best supported format. DVD camcorders record to small DVD discs. The average person would have no idea how to recover data from those in the field. Same goes for HDD.

Your son needs to be part of this decision.

[mach]

I believe the best choice for your son would be a HD camcorder, and definitely a Sony. Its easy to transfer the films directly to a laptop and later upload them on a server so others like you can get easily access to it. Once the camcorder is connected to the laptop is just a drag and drop of the file just like from an external hard drive to a PC.
There are no problems using a HD camcorder at all, as it records in MPEG2, which is DVD quality, and can easily then get copied (burned) on to a DVD media. The model you mentioned SR7 is good and has a good resultion, a very good choice, the only extra need is a battery as it uses alot power. No other software except a burning program like Nero is needed if he wants to burn them and later send them on a DVD disc to you.
MiniDV have a disadvantage that the tapes need to be stored in places that are not warm and must not get sun rays. The quality of DV is very good, but takes time to transfer them to a PC and later maybe need to change the format and resize the film in order to upload them for you to a server.

Best of luck

[redwudz]

Even if he has good mail service, he may not have a high speed internet connection and that would be the problem of transferring even a one gigabyte MPEG file. Military mail service is much more available. If he has a computer, he can transfer the files to that and burn them to DVD, then mail them off.

But I would assume he would have better things to do than to use a FTP server or edit and burn a DVD of each tape. Simpler would be a DVD camcorder, but with the aforementioned problems.

I was thinking for him just to mail off the recorded tapes and shoot as much video as he wants. Of course he would probably view them first, but I doubt he would want to haul them around with him when his station changes. They have a lower risk of damage from the mail service than hauling them around a foreign country in a duffel bag.

But everyone has different methods.