Question on camcorder?

[ingeborgdot]

Where can a person go to find out what is the best type of camcorder to get under $500. Is it a mini dv or a dvd camcorder or a hard drive camcorder or a sd card camcorder? Where is the best place to ask people about this and reviews on the subject? Thanks.

[Verify]

Many recommend: http://www.camcorderinfo.com/

[ingeborgdot]

Everything I have read says that MiniDV offers the best quality when you are talking standard def right? What would anyone recommend if you were planning on buying a camcorder? Just looking at other people's ideas. Thanks.

[guns1inger]

I would buy a HD camera that uses miniDV tape. I would output to DV at the moment, as I don't have a bluray player, but keep the tapes so I can revisit the HD footage again in the furture. I see no point in buying SD any more.

[ingeborgdot]

Ok, I understand about HD cameras. I was just wondering about good entry level hd cameras. Do you also agree that MiniDV does have the best quality? What about cameras with SD cards?

[guns1inger]

MiniDV is just a place to store data. It isn't a format. DV is a format, and it is a decent format for consumer cameras. It is easy to edit, the quality is good, though not outstanding. The biggest quality issue though is generally the quality of the lenses and CCDs.

Anything that stores SD resolution to memory cards should be avoided, as it will be using a non-edit friendly compression scheme. It will be more difficult to work with, and will not like being re-encoded.

Also, avoid DVD based cameras and HDD based cameras.

HD cameras that use MiniDV compress with mpeg-2 at high bitrates. The quality is high, and the format is easily handled on mid-range PCs. There are seveal native editors capable of handling the footage without completely re-encoding it.

HD that stored to SD uses AVC for compression, and means you will need a high-end machine to work with it, and probably have to re-encode the footage to an intermediate codec to edit it.

[raeppac]

Hey ingeborgdot, why not go check some camcorder ratings. Always come in handy when confuse about certain items.

Hope this helps.

[johnnyzq]

-SPAM-

[edDV]

Hey ingeborgdot, why not go check some camcorder ratings. Always come in handy when confuse about certain items.

Hope this helps.

For consumer cams these ratings are better.
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/ratings.php

For Pro cams, tell us what you need.