Which camcorder (newbie question)

[CliveJ]

I'm sort of new. Are people still buying the HV40? I see Canon is selling flash memory models now and not tape. I still like the idea of cheap project storage cost on tape. My $'s are limited. Maybe $700 - $1500 for camcorder. My application is simple. An indoor set with plenty of fixed light and I need a hardwire mic jack. Real boring stuff with no action shots - very little movement. I just need good picture quality for simple talking head shots with insert edit closeups. I need a camcorder with an easy editable format. Don't know if I will buy Adobe Premiere Pro or just buy a MAC with FCP. I just want easy and don't want a long learning curve for the simple editing I will be doing. Back when I was looking into this stuff HDV was the way to go (vs AVCHD). Is HDV editing format hardware still cheaper? All I really need is DVD widescreen quality, no BluRay or anything.

I am looking for a camcorder recommendation now. I actually need two camcorders. Canon, Pan or Sony NO JCV or other. Also, Premiere vs FCP for shortest learning curve and also price. I will need to buy a new computer but am not at that point yet.

[edDV]

I'm sort of new. Are people still buying the HV40? I see Canon is selling flash memory models now and not tape. I still like the idea of cheap project storage cost on tape. My $'s are limited. Maybe $700 - $1500 for camcorder. My application is simple. An indoor set with plenty of fixed light and I need a hardwire mic jack. Real boring stuff with no action shots - very little movement. I just need good picture quality for simple talking head shots with insert edit closeups. I need a camcorder with an easy editable format. Don't know if I will buy Adobe Premiere Pro or just buy a MAC with FCP. I just want easy and don't want a long learning curve for the simple editing I will be doing. Back when I was looking into this stuff HDV was the way to go (vs AVCHD). Is HDV editing format hardware still cheaper? All I really need is DVD widescreen quality, no BluRay or anything.

I am looking for a camcorder recommendation now. I actually need two camcorders. Canon, Pan or Sony NO JCV or other. Also, Premiere vs FCP for shortest learning curve and also price. I will need to buy a new computer but am not at that point yet.

Need better job spec. If you only need DVD quality and short learning curve why are you looking at Premiere Pro and FCP both will take months to master. Way overkill.

A Mac+ FCP takes you into big $$$. A Win7 PC + Vegas Platinum about $500-700.

No real need to shoot HD for a wide DVD. A Canon HV40 shoots excellent DV wide native or converts in camera HDV to wide DV Firewire. The tape will be HD for future use.

Their are issues shooting AVCHD, the most difficult is getting a good software downscale for DVD. Also AVCHD editing is more demanding for computer hardware.

[pepegot1]

I bought this cam (Panasonic TM900) based on many reviews. Unfortunately, nobody explained the true faults of this cam. It is very annoying not to have an external battery charger-not thinking of customer. They placed the flash, for the camera function, in the lens barrel. Therefore, if you have any filters attached, they must be removed for dark conditions. No ring provided to attach a shoulder strap and a cheap looking gripper. The picture quality and menus are excellent. However, if you have to zoom, and do not have a tripod-you are in trouble. It is extremely difficult to zoom from hand held positions-unlike my old PV GS500 cam. The light weight is no help here. A tripod is a must! Pressing the stop rec. button is shake producing. The remote works quite well, if conditions allow for the setup, including tripod. However, many situations do not allow this luxury. Had I know this, I would have saved a little more and bought the Canon cam. Also, battery life is very short on their batteries and they want $160 for a long lasting one-what barbarity! All vendors are presently out of external battery chargers as of this date. They introduced this cam without any regard for an external battery charger being made readily available. They are not to be found-anywhere. Zoom control could be better.
The camera functions quite well with easy controls. I do not bother to use IA mode, as Manual mode is quick and easy.
he Canon model is: Vixia HFG10 and it is certainly worth a look as they have supposedly good zoom control and more mass.
For these cams you must have a very fast computer and software to go with it for editing and adjusting-not cheap.
Today, the cams are AVCHD. If DVD is all you want, go to Ebay and buy a used PV GS500 Panasonic cam for about $400.00. It will give you excellent picture quality with its 3 CCD sensors and minimal cost.

[TreeTops]

"If DVD is all you want, go to Ebay and buy a used PV GS500 Panasonic cam for about $400.00. It will give you excellent picture quality with its 3 CCD sensors and minimal cost"

I agree but they are getting scarce. Last check on Ebay showed none available.

[pepegot1]

NO! There are several available and at good prices. Type in search: PV GS500 and you will see.

[CliveJ]

Thanks for the tips. Think I'm going with the HV40 for the tape storage. Don't know what I'm doing with computer or software yet. This will keep me occupied for a while. One question I have though is - What is the resolution of a basic Hollywood widescreen DVD (just so there is no big misunderstanding). That is all I'm looking for in a camcorder right now. Thanks again for the tips.

[edDV]

Thanks for the tips. Think I'm going with the HV40 for the tape storage. Don't know what I'm doing with computer or software yet. This will keep me occupied for a while. One question I have though is - What is the resolution of a basic Hollywood widescreen DVD (just so there is no big misunderstanding). That is all I'm looking for in a camcorder right now. Thanks again for the tips.

All DVD (also DV) is 720x480 with non square pixels. This is true for 4:3 or 16:9.

The HV40 can record in native DV mode or HDV at 1440x1080. Either format can be sent to computer over Firewire as DV 720x480.

[TreeTops]

pepegot...found them. Thanks for the info. That is one great DV camera. I can attest to that as I have one.

[BogieV]

I've been away for a while shooting video but recent projects made me re-shoot some footage.
I own Pana NV-GS100 (the Japanese version - first of the 3 in this very good series)
I found the quality of the "wide" setting just a little bit better for the new wide LCD TVs but still it is not meant to be used for HD screens I guess.

I would follow the advise to get newer generation (as the mentioned Canon) that can shoot native HD (or at least better than SD) and transfer on the fly in DV.avi to your PC.

Later when you decide to work with higher resolution video you can always use those abilities while I have to buy new cam to be satisfied for the bigger screen. And yes - even for making SD DVDs I feel the source quality of my current Pany is not up to the task.
I have the feeling that the finer, smoother pictures of the high resolution cams make for a better source for the MPEG compression giving less noise for the final SD DVD.

[magillagorilla]

Digital tape is no longer a "cheaper" alternative. I still see this flawed logic. Now, if you are on remote "location" and need to shoot and store 40 hours of video, then maybe tape makes sense. Though a laptop may weigh less than 40 tapes.

Here is some math. It's fuzzy, and my prices are high. I know you can get an HDV tape for under $10 and you can get a 1TB HDD for under $100. We will use high prices and round numbers to look at this.

So a 63min HDV tape at $10 would be 16 cents a minute.

A 1TB HDD (a fancy external USB model) would be $100. Let's run our SD memory based camcorder at 17mbps (I know it's on the low side). 17mbps is about 2.125Megabytes a second. Your 1TB drive will hold about 8200min of 17mbps video or 137hours respectively. This puts our storage cost at about 1.2 cents a minute.

But wait, you still have to buy SD cards. You can get a 32GB SD card for about $50, which will buy you about 4.25 hours of video. So roughly 20 cents a minute for SD but, the card is reusable so it's a one time cost.

Let's be realistic. You'll need more than 1 SD card. 1 may fail of you may need more than 4 hours. So get 2x32GB SD cards. That put's the total, for 2 SD cards and a 1TB HDD at about $200. Over the span of 137hours of video captured and stored you are looking at about 2 cents per minute of footage.

HDV tape at 137 hours on 63 minute tapes at $10 a tape is, oooh boy, $1,300.

My numbers may be a little off but even if you get tapes in bulk for a half the price, you are still at a way higher cost. If 137 hours of video is way more than you need, cut your drive down to 750 or 500GB, you can get one of those for $50. SD cards at 16GB are really cheap, try $22 for a calss 10.

If you don't trust SD, get 6 of them, your are still cheaper, in the long haul, than tape.

Other tape verses flash issues:
HDV - Tape is stable and can be shelved for archive +1
Flash - HDDs are subject to mechanical failure -1
HDV - tapes (realistically) can be used 1 time -1
Flash -SD cards can be used 1000 times +1
Flash -SD cards may fail (don't get crappy ones) -1
HDV -Tape decks are subject to mechanical failure -1
Flash - Nonlinear footage transfer +1
HDV - Linear footage transfer -1
HDV - Camera breaks/battery dies no video playback until replacement camera -1
Flash - camera breaks/battery dies get a $5 card reader and load to any computer +1


HDV -3
Flash +1

[edDV]

Your tape cost is off. Also Pro MiniDV tapes such as Panasonic PQ can be used for DV or HDV with very good reliability. These are available well under $3/hr. Also tapes can be reused a few times without issue.

Sony HDV tape
$ 7.99/hr http://www.tapestockonline.com/mini-dv-hd.html

Panasonic HDV tape
$ 6.45/hr http://www.tapestockonline.com/pa63miamqus.html

Panasonic PQ Pro MiniDV
$ 2.15/hr http://www.tapestockonline.com/pa63mipqus.html

So tape is cheaper (up to 15x) and provides an auto backup +1, or +2
If you are upgrading from a MiniDV camcorder to HDV, the old tapes still play +1

Flash drives wear with cycles eventually dropping frames, so will need replacement -1

[magillagorilla]

Your tape cost is off. Also Pro MiniDV tapes such as Panasonic PQ can be used for DV or HDV with very good reliability. These are available well under $3/hr. Also tapes can be reused a few times without issue.

Sony HDV tape
$ 7.99/hr http://www.tapestockonline.com/mini-dv-hd.html

Panasonic HDV tape
$ 6.45/hr http://www.tapestockonline.com/pa63miamqus.html

Panasonic PQ Pro MiniDV
$ 2.15/hr http://www.tapestockonline.com/pa63mipqus.html

So tape is cheaper (up to 15x) and provides an auto backup +1, or +2
If you are upgrading from a MiniDV camcorder to HDV, the old tapes still play +1

Flash drives wear with cycles eventually dropping frames, so will need replacement -1

Look, I'm not tryint to troll up an arguement. Obviously my prices are a bit off, but I buffered them on both sides of the arguement. I have a stack of 1TB drives I got for $50 a pop, brand new. I can also go down to Microcenter and get 1.5TB drives for $79.

SD cards can fail (already gave that a -1). On a good card, like a Sandisk, it still takes hundreds of cycles before failure. Let's say I fill my $50 32GB card 10 times before it fails. That's 40 hours of video for $50. Your least expensive Panasonic tapes are going to run me $80 at that ratio. But lets be realistic, I'm going to get dozens if not hundreds of cycles from that card.

Tape is not less expensive, it is a weak arguement.

Tape does offer some archival advantages, but my $50 1TB HDDs seriously weaken the arguement. I have 3 backups of everything for not much financial investment.

"If you are upgrading from a MiniDV camcorder to HDV, the old tapes still play +1" I didn't consider that, it's very valid.

[edDV]

The HDD is a wash IMO because one would at minimum need a tape + HDD backup plus ideally an off site backup.

Most consumers don't back up. Flash needs a backup discipline. Bottom line, I think HDV tape has advantage for people already using MiniDV tape and those that record in large volume. The trend is to flash ram but the initial investment in cards is significant.

There are other issues of HDV/XDCAM (MPeg2) vs AVCHD (h.264) that has been covered many times.

[magillagorilla]

Ya, you have to have a very disciplined backup routine with flash based cameras. But, I'll reiterate, HDDs are inexpensive. I have 1 live, 1 local offline, and 1 offsite backups for a total of 3x1TB HDDs. That's a total investment of about $150 for all 3 drives.

Tapes need to be backed up too. They are not immune to mechanical failure, site disaster, and degradation. The fact that most consumers don't back up, does not grant any advantage to the tape format. Except for one, you can lose a few tapes and you are only out a couple hours of footage, loose a HDD and you're out all of your footage. Again, failure to back up either format is foolish.

In the end, mechanical media devices are going the way of the dinosaur. It's just a matter of time.

Think about the not too distant future where 4k video becomes the new standard. Tape is not going to work at all for data rates that high.

And yes, AVCHD is a horrible editing format. But faster hardware and clever application developers should fix that. AVCHD is pretty much the standard camcorder format. Where there is a mass consumer market, innovation will follow. That's th enice thing about standards, even if they are not good standards. I've had excellent luck editing AVCHD in Vegas, albeit painfully slow to transcode.

[ricardouk]

HI everyone!

after reading magillagorilla and edDV answers/arguments i found myself still wondering which camcorder/format i should buy, up untill now i had a minidv cam which stopped working, i have friends with HD camcorders but the video quality doesn't look that good to me, my questions are:

which HD format (HDV/AVCHD) gives the best quality? do both formats compress on the fly to mpeg2/h264? from what i read online h264 is better than mpeg2 but that also depends at what bitrate the camcorders "record/compress on the fly" to the hdv tapes or memory cards right?

i found the quality/workflow with minidv good...

1-record
2-use windv to capture through firewire
3-convert to whatever format i needed.

my objective is to have the "best" video quality at the end of step2 like i had with dv-avi using minidv tapes.

[aedipuss]

HDV is mpeg-2 25mbps. it's recorded on tape at 1440x1080 but in square pixels it is 1920x1080. it would use the same workflow as your minidv cam except you'd use the free program HDVsplit to capture over firewire with.

avchd is more highly compressed mp4. a little harder to work with and doesn't render to other formats as nicely as HDV. imo.

[ricardouk]

hello aedipuss, thanks for the info, i've been following eddv answers here for a while now about hdv versus avchd pros and cons, my doubt is if the bitrates are fixed for hdv and avchd, do all the hdv and avchd cameras record at the same bitrates or do canon encode @25mb and sony etc @20mb, do both formats record/encode at a specified bitrate? no differences between brands?

is mpeg2 @25mb enough for HD? for "home usage": holidays, family etc

do you know anywhere online where i can find a sample from hdv and avchd recording the same thing? haven't found anything, from what i read hdv is more friendly to handle but does it have the "best" quality? Would be nice if anyone could post some short samples from both formats (untouched) filming the same thing.

[aedipuss]

avchd cam usually have several choices of bitrates to choose from.

HDV is a standard and tapes from different cams can be played interchangeably as long as they use the standard 1080i. there are HDV camera options to record at 30p, 24p, and some even allow 720 60p, so if those are used the recording cam is normally needed to play them.

HDV uses miniDV tape, so the same ~ 60 minutes and 13GB/hr to capture a tape.

[ricardouk]

from a HD newbie prespective its a bit difficult to decide, i kind of know how they work in theory and their pros and cons but for some reason i kind wanted to compare both fornats visually, 720p and 1080p, in identical situations, in theory from what i read here hdv is the most friendly one but on the other hand i dont do a lot of editing... just "cut" here and there and convert...no Fx or filters.

sorry if this looks confusing to you...thanks a lot for your comments/advice...they were helpfull

if anyone has those samples 720p/1080p from both fornats in similar conditions can you post them as i been unable to find the online, the ones i found are dead links.

Once again thanks

[edDV]

HI everyone!

Your first issue is your AMD Athlon II X2 245 CPU is probably not up to AVCHD requirements. HDV MPeg2 should work but will be sluggish. What is your editor and version?
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+II+X2+245

Are you planning to upgrade to a Core2Duo quad or better?

I'll be back later to comment on other questions.

[ricardouk]

Your first issue is your AMD Athlon II X2 245 CPU is probably not up to AVCHD requirements.

HI, well spotted, thought it was enough.

HDV MPeg2 should work but will be sluggish. What is your editor and version?
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+II+X2+245

by editor you mean video editor? i like to keep it simple...windv to transfer to pc through firewire, cut here and there with virtualdub, resave without recompression and convert to the format i need through avisynth or not.

Are you planning to upgrade to a Core2Duo quad or better?

yes.

I'll be back later to comment on other questions.

thanks...i'll read your comment tomorrow, its 2am over here...

Thanks

i've upload the benchmark test here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?ffxefbwnh0f1rvq

[edDV]

HI everyone!

after reading magillagorilla and edDV answers/arguments i found myself still wondering which camcorder/format i should buy, up untill now i had a minidv cam which stopped working, i have friends with HD camcorders but the video quality doesn't look that good to me, my questions are:

which HD format (HDV/AVCHD) gives the best quality? do both formats compress on the fly to mpeg2/h264? from what i read online h264 is better than mpeg2 but that also depends at what bitrate the camcorders "record/compress on the fly" to the hdv tapes or memory cards right?

HDV is a subset of the Sony Broadcast XDCAM format. XDCAM-EX records MPeg2 at up to 50Mb/s. The format for HDV was scaled for optimal performance on standard 25 Mb/s MiniDV tape thus allowing dual standard DV/HDV camcorders. SD MiniDV tapes can be played and captured from HDV camcorders. Also HDV recordings can be output in DV format with downscale performed in camcorder hardware. Thus the main HDV advantage is workflow in mixed SD / HD environments such as live broadcast or DVD production. HDV editing software is mature, some offering smart rendering. Minimum CPU requirement is approx Core2Duo dual core.

Like DV, HDV uses non-square pixels. HD video is shot 1440x1080i at 25 Mb/s CBR.

AVCHD is a consumer h.264 VBR format that had a rough start but hardware is catching up to make the format perform better. The original 1440x1080i 17 Mb/s format was generally considered below HDV quality especially after recode during editing. The next generation 1920x1080i 24 Mb/s models performed better mainly due to improved hardware codecs. Editing software remains problematic unless a digital intermediate codec is used such as Cineform or Apple's AIC. The faster Wintel i7/i5 quad core CPUs allow native h.264 editing with programs like Sony Vegas. Apple doesn't support native AVCHD editing.

In the past year the AVCHD format has been expanded downward to 1280x720 30p/25p "AVCHD Lite" and up to 1920x1080 60p/50p (AVCHD Rev 2.0). It should be noted that 60p/50p is not currently supported by DVD or Blu-Ray but 60p is useful for computer display.

The main issues with the format are computer/software requirements for editing and learning curve to do quality SD downscale for DVD. It is possible for the newbie to do simple I frame cuts and put 20-40 minutes on a so called "AVCHD" DVDR disc playable on most Blu-Ray players.

i found the quality/workflow with minidv good...

1-record
2-use windv to capture through firewire
3-convert to whatever format i needed.

my objective is to have the "best" video quality at the end of step2 like i had with dv-avi using minidv tapes.

HDV follows a similar workflow. The free capture software equivalent to WinDV is HDVSplit. Like DV, HDV is capable of live streaming over Firewire for network upload. AVCHD camcorders only offer live uncompressed HDMI (intended for monitoring).

AVCHD capture is usually done with proprietary software over USB2 or copied from flash card readers.

Some editors like Sony Vegas support "smart rendering" for HDV allowing frame accurate cuts of original camera generation video to be output to AVCHD DVDR. In other words, zero recode except for the cut GOP. It is necessary to remux video and audio from mts to m2ts for AVCHD or Blu-Ray disk.

Currently there is no smart render support for AVCHD camera source forcing a recode of all frames during editing.

[ricardouk]

Thanks for the "pros and cons" summary edDV, what would you recommend for a newbie? over the time i read your posts recommending the hv20/30/40 cams? the cheapest one i found (hv40) costs 560 euros (800 $), and it seems the older models are no longer on sale or cost more than the newer models lol

From the dozens of reviews i read I'm inclined to go for the hv30/40 models but its something ill need to wait and save for it...my financial priorities lie elsewhere.

[magillagorilla]

The tape fans have spoken. I have used, VHS, sVHS-C, and Mini-DV over the years. I just shoot family videos. Some of the people on this forum are professional videographers whose hardware choices favor pro and prosumer equipment. For shooting kids and dogs and birthdays, AVCHD works fine for me.

The lesson I learned from using so many formats is that using tape requires you to maintain equipment which can play the tape back. You must also maintain transfer hardware. When you get a new PC you have to install/buy a firewire card. Fireware is cheap but it's turning in to a legacy interconnect.

Unfortunately, instead of transferring footage as I collect it, I let tapes stack up. Eventually I had years worth of tapes to transfer. When I "got around to it" I found that my Canon miniDV camera no longer worked. I thought I was going to have to buy a new miniDV camcorder, which was irritating because I already upgraded to a Canon HD HF100 and didn't need a new miniDV. Fortunately, a friend of a friend was kind enough to lend me a miniDV camera, even after I told him I needed to run about 30 tapes through it.

When I got my first HD camera my computer was a single core Pentium 4 with 2GB of RAM. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to edit the footage but it was easy to capture and transfer. I didn't even have a HD TV, haha! I was staying ahead of the curve on capturing my family moments with the best camera I could afford. 3 years later I was able to build a quad core machine with 4GB RAM. I am happy to say, I can now watch, edit and transcode my AVCHD in Vegas with no issues (except it's slow and a core i7 would be nice).

I work in the IT industry where I have, on many occasions, dealt with the headache of sorting out tape problems. Tape transports get old and outdated fast. Trying to retrieve data from a 20 year old tape, for which you have no working transport, whose format died 10 years ago, is not fun. Think about it, in 25 years are you sure you will have a functional miniDV transport. I was lucky to get a functional high quality VHS deck to transfer my VHS footage from 25 years ago. Tape "backups" are only useful if you have a playback device.

I finally finished transferring all of my audio cassettes, original band recordings and such. Some were done on a Tascam 4 track, which, big surprise, no longer worked. Then there was a stack of 50-60 miniDiscs I had to transfer. Luckily I had a working minidisc deck.

I switched to solid state audio and video recording and never looked back. No more keeping old hardware around just to maintain compatibility with my media. I left film cameras 11 years ago. Capture with flash, transfer, backup, done.

Tape, film and discs served their purpose and did well. It's time to let the sun set on physical media. I don't even burn DVDs anymore. With HD TVs, portable media devices, and network media players there is no need to transfer video to optical media.

[edDV]

While I basically agree on the future direction, if you bought an HDV cam you could have transferred the old tapes with the new cam and would be able to shoot SD where needed. Granted the latter is more expected in a pro shoot where you need to shoot SD or HD. AVCHD camcorder SD modes are inferior to and incompatible with DV. Also lack of live compressed uplink can be killer in a pro environment.

I also agree that over time, a working camcorder will be difficult to maintain although my early 90's Hi8 and SVHS decks still work. That is why your primary backups will be on HDD. The tape is likely to outlast hard drives and should be considered a last resort backup. There will be duplication/capture services for Hi8, Digital8, MiniDV and HDV for many years to come.

There are two separate issues here: MPeg2 (HDV/XDCAM) vs. h.264 (AVCHD) and tape vs. flash media. In the first case it is worth noting that broadcasters don't use AVCHD as an acquisition format, they use MPeg2 or non-GOP DVCProHD or AVC-Intra. XDCAM is available with flash or optical media. It is true that neither Sony nor Canon have produced a flash ram based HDV camcorder for the consumer market.

JVC has gone MPeg2 (XDCAM) for it's pro/prosumer flash ram line and Canon is expected to follow. Sony and Panasonic have made AVCHD based models with prosumer features (AVCCAM and NXCAM). The video format is the same as consumer AVCHD but audio is uncompressed.

[magillagorilla]

Yes, most of the time tape will outlast a HDD. But "no tape player, no data retrieval". Nuff said on that subject.

" There are two separate issues here: MPeg2 (HDV/XDCAM) vs. h.264 (AVCHD) and tape vs. flash media. In the first case it is worth noting that broadcasters don't use AVCHD as an acquisition format, they use MPeg2 or non-GOP DVCProHD or AVC-Intra. XDCAM is available with flash or optical media. It is true that neither Sony nor Canon have produced a flash ram based HDV camcorder for the consumer market."

Yes broadcasters have different requirements. I suspect their adoption of MPEG2 is more due to legacy compatibility in their workflow. I also understand that MPEG2 is far less resource/processing intensive. This makes sense for a broadcaster, there will be fewer chances for a delay due to decoding/encoding overhead. Give me an HDV camera with a replaceable SSD instead of a tape drive at the price of an AVCHD camera and you have a convert.

I'm not a big fan of AVCHD but I tolerate it because of my dislike for tape. AVCHD looks good, but it does not tolerate being re-encoded too many times and it's very processor intensive. Plus, it's proprietary. The use of SD cards for "everything", I believe was another mass market drive concerned with pushing product and not quality. SD's lack of fault tolerance is a major design flaw, or is it? I suspect the card manufactures see no enterprise in creating memory cards that last forever.

Things are looking up with the newer 24-28mbps AVCHD cameras. Better looking frames, less data reduction, will benefit the workflow. The original AVCHD specs were written before 32-64GB class 10 flash cards existed which is why the bit rate was so low. AVCHD 2.0 standards should be a significant update, in the baseline for "compatible" editors and playback devices.

I am by no means well versed in the technical aspects of codecs. It just seems to me that the rightful place for h.264 is the final format after editing. I've seen some damn nice h.264 content.

Though I am a little confused about the m2ts (MPEG2 Transport Stream) wrapper AVCHD puts its h.264 in. Or at least, my Canon software does this. I'll have to read on it a little more. Is it actually h.264 in an MPEG2 container?

Good discussions here. Thanks

[2Bdecided]

Panasonic's 1080p60 is visibly superior to HDV, and as display sizes increase over the years the difference will only become more obvious.

But if HDV is good enough for you, it's a far simpler workflow at the moment. Vegas HD is very cheap and very good.

I can't see the point of jumping off tape unless you need faster ingestion, higher quality, physical robustness / simplicity, or simply don't care about the tape backup (e.g. ephemeral footage which you'll dump the next week anyway).

But like it or not, tape is on its way out. It's certainly "niche" in 2011.


I jumped onto DV before it was easy to edit it. I jumped onto HDV before it was easy to edit it. I'll probably jump to 1080p50 before my PC can cope I do get around to editing some stuff eventually, but being mostly family stuff, the footage is far more interesting five or ten years after it was shot and everyone has grown up some! By which time, playing back the "cutting edge when shot" video is trivial.

Cheers,
David.

[2Bdecided]

Unfortunately, instead of transferring footage as I collect it, I let tapes stack up.

If you do the same with your HDDs, eventually you will have no home movies, and no one will be able to help you.

Whereas the tape is likely to remain playable, and someone somewhere will have a machine to play it even if you don't.

Of course, ideally, in both cases, you do the transfer yourself and actively manage your digital data.

But in the situation of casual neglect, the tape wins in the medium term.

In the long term, I don't think we have anything comparable to putting old black-and-white photos in a shoe box and leaving them for half a century or more. Any current media that's forgotten for half a century or more is probably doomed. Not great for future historians, or for showing your grandkids what you looked like as a baby. Two decades ago, we couldn't even copy those tapes losslessly!

Cheers,
David.

EDIT: Still, at least we now have a choice. Until relatively recently, home video created a mind-boggling amount of data compared with typical HDD capacities, so there was little choice but to rely on tapes.

[magillagorilla]

Unfortunately, instead of transferring footage as I collect it, I let tapes stack up.

If you do the same with your HDDs, eventually you will have no home movies, and no one will be able to help you.

Whereas the tape is likely to remain playable, and someone somewhere will have a machine to play it even if you don't.

Sorry 2Bd, I can't let that statement go unchecked. The market to recover data from HDDs is likely equal if not bigger than miniDV tape restoration. I wager that in 25 years someone will still have a method of extracting data from an SATA drive. I started out with EIDE, then migrated to SATA. When the new HDD standard, whatever it is, takes hold I will migrate data again. After all, it's just a nonlinear data transfer.

When EIDE was king at 500GB drive was big. Now a 3TB SATA is big. I suspect the next storage standard will see 10-20TB per drive. It becomes easier to push your video forward because storage capacity increases as your collection increases.

I think tape as a backup medium is a watery argument. miniDV is a specific format which requires a purpose built transport to retrieve data. HDDs are universal. Look at all the trouble people go through to recover obscure film formats 20-40 years later.

I have several backplane converters to turn a EIDE/SATA drive in to, eSATA, USB, and firewire. Furthermore the file system is NTFS, which is readable by Windows and Linux. Windows maintains backwards compatibility with all NTFS standards. There are also millions of HDDs using this format ranging from home to corporate use.

The best solution is to move all your data, flash or tape based, to HDD. Push your data along every 4-5 years to a new HDD. Don't rely on someone somewhere having a working miniDV player in 25 years. When you find that person it's gunna cost you a whole lot more for their services than buying some new HDDs every 5 years.

Keep 3 HDD sets. 1 live, 1 offline, 1 offsite.

Look a bit more in to the future. You'll have a 200Mbps internet connection and 1TB of cloud storage for cheap.


I think the real challenge is going to be keeping codecs alive. Codecs fall out of fashion quickly. Will your codec work on Mac OS 15 or Windows 12? That's my primary concern. I think MPEG2 is a safe bet because it's used by broadcasters. Codecs like HUFFYUV and AVCHD worry me a little. Boutique codecs like x264 in an MKV wrapper worry me a lot more. I really don't want to have to transcode 1TB of video to a new codec.

[edDV]

I think the real challenge is going to be keeping codecs alive. Codecs fall out of fashion quickly. Will your codec work on Mac OS 15 or Windows 12? That's my primary concern. I think MPEG2 is a safe bet because it's used by broadcasters. Codecs like HUFFYUV and AVCHD worry me a little. Boutique codecs like x264 in an MKV wrapper worry me a lot more. I really don't want to have to transcode 1TB of video to a new codec.

I agree that Huffyuv and Lagarith support will disappear over time. I suspect divx/xvid will suffer loss of support as h.264 takes over. Best bets for affordable long term support are

SD

DV (on HDD) -- Most broadcast SD archives exist in DV format (DV, DVCPro, DVCAM) plus it was a 10 year home camcorder format. Rare that broadcast and home camcorders use the same format.

DVD MPeg2 -- the DVD will be supported for many many years.

HD

ATSC MPeg2 -- Fortunately MPeg2 in MPeg2 transport stream (MTS) is similar for ATSC, HDV and XDCAM.

DVB MPeg2 -- similar story to ATSC for MPeg2. H.264 varies so should not be as trusted for long term archive.

Blu-Ray/AVCHD disc -- requires the MPeg2 (m2ts) transport stream but can contain MPeg2, VC1 or h.264. My guess is VC1 will lose support and h.264 will remain a "work in process" for some time so may not be the best long term archive.