HD Cam with Uncompressed Audio

[luckyo]

Hi

I am looking for an HD camera in the 600-1000 Dollar/EUR range, that can record uncompressed or lossless compressed audio.
It seems very difficult to me to find something like this.

I found this camera:

Sony HDR-CX740

Which say: The built-in microphone records 5.1 surround sound.

Does this mean it can record uncompressed/lossless audio with an external microphone ?

Because that is what I am looking for.

Any help would be very appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

[Baldrick]

I would guess that it captures to dolby ac3 5.1.

See http://www.digitalversus.com/camcorder/sony-hdr-cx740-p13074/test.html . They say ac3.

[brunerww]

Hi luckyo - sadly, the best consumer camcorders record only mediocre sound at a 48kHz sampling rate. Instead, you might want to look at high quality 24-bit/96kHz audio recorders with an added 1080p video recording function such as the 235€ Zoom Q3HD and the 230€ Olympus LS-20M.

These recorders capture professional quality sound recordings and basic 1080p video. Here is what these cameras can do.

Shot on Zoom Q3HD:



Shot on Olympus LS-20M (please watch in 1080p):



Another option might be to buy a standalone professional audio recorder with XLR inputs such as the 205€ Tascam DR-40 and a high quality prosumer interchangeable lens camcorder such as the Sony NEX-VG10 (746€ used from Amazon)

By syncing your sound during post-production with a program such as pluraleyes, you can have the best audio and video quality. The VG10 can produce video images like these:





Hope this is helpful,

Bill
Hybrid Camera Revolution

[luckyo]

Thank you to both of you.

1. AC3:

Unfortunately they dont specify which one exactly and according to here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_AC-3

All of them are lossy unless Dolby TrueHD.
I called Sony and all of them are lossy. At least in the consumer range.

2. Q3HD Zoom Camera:

I looked this up and this would be ideal if it had zoom, focus etc or have any camcorder like handling.
I need this cameras outdoors and need to zoom in and out and this seems not to be ideal.

I hoped there are camcorders out there that have PCM recording.
The HD would be secondary to the uncompressed.

But thank you again for your help.

[2Bdecided]

HDV uses MPEG-1 layer II at 384kbps.*

I'd be fascinated to hear your justification for 384kbps stereo audio coding being the bottle neck in the audio quality of a sub-$1000 HD camcorder's audio system!

As for recording 5.1 using a sub-$1000 camcorder's internal microphone, and then worrying that the codec set the limit on quality...!!!


If there is a good reason to avoid lossy coding (and a good reason to get better audio than built-in microphones, which is far far more important), brunerww gave you some great suggestions. The most important issue is how good the venue is, then where the microphone is placed, then how good it is, then how good the pre-amp is, then how well you edit+process it, then - just maybe - the fact it went through a lossy codec in the camcorder.

Cheers,
David.

P.S. * = In the unlikely event that you don't want to touch the audio after recording it, the 384kbps MPEG-1 layer II stream can be used in DVD authoring without transcoding.