digital video camera recommendations?
- Thread starter Franky
- Start date
Digital Camcorders
Sony, Panasonic head up the list with Canon and JVC following:
Be sure to get HD, high definition, and check out the optical zoom:
http://www.pcworld.com/product/pricefinder/browse/category.html?id=10366&page=1&src=sem&CMP=KNC-SEM&HBX_PK=pcw_01_shop_camcord_all-c&utm_source=shop_camcord_&utm_medium=all&utm_content=c&utm_campaign=Google-CPC
Sony, Panasonic head up the list with Canon and JVC following:
Be sure to get HD, high definition, and check out the optical zoom:
http://www.pcworld.com/product/pricefinder/browse/category.html?id=10366&page=1&src=sem&CMP=KNC-SEM&HBX_PK=pcw_01_shop_camcord_all-c&utm_source=shop_camcord_&utm_medium=all&utm_content=c&utm_campaign=Google-CPC
Download this for your computer:
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/elecard-avc-hd-to-dv-transcoder/#comments
This is a great site for downloads, it just happens this one is for a digital HD camcorder thats up there today.
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/elecard-avc-hd-to-dv-transcoder/#comments
This is a great site for downloads, it just happens this one is for a digital HD camcorder thats up there today.
I'm no expert but, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. And I have been doing alot of research on video cameras lately.
The HD is nice if all you are going to do is run the feed from the camera to a HDTV. To do any kind of editing with the HD it is a little more involved and takes some serious horsepower to do it without driving yourself nuts. You will also need a HDDVD or Blu-Ray burner and player to get the true HD benifits. It is neat stuff but seems to be a little more involved when you look into it.
The optical zoom should not really come into play if you are going to be mounting it for coverage of your pool table. Main factor is lighting, lighting,lighting. Unless you have a bright room you need to pay attention to something called lux. This is a number that tells you how well the camera performs in low light. The lower the number the better.
I would advise against buying one of the DVD cameras. Buy the mini-DV or HDD. The DVD cameras and their format will limit you in your editing possibilities should you choose to.
Here is an example of a cheap Sony Digital 8 TRV-480 on a tripod in a sunny pool room. The video has been compressed into the Google Flash format so it is not great. The original footage is MUCH cleaner and not too bad for around $350. http://www.theactionreport.com/links.html
I would also suggest making sure you have a manual mode that you can set the focus on the table. If you leave it on auto the camera may have a tendency too "hunt" for focus when a player is moving in the shot.
Honestly just about any quality camera from Sony, Canon, or Panasonic will probably do more than you need. IF you have enough light. There is a reason Accu-Stats and ESPN tables are as bright as the sun.
The HD is nice if all you are going to do is run the feed from the camera to a HDTV. To do any kind of editing with the HD it is a little more involved and takes some serious horsepower to do it without driving yourself nuts. You will also need a HDDVD or Blu-Ray burner and player to get the true HD benifits. It is neat stuff but seems to be a little more involved when you look into it.
The optical zoom should not really come into play if you are going to be mounting it for coverage of your pool table. Main factor is lighting, lighting,lighting. Unless you have a bright room you need to pay attention to something called lux. This is a number that tells you how well the camera performs in low light. The lower the number the better.
I would advise against buying one of the DVD cameras. Buy the mini-DV or HDD. The DVD cameras and their format will limit you in your editing possibilities should you choose to.
Here is an example of a cheap Sony Digital 8 TRV-480 on a tripod in a sunny pool room. The video has been compressed into the Google Flash format so it is not great. The original footage is MUCH cleaner and not too bad for around $350. http://www.theactionreport.com/links.html
I would also suggest making sure you have a manual mode that you can set the focus on the table. If you leave it on auto the camera may have a tendency too "hunt" for focus when a player is moving in the shot.
Honestly just about any quality camera from Sony, Canon, or Panasonic will probably do more than you need. IF you have enough light. There is a reason Accu-Stats and ESPN tables are as bright as the sun.
I dabble a bit with digital video editing and quite a bit with converting of analogue video to digital. High Def is of course nice but as mentioned very accurately I might add, it does come at some extra expense and practicality.
Some camcorders can shoot in either mode and you never mentioned your price range or your intent with respect to video editing.
My choice of standard definition video is the MiniDV format by far over either hard drive or DVD type camcorders. The DV codec offers a much more lightly compressed video with full frame references and is a VERY edit friendly format. MPEG type camcorders such as the hard drive and DVD start life as highly compressed video designed as an output or viewing codec rather than an editing friendly codec.
Much depends on your intended use. I can tell you lots of people starting out say they have no intention of editing their video, and find out later that they were wrong.
So, IMO speaking in terms of Standard Definition Video, I would recommend the MiniDV format, and a capable computer ( ideally free from internet use and tons of programs running in the background) a seperate external or internal hard drive, (cheap these days) specifically for storing and manipulating your digital video, and a firewire connection (which is a must) for downloading your DV video to your computer. USB is n/g for this.
As far as software to do your editing, rule number one is to download and try the free demo version of any program you may be interested in.
Again, IMO and in the order of what I believe to be the best software, Adobe Premiere or Premiere Elements, followed closely by Sony Vegas or Vegas Movie Studio, next in a slightly distant third are the ULEAD products such as Media Studio and Video Studio. The Pinnacle products ... I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole. Hope that offered a little more info.
Here is the place to log onto and ask your questions ....
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/f1
Some camcorders can shoot in either mode and you never mentioned your price range or your intent with respect to video editing.
My choice of standard definition video is the MiniDV format by far over either hard drive or DVD type camcorders. The DV codec offers a much more lightly compressed video with full frame references and is a VERY edit friendly format. MPEG type camcorders such as the hard drive and DVD start life as highly compressed video designed as an output or viewing codec rather than an editing friendly codec.
Much depends on your intended use. I can tell you lots of people starting out say they have no intention of editing their video, and find out later that they were wrong.
So, IMO speaking in terms of Standard Definition Video, I would recommend the MiniDV format, and a capable computer ( ideally free from internet use and tons of programs running in the background) a seperate external or internal hard drive, (cheap these days) specifically for storing and manipulating your digital video, and a firewire connection (which is a must) for downloading your DV video to your computer. USB is n/g for this.
As far as software to do your editing, rule number one is to download and try the free demo version of any program you may be interested in.
Again, IMO and in the order of what I believe to be the best software, Adobe Premiere or Premiere Elements, followed closely by Sony Vegas or Vegas Movie Studio, next in a slightly distant third are the ULEAD products such as Media Studio and Video Studio. The Pinnacle products ... I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole. Hope that offered a little more info.
Here is the place to log onto and ask your questions ....
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/f1
Thanks for all the input.
As far as my lights go, I'm sporting four 8'-75 watt bulbs and the brighter tournament blue cloth so that shouldn't be a problem. I've also spaced them out so that the camera can be mounted in a more vertical fashion to give both a somewhat better view of the table and eliminate shadows.
I'll check out cameras with the MiniDV format too. I'm a computer guy so I always have plenty of computing horsepower and storage around.
As far as my lights go, I'm sporting four 8'-75 watt bulbs and the brighter tournament blue cloth so that shouldn't be a problem. I've also spaced them out so that the camera can be mounted in a more vertical fashion to give both a somewhat better view of the table and eliminate shadows.
I'll check out cameras with the MiniDV format too. I'm a computer guy so I always have plenty of computing horsepower and storage around.
here is something to read and consider when selecting a digital video camcorder format, specifically DV-AVI (good editing codec) vs MPEG (not so good editing format.)
These formats as I mentioned relate to MiniDV vs Hard drive or DVD type camcorders.
http://tangentsoft.net/video/mpeg/edit.html
These formats as I mentioned relate to MiniDV vs Hard drive or DVD type camcorders.
http://tangentsoft.net/video/mpeg/edit.html
what is your main purpose for the camera? track your preformance? post online? What is your price range?
I sometimes record myself to keep myself in check.... make sure my fundamentals are on point and that im not getting sloppy. For this I dont need high quality, so i use the built in webcam on my computer (macbook pro) works great because it keeps the file size small so If want to upload to the internet, I dont have to compress it anymore than it already is. its about 1 min= about 1mb.
Now on the other hand, I have a $5000 HD camera... but to film myself paying pool with that is a little over kill.
I sometimes record myself to keep myself in check.... make sure my fundamentals are on point and that im not getting sloppy. For this I dont need high quality, so i use the built in webcam on my computer (macbook pro) works great because it keeps the file size small so If want to upload to the internet, I dont have to compress it anymore than it already is. its about 1 min= about 1mb.
Now on the other hand, I have a $5000 HD camera... but to film myself paying pool with that is a little over kill.
It'll be used for monitoring my personal improvement/performance (primarily), games/matches with friends, and of course the occasional family video. I'm willing to spend up to about a thousand on it. When I think about video cameras, I figure I'll upgrade in a few years time so I don't need a monster high end model.
I suppose I want it to be able to:
* distinguish the ball edges and colors fairly well
* feed a digital monitor in real time
* be able to record off of wall-power, not just battery power
* have a reasonable battery life when unplugged
* save easily editable files, I can convert file formats via a PC (we covered this methinks)
* have an easy way to mount the camera
* manual focus mode
* handle moderate light levels fairly well
That's about it I guess.
I suppose I want it to be able to:
* distinguish the ball edges and colors fairly well
* feed a digital monitor in real time
* be able to record off of wall-power, not just battery power
* have a reasonable battery life when unplugged
* save easily editable files, I can convert file formats via a PC (we covered this methinks)
* have an easy way to mount the camera
* manual focus mode
* handle moderate light levels fairly well
That's about it I guess.
something like this might be good.
http://www.buydig.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=CNVHV10
Its an HDV camera which will give you good resoultion. I doesnt look like it has any kind of manual focus, but In this price range, I think that might be hard to find manual focus. As far as capturing/compressing the footage on your PC, I beleive windows has a free program called "movie maker".
Oh, and if your looking to buy online... I would go with buydig.com. A lot of deals you find online are just scams. They get you to buy the camera, then try to sell you $2000 in extras... and when you dont buy from them, they charge you $300 in shipping. So yea, buydig.com has always been the best deal/service for me.
Hope this helps
http://www.buydig.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=CNVHV10
Its an HDV camera which will give you good resoultion. I doesnt look like it has any kind of manual focus, but In this price range, I think that might be hard to find manual focus. As far as capturing/compressing the footage on your PC, I beleive windows has a free program called "movie maker".
Oh, and if your looking to buy online... I would go with buydig.com. A lot of deals you find online are just scams. They get you to buy the camera, then try to sell you $2000 in extras... and when you dont buy from them, they charge you $300 in shipping. So yea, buydig.com has always been the best deal/service for me.
Hope this helps
just an FYI. The free windows movie maker does not have the ability to convert to the DVD TV standard format for TV top dvd player viewing.
That requires an mpeg encoder most commonly and best is the mainconcept codec. So although you may be able to edit your movies you can't burn them for use as regular DVDs without commercial software.
No biggie, but its best to know going in that if that is one of your intended outputs, be prepared to add at least another 75 to 100 bucks to the cost for a halfway decent video editing package that includes the mainconcept mpeg encoder.
That requires an mpeg encoder most commonly and best is the mainconcept codec. So although you may be able to edit your movies you can't burn them for use as regular DVDs without commercial software.
No biggie, but its best to know going in that if that is one of your intended outputs, be prepared to add at least another 75 to 100 bucks to the cost for a halfway decent video editing package that includes the mainconcept mpeg encoder.