Sony HC3

[limeyx]

I knew that. Just pointing out where they were still available. What are your plans now? Go with an HDD camera? Or the HVR-A1U? although it's probably discontinued now also, at least you can't find it under HDV camcorders on sonystyle.com

I hope Sony doesn't quit making a small form factor tape-based HDV camcorder. Or if they do, they need to be providing bigger storage media(removable would be nice) in their HDD models and get away from AVHCD. But I fear the trend is going the other way, witness the "Easy" button on some models now. I'm not willing to pay $3500 for either the FX1 or FX7 either, my camera and housing cost less.

First off, I think by the very nature of how fast technology is moving, us U/W users are somewhat resigned to using "obsolete" cameras.

However, I presume the manufacturer will still repair cameras (as best they can) and I think you can probably get replacements on eBay etc. for quite a while.

Seems like the FX1/1U has "legs" in that housings have been out for a while and for now the cam is still not (yet) phased out.

In theory (as I understand it) AVCHD can achieve better quality than HDV, and if you look at H.264 (the basis for AVCHD) then you can see fantastic results at low bitrates. However, H.264 does need a *lot* of CPU cycles to playback (kills my poor notebook and even stresses my G5).

I think the trend will be toward HDD and DVD recorders but with ever better versions of AVCHD for the "consumer" end cameras.

Regarding the "recompressing" issue -- Final Cut Pro can edit in HDV, but iMovie and Final Cut Express as far as I know translate into Apple Intermediate Codec, which I dont think is necessarily too much of a bad thing.

I was very nervous about editing and then recompressing a stream that is already compressed into MPEG-2 at first, but so far I have been pretty happy with the quality of the HDV streams.

To be honest, I think that once you get to around 25Mbps or so, the quality of the lenses/CMOS/CCD sensors start to make a big difference as well, and I think for now we are somewhat doomed on that end of things on the lower-end cams.

 

[paulpost]

I knew that. Just pointing out where they were still available. What are your plans now? Go with an HDD camera? Or the HVR-A1U? although it's probably discontinued now also, at least you can't find it under HDV camcorders on sonystyle.com

I hope Sony doesn't quit making a small form factor tape-based HDV camcorder. Or if they do, they need to be providing bigger storage media(removable would be nice) in their HDD models and get away from AVHCD. But I fear the trend is going the other way, witness the "Easy" button on some models now. I'm not willing to pay $3500 for either the FX1 or FX7 either, my camera and housing cost less.

Hi Steve is me again,
This time the focus is on the new camcorders that Sony will keep or not on the market. As we all know we already said goodbye to HC1 , soon HC3 and HCA1U will be fazed out. Reason? I think the big picture is not so good for Sony, let's do not forget that we as underwater video enthusiasts we are just a 0.0001% of their target market. I think that the changes we see are because their sells in this niche (HD minidv) did not met their expectations.
Let's make a scenario, lets take the average Joe that all he wants is to take a few shots of his dogs or kids in the back yard.
What do you think our Joe will chuse ( assuming he has a DVD player) of cause a camcorder that records to DVD. no headache , no video editing , no computer involved, by the way look around and think of all the people you know that have a camcorder, that is using it and on top of all is using a NLE software to make his/her home movies.
This is just an scenario I might be wrong and I hope I am , but if I'm not, well it's you"re take. Please express your opinions for the benefit of all of us.
Thank you for your attention
Paul

 

[Crewboat]

I guess I bought the last one from B&H, On 01/01/07. Need a back up?Hate when they do that.

 

[drbill]

You are correct, that's why I said you would not want the camcorder that records on DVD if you plan on editing.

I was agreeing with you rather than questioning. I just quoted yours as a starting point to elaborate on a little. Sorry about any confusion.

 

[limeyx]

You are correct, that's why I said you would not want the camcorder that records on DVD if you plan on editing.
...

Do those cameras really "record on DVD" or just record "data files" that happen to go on a DVD?

I thought that they recorded AVCHD "Hi def" data files that just happened to go on a DVD. This would Not be a DVD that would say play in a regular DVD player.

If they do output the data files (as I thought) then editing the footage is not really different than editing HDV output (except that for now AVCHD is lower bitrate).

if they really burned to a "playable" DVD then they would be rather useless as a DVD wont take HD footage.

 

[LowVizWiz]

I was agreeing with you rather than questioning. I just quoted yours as a starting point to elaborate on a little. Sorry about any confusion.

I never thought you were in disagreement, I just thought it was necessary to clarify why DVD vs. miniDV media. As you can see by the other posts it's not crystal clear to any of us. No harm done.

Do those cameras really "record on DVD" or just record "data files" that happen to go on a DVD?

I thought that they recorded AVCHD "Hi def" data files that just happened to go on a DVD. This would Not be a DVD that would say play in a regular DVD player.

It's not just a matter of it recording to DVD or not... it's a matter of what format do they record in. If it's AVCHD or MPEG 2 you will have to transcode to edit therefore data loss will occurr. Unless you're NLE uses that format natively.

if they really burned to a "playable" DVD then they would be rather useless as a DVD wont take HD footage.

Althought the footage will no longer be HD the visual quality of the picture would still be amazingly better than if shot in SD. I'm a firm believer of shooting at the highest possible quality regardless of what the intended final media is going to be. You never know where your video could end up

 

[limeyx]

...

It's not just a matter of it recording to DVD or not... it's a matter of what format do they record in. If it's AVCHD or MPEG 2 you will have to transcode to edit therefore data loss will occurr. Unless you're NLE uses that format natively.

This is true, *but* for most of us, right now HD *is* HDV (which is MPEG-2) so the DVD recorders that use AVCDH are probably no worse -- either way you are editing an already lossy compression that was really designed as a final delivery CODEC, not something that was really supposed to be tweaked with and re-compressed.
AVCHD for now might be a bit worse than HDV because it is compressing more than HDV, but I think that will eventually change.

Althought the footage will no longer be HD the visual quality of the picture would still be amazingly better than if shot in SD. I'm a firm believer of shooting at the highest possible quality regardless of what the intended final media is going to be. You never know where your video could end up

Agreed. I am editing SD and HDV in the same project right now and you can definitely tell the difference, especially if you need to color adjust, crop/zoom the shot etc.

I like the tapes because I can use the tapes as a cheap backup mechanism.
external USB's are around $150-175 for 500G these days? that would (I think) store maybe 15 hours of HDV for me (in Apple Intermediate Codec which is all that Final Cut Express supports), compared to 15 * $2.65 for tapes (which I consider more reliable than cheap USB hard drives)

 

[Shasta_man]

Sony is announcing the HC5 & 7 at CES.

 

[ScubaBob92651]

Um, CES starts tomorrow. Coincidence, I think not....

Oops, I meant it started Monday (today)

Cnet

Very cool CES camcorder tracking page here

 

[drbill]

Sony is announcing the HC5 & 7 at CES.

Any advanced info on them? Are they HDV or AVCDH? Can I afford either of them?