I am looking to do some hardcore video editing. I have a 3.0MHZ P4mobile 512ddr and 80gb HD laptop Im not looking for taking pictures with this camcorder. Im looking for strait video quality. With the terms of video quality being at least 540lines, which is better. What brands should I go for? D8 seems to be cheaper while getting more bang for the buck. I don't want to spend alot either($500). Will I get the same video quality lines from a MiniDv & D8 camcorder.
Go with minidv. Digital8 is cheaper now but it is going out. There is more miniDV coming out and the connectivity with computers is great. I got my last batch of miniDV tapes for a great price (10 for $22)--look around on the internet, don't pay more than $4 or $5 for a tape. The tapes hold more also I think-- I think digital8 only holds 30minutes vs 60/90 for a miniDV. With regard to brands, I think that they are all pretty similar. I have a Sony and have had great results with it. I have heard mixed things about the canons. You can get their lowest model which has a great set of features for about $500 trv19. If you are going to do a lot of editing, the laptop will be tough as 1 hour of miniDV footage is about 12 or 13 gb and the hard drive fills up quickly.
Actually, D8 holds more than miniDV. D8 tape holds 3/4 amount of analog video. So if you have 60 minute Hi8 tape and you use it in D8 mode, it takes 3/4*60= 45 minutes. I have 120 minute tapes and those take about 1,5 hours of digital video. Standard miniDV corders can use the capacity that is marked on the tape. But in many models it is possible to use LP mode, but I do not know how that affects the quality.. Actual specs for res and quality in D8 and miniDV are about same. I bought D8-VCR because I had plenty of old 8mm and Hi8 tapes. Otherwise I would recommend miniDV machine. If you really look for hc editing capabilities you must have external HD for video use only (firewire HD works well if it is 7200 rpm model). I use my P4 laptop for editing and it works fine, but internal HD is too slow for realtime playback.
Personally, I would go with MiniDV. It is the clear path to the future. Either way, just make sure you go digital -- mainly for connectivity to the computer (you *can* suck in analog video, but most folks will run into some degree of a/v sync issues). I don't see much of a mass adoption future for Digital 8 -- it is more of a "cross over" technology -- allowing people to use their existing 8mm tape collection and making the leap to digital all at one time. For first timers, I would just go with MiniDV. As you can see, the only issue is price for the camera and media -- but as more people adopt MiniDV, this will get more reasonable (we are already starting to see this trend). As the previous post suggests, Harddrive speed and copacity are key concerns. You *can* use an Internal drive, but you need to use UDMA mode and not the old DMA. Harddrives that are rated at ATA66 or better should do fine. Also video will take advantage of large buffers on the disk -- like my 8MB buffers on my 120 GB drives is wonderful. With prices on drives these days (and rebates abounding), most folks should be able to slap an extra 120+ GB drive in. My only other major concern is RAM. The more, the better. I'm doing fine with 512 MB. Processor speed is also nice, anything over 1 Ghtz should be able to get by, but faster is better -- especially when converting AVI-DV to MPEG2 for DVD.
The DV tapes would be phased out in the not so distant future in favour of solid state storage. We already see camcorders with option of solid state media in combination of tapes.
Hi, Im new to this thread but I just got a brand new Panasonic Mini DV and I don't even use mini dv tapes or solid state memory as I just plug it into my wireless transmitter which sends it to my PC, where I can edit it and then burn to DVD. These Mini DV's are alot better than crappy High 8's!
Well, we still have plenty of time before solid state catches up. For example, Compact Flash currently is capped at 4 GB (although soon a 8GB is coming). Read/Write speeds are still less than desireable. When you consider it ususally runs about 12-14 GB per 1/2 hour on "standard" mode on MiniDV -- you can see we have along way to go. BTW, I know know of many digital camcorders using CF. Several are using SD or MMD or xD or something like that, which has an even lower maxium size. Also, because of the above limitations, several camcorders only record 10 to 60 seconds of poor quality MPEG 1 video. I personally think writing directly to mini-DVD-RW has a better chance of taking over as a standard before solid state. Right now, DVD-R based camcorders are a bit expensive and I'm sure they aren't saving the output in DV-AVI but rather in lossy MPEG format. Perhaps Blue-ray laser discs will help, but that's still way in the future (especially for camcorders). In all, MiniDV is the technology today that has a bright foreseable future. I don't see it phased out anytime soon (just like we were promised "solid state" harddrives by now). Your best bet is to get MiniDV for now. By the time a future technology makes MiniDV obsolete, your camcorder would have died by then anyways. Of course, only time will tell.
