Whoa... that's cool! Cute grandchildren btw. About your response to my first question, I meant proper films! (Sorry I should've been more clear). I'm actually making a film, involving my Dad and I (with a very good storyline), and it's in my father's memory, but I cannot say the storyline out yet! I want to see (once I've created the film)if I can get cancer research to distribute the film (my Dad pased away of cancer a few months back in October). I'm a twelve year old with BIG plans i just need to sort myself out first and have everything set out properly. So what d'you think?
First, I am sorry that you lost your father so early in your life. As for good enough for the Cancer Society for distribution of the film, I don't know if it is good enough for that. It all depends on what they would require. Contact them.
Thanks. I know, I saw an apparent HD video of it, and it wasn't as good as I'd expected - AT ALL. I had a look at this video sample of the hdr-fx7 - I was SHOCKED. I can't begin to tell you how surprised I was, have a look for yourself! (Maybe DV really is better than hdd, which I'd been doubting. And he did edit the video, but only adjusting the colour[according to him]) http://www.stage6.com/user/Cort_land/video/1914411/Bee-captured-on-a-HDR-FX7 For the sr7 this looks quite decent: http://www.stage6.com/user/webripper/video/1709568/Boca-Grande-beach-Hdr-sr7-test-720p Although this one puts me off (still sr7): http://www.stage6.com/user/florilege64/video/1756071/Test-HD-:-Sony-HDR-SR7
Wow! Those examples are very bad indeed but I can asure you the camera is better than that! Remember that those movies are not full resolution and they have been DivX encoded. I've got some example footage I took with the camera that I can put somewhere for you. If you have the CoreAVC codec installed you can play the MTS file directly in media player (i.e. data straight from the camera rather than being recoded). Having said that, in answer to your earlier posts, I'd say DV is still better than the other compression techniques and I'd definately say the the camera IS NOT high quality enough to do real film work with. If you're looking to do something serious then a consumer level unit (even a medium to high end one) isn't going to give you the quality you need. Let me know how to get the MTS files to you as I don't fancy posting an FTP or web link directly on the forum otherwise I'll be spammed left, right and center! Oh yes, before I forget, Nero got back to me with a big list of things I need to do to provide them with a full bug report and they have accessed my FTP server so watch this space. And Sony Vegas still crashes on some of the files (only 2 of the 90 I shot) so compatibility is very much improved but still not perfect. Still a few software revisions to go before things are glitch free I think.
Siwanisal is correct. You are not getting an accurate view, because those movies are DivX. I did not want to download a DivX viewer, so I didn't watch them.
Thank you very much for that! I certainly do uderstand your spamming point, so my email address is smokethis2008@hotmail.com. I did take into account that it was divx encoded, but I wasn't sure how much quality had been reduced due to that. Thank you for telling me about the codec, I'm sure I'll be able to pick that up some time soon. I'm guessing you'd recommend me to get a DV camcorder to do real film work with? (To be honest, I was trying to avoid that because of the DV tape costs, but oh well for me) What is it that makes the two differ? Why is tape better than HDD? Is there one right now on the market that you'd really recommend to me?
The cost of the tape is insignificant with respect to the quality of the memories you will get by using tape.
sorry I actually hadn't finished writing that, cuz my pc crashed on me while I was typing it... however, why does it differ from hard drive recording?
The quality, of the captured file, is superior to the hard drive quality. It is also superior to the quality of a MiniDVD. The reason is, MiniDV tapes can be captured as .avi files, which results in lossless video quality. Captures from hard drives and MiniDVD's are compressed video, which results in some loss of quality.
Hmm.. thanks again for another good explaination (and all the help so far), what I was wondering was, are there any HDD camcorders that captures video straight to .avi? I'm going to have to really consider my options here, however, I'm still writing script for the film, and discussing with my brother what camcorder to get. The Christmas holidays are coming up soon, and hopefully I'd have finished my script towards the end of it and have more time to think clearly about my final option. swinansal my email address is smokethis2008@hotmail.com, if you could send me the link to your server with the video sample, I'd be very grateful, and thanks for all your help so far too ;-> And of course to TPFKAS, thanks a lot for your help too so far. Saying thanks, don't be surprised if I ask for more help and answers some time soon!! ;->
Indeed there are no camcorder that record to hard drive in DV-AVI. Unfortunately according to many long standing video enthusiasts. Although DV is not a lossless compression (as suggested earlier in this thread), the compression rate is much lower than the reats that are usually used in mpeg, divx etc. and therefor the image is much better. One big advantage of DV is furthermore that all frames are compressed individually which makes it easier to edit and reduced the need for re-encoding unchanged frames. So why isn't there a hard drive camcorder that records in DV-AVI? Simple: because camcorder manufacturers tried to make HDD camcorders more attractive. The first models had a harddrive of 20GB, which is enough for around 1.5 hours of DV-compressed footage. Furthermore, if you then tranfer it to a PC, which you have to if your hard drive in the camcorder is full, you also would end up with very large files. So they decided to use mpeg-2 compression. This has another advantage: it is the compression that is also used on DVD, so you can simply take the files and use them for authoring DVD's. What we should not forget however is that many people that use miniDV tape (apart from the millions of people that just shoot loads full of holiday tapes just to never watch them again) will transfer their footage to DVD so it will be compressed to mpeg-2 anyway. However, if done with a proper encoder you can still get decent quality. All the above, however is the story before HighDef arrived on the market. MiniDV camcorder are certainly superior in quality over DVD and Hard Drive camcorders in standard definition. But if you go to HD and keep your material in HD all the way (meaning that you end up with HD-DVD) you have a good case for using hard drive camcorders that record in HighDef. But for the moment the amount of people that own a HD-DVD is still limited and there is still the war between HD-DVD and Bluray going on. The bottom line: if I would have to buy a new camcorder today, I still would opt for miniDV.
Well said, TPFKAS, Hopefully, the battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray will be over while I am still young enough to partake of the final product.
Yeah, but I should read my own posts before pusing the button. Too many typos... :-( But I'm pretty sure that you will live to see the the conclusion of the battle. These days it it will not take as much time as it did 30 years ago during the battle of the various tape formats.
Thank you very much TFKAS, I do indeed want to keep it HD the whole way through, however I don't own a HD-DVD or a HD-DVD player, and I'm 12 years old! I mean this is my time, my generation! And Bruce, you seem like you have a long way to go in life! Very full of life (from what I can see) and knowledge. So most likely you'll see it through to the last stand! When I become older, I want to be like you; still keeping up with all the new technology, and being very wise and helpful to other people, like in this case, it was me! ;-) Thanks man!
So I guess we'll be hearing from you in 10 years from now as the new Steven Spielberg ;-) As said earlier in this thread make sure you have access to a powerfull PC that is able to edit AVCHD without any conversion. And for archiving purposes I would also reccomend to throw in a decent size external hard drive.
It's the dream! And I have the inspiration from many friends and family members, including my Dad (though my career choice was unknown to him, he wanted me to follow my dreams and be sucessful), which the film I'm writing script for revolves around a lot. About the PC, if I did the shooting in January, February I'd have a week off from school to spend with my brother, so if my brother let me, I could use his PC, which I know is very powerful, and on top of that he's upgrading it (well according to him, but knowing my brother, that's a few years away!). I also have permission from my English teacher to do all the editing work on his Mac, as long as I stay in school with the whole editing process; he is a really good teacher! And then I have the support from my drama teacher too, where in their studio they have loads of editing software and hardware (also in my school though). So, I think I'm relatively safe (and I mean RELATIVELY, because those options aren't all that stable). If I ever become the 'next' Steven Spielberg, I shall mention all of you to the world, and Afterdawn of course! For all your help, thank you. I may well be back to ask for more help on more cam.s, but 'till then - cya! Safe to all my fellow Afterdawn homies (safe is a british term for respect, for ya'll Americans! )
You are welcome, and thanks for the kind words. It isn't easy to comprehend all of this new technology, when you are a bit older, so I read and learn from the young. Life is good.
