Just bought the Sony HC3

[Helevitia]

If anyone wants to know anything about it, post your questions I am currently charging the batteries, so I don't know much about it yet. I am also an amateur to video recording and editing, so your questions should be easy enough for a 5 year old to understand

I have 14 days to return it if I don't like it.

I do know one thing, the slow mo feature has horrible qulity, worse than DV mode. Also, I bought the cheapest mini dv tapes money can buy, so we will see if I run into issues.

[Helevitia]

Oh, one more thing. Any advice offered on which is the best video editing program to use, which codecs are best, or anything else you want to offer adice on

Thanks!

[Brian Ellis]

Oh, one more thing. Any advice offered on which is the best video editing program to use, which codecs are best, or anything else you want to offer adice on

Thanks!

The best video editing proggy will cost you 10 times more than your cam If you want a low-cost entry level one, go for Ulead VideoStudio. The most economical prosumer one with most of the bells and whistles + flexibility and ease-of-use, try Ulead MediaStudio Pro. You can download either/both, as trial proggies, free, from www.ulead.com.

[Helevitia]

Thanks Brian

[Helevitia]

I thought I'd report in on my thoughts with using this camera for a few days.

1. The video looks amazing! It is very clear and sharp. In bright conditions, it is just as good as Discovery HD.

2. Once you get inside or in lower light conditions, the video is still pretty good, but as it gets darker, noise shows up significantly. I haven't bought a cmacorder for 8 years. It amazes me that we still have these kinds of problems. Maybe I am expecting too much.

3. HDV only supports 384K mp3 audio files. I just found this out yesterday. I guess they wanted to keep things to a minimum.

4. Audio sounds suprisingly good! Everything sounds crisp and clear for a 2 channel mic. It picks up the smallest noises. I tested it out in my work the other day and when I watched the video later, I noticed a horrible background noise. Like a hum of some sort. I thought it was the camera with crappy audio. when I went into work the next day, sure enough, there was a low humming noise from the A/C unit. I was suprised!

5. The slow mo feature sucks really badly in low light. To the point where you shouldn't ven bother. It has to be very bright. Even then it appears to be 480i or lower with lots of noise and grain.

6. The still camera feature is pretty damn good. Of course, I own a Rebel XT and it doesn't comapre, but for tight situations where I may not have my camera, it is nice to know I can take 4mp pictures.

7. This is where the really disappointing stuff starts. The capturing of HDV is absolutely frustrating at best. First of all, you need an extremely powerful computer to capture and preview at the same time. I have an AMD 3500, 2GB memory running @ 2-3-2, Asus X800XT PE w/ 256MB memory and I drop frames when capturing in some programs. This is highly disappointing as you have to jump through hoops and buy very expensive programs to circumvent this. Maybe it is my lack of understanding since I am new to all of this. I expected it to be easier than this.

8. Tonight, something really ****ed up started happening. I try to playback video on my TV and it blanks out for no apparent reason. And the problem is from the camera, because the screen is blank on the camera.

So I am so far disappointed to say the least.

[Jerry Jones]

The capture issue is something that speaks volumes about the advantage of the forthcoming HD camcorders that will record to disc or to SD memory cards.

With discs and cards, there will no longer be a need to "Firewire" HD video to your computer's hard disk.

Capture will be much simpler.

This is why I sold my HDV camcorder.

I believe for this very reason that tape-based HDV camcorders are obsolete - because one should not have to buy a newer, faster computer to capture.

Existing processor power is quite sufficient to EDIT the high resolution video.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[IM_Riktar]

Just in case you haven't picked an editor yet, go with Mediastudio Pro over Videostudio. The interface for Media Studio Pro is MUCH more intuitive than Videostudio. Unless of course Ulead has wised up and ditched the interface for Videostudio.

I tried Videostudio a few years back and was very underwhelmed by it's interface.

[Helevitia]

FYI - I returned the camera a few days after my last post. It's painfully slow to capture video. I'll wait until we can record HD on a disc or hdd.

I also got hit with a 15% restocking fee $182 down the drain.

[Jerry Jones]

You were probably better off getting rid of it.

HDV, in my opinion, is not the greatest camcorder technology out there.

It's tape-based and that's lame.

And while it can be edited, it presents a whole new set of problems... the need for the fastest processors and the newest display adapters, etc.

At present, I think plain vanilla MiniDV still ranks as the best value out there.

1) compact;
2) easily edited;
3) decent image quality

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Brian Ellis]

4) Format compatible with DVD.
5) No single HD standard accepted for DVDs

[Jerry Jones]

Agree with Brian.

In addition, I would offer the following opinion:

6) A good 2/3" CCD ***standard definition*** MiniDV or DVCam camcorder with high quality optics can produce an image that beats the images recorded by ***high definition*** HDV camcorders with relatively small, 1/3" CCDs and cheaper optics.

Example:

http://tinyurl.com/cgl8b

Of course, $18,000 may seem like a lot of money, but - in reality - it's a deal for the images this type of camcorder can generate.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Hulk]

I don't have an inherent problem with the HDV format but I do agree that it would be nice to have another option besides tape based cameras. It would just be so nice to have the option to buy an HDV camera in tape based or hard drive based configurations.

The higher processor overhead of editing the MPEG-2 HD format can be problematic but faster and cheaper processors are just around the corner, that corner being July 23

And there is always the option of using an intermediary such as CineForm.

I think the HDV format may have some legs since real time in-camera MPEG-2 compression will improve with successive camera generations.

Then again the DV-like data rate of HDV was decided upon so that existing tape transport technology could be employed in HDV cameras. If hard drives were used in the cameras most any format would be available for recording.

- Mark

[Jerry Jones]

Mark,

The trouble that the HDV group faces now is that Panasonic and Sony have jointly announced (and are pouring huge development effort into) a brand new consumer HD format... AVCHD.

And as explained here...

http://tinyurl.com/pc7d8

...Panasonic will be designing camcorders that can record that HD format directly to memory cards, which is cool.

Everybody sees this differently, I realize.

But I sold my HDV JY-HD10 for a loss and I wish now that I hadn't jumped onto the HDV bandwagon. I think I lost around $1,000 in value within six months of that deal.

For me, MiniDV makes more sense - for now - than an upgrade of processors, monitors, etc. just to enjoy HDV when an arguably more advanced format is less than a year away and prices of monitors continue to fall.

I wonder what's going to happen to HDV after the release of the first AVCHD camcorders.



I don't know, but one has to wonder how much life will be left in that format when new customers see how much easier it is to use memory cards.

Panasonic has also announced plans for new memory cards with huge capacity and high data transfer rates...

http://tinyurl.com/kq4eu

...up to 32gb and data transfer speeds up to 6mb/second!

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

I forgot to add that by the time the new AVCHD camcorders are available, we might have a better idea of how the high definition DVD fiasco is going to impact us.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Hulk]

Jerry,

I have no dog in this fight. For some people the use of HDV now makes sense as they can "future proof" their productions for later HD release, when distribution media is available. For many people like yourself HDV does not make sense.

From what little info your link provides I'm not excited about this new format. It appears to be moving in the wrong direction, that is from the highly compressed MPEG-2 HDV format to the even more compressed H.264 format. I don't think either is a good editing format but H.264 is generally a nightmare to edit.

It will be interesting to see how this works out as eventually we'll have quite a few HD consumer/prosumer camcorder choices I think. This is because once we're free from the miniDV tape spec a manufacturer can use whatever recording format they want and simply provide the codec so that all video apps on your computer can work with it, or in a worst case situation transcode it to a format optimized for editing.

I've used the Sony 3 chip HDV cameras and personally think they are significant leap from DV camcorders.

- Mark