For the Sony Handycam HDR0SR11...what does internal disk drive mean?

Question

... is it different from a hard drive? does it require the purchase of a disk?Also, is this camera high def? do you recomend it? sound quality and all?

thanks~

Answer 1

The Sony HDR-SR11 is a consumer-grade, internal hard disk drive (HDD), camcorder that uses a very high compression method and stores files in a relatively new AVCHD format.

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stor...

You do do not need to purchase a disc for the camcorder.

The camcorder description says it captures high definition video.

I would not recommend it because using such high compression as the first step of the process means the BEST possible quality will be limited to that. Compressed digital video = discarded video data = reduced video quality (which is one, of many, reasons why the professionals continue to use miniDV tape and DV/HDV, DVCPro and HDCAM formats.

NO consumer camcorder has "good" built-in mics - the better consumer camcorders can connect external mics and have manaul audio control. The good news is that this camcorder has an external mic jack. I strongly suggest you download and read through the camcorder's manual

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/model-h...

Check to see if it has manual audio control.

Two warning items:

1) Hard drive camcorders do not like vibration. Loud audio - bands, planes, motors, etc, will cause enough vibration to cause the hard drive heads to park and video capture will not be allowed. Then the camcorder buffer will overflow.

2) Hard drive camcorders do not like high altitude - that means anything over about 9500 feet. The camcorder will not allow video recording - the hard drive heads need air pressure and air.

MiniDV tape based camcorders and flash memory camcorders do not suffer from either of these issues.

Also, AVCHD video is relatively new. Windows MovieMaker can't handle it. Current versions of Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere are recommended for the Windows environment; an Intel-Mac running iMovieHD08 or FinalCutExpress4 or FinalCutPro2 are required for the Macintosh environment.

MovieMaker can't hande HDV, either... but iMovieHD has been able to work with HDV since version 5 on PPC based Macs - a custom install of the Apple Intermediate Codec from the MacOSX system discs is required.

Answer 2

It has a hard disk inside.

This makes it highly prone to damage.

Tapes still offer a higher quality, because less processing is required.

AS for AVC, thats just MPEG4-10.

This codec requires an insane amount of precessing to get it encoded into a good quality. I seriously doubt that some cheapo camera will have enough processing power to encode it with enough quality and size so it makes it onto the hard drive efficintly....only way is to reduce the quality of video...

Why do you think that professional tapeless camcorder use special memory card like p2 or sxs and not hard drives ?

I would NOT recommend any camcorder with an internal hard drive.