Should I buy a High Def Camcorder? Reccomendations?

Question

I really want to get into film editing as a serious hobby. I was hesitant at first to buy an HDD camcorder because I' have heard that the data is massive to upload onto my computer.

I own a PC w/ 2GB RAM and 250GB harddrive aswell as a Macbook of similar specs. Would they handle the HDD film without crashing or taking a very long time?

Does anyone have any recommendations as to which camcorders are the best buy (HDD or not) I want something with good picture quality, digital, and harddrive or HDD.

Thanks

Answer 1

OK; first thing is to clarify what you mean by HDD and HD...

HDD means the camera records onto a hard disc; could be standard definition could be High definition; the two terms AREN'T interchangeable...

Next is the compression issue..... ALL domestic digital video formats use some form of compression as do most broadcast formats. The greater the level of compression the more 'fragile' your recorded signal is...

MiniDV is SD only... Each frame of video is compressed spatially in a broadly comparable way to a JPEG still image and thus the temporal element of the video stream is preserved. The data rate is approximately  35.4 Mbit/s

HDV uses MIniDV type tape; but it records a completely different type of signal on the tape. The basic frame size is of course greater but to preserve an approximately similar data rate the compression scheme uses both spatial compression (as per MiniDV) and temporal compression. Essentially this throws entire frames away and mathematically 'guesses' what they contained on playback.  

HDV is based on MPEG-2 video This is the same type of compression used for DVD video and allows HDV to achieve high spatial resolution at low data rates compared to other HD recording formats. HDV 1080i uses a recording data rate of 25 Mbit/s (3.125 MB/s)

This means that there should be no appreciable difference in the size of the actual HDV files stored on your computer and  MiniDV files stored on your computer.  Users reporting their hard disc space being 'eaten up' by editing HDV material are more likely experiencing issues either with the processing power of their machine or their editing software utilising space for proxy  files using an intermediate codec...

Editing HDV requires a lot of computing power as frames that do not actually exist as independently have to be re-built by the NLE system on-the-fly.

You mention the amount of RAM and Hard drive space but make no mention of the processor speed. MINIMALLY you will need the fastest dual core processor you can lay your hands on. It's also essential to have a graphics card that is designed to handle HDTV and highly desirable to have a dual monitor set up with one monitor set to act as the 'programme' output; which essentially means an HDTV...

At the moment HD formats are evolving. HDV has proved to be a little 'too good' for the domestic market. It has it's issued for post production (some quite serious) but in general it's being adopted as a 'indie/industrial' option....

Disc based cameras generally used AVCHD; a variation on the 'blu ray' theme which typically applies even higher levels of compression than set out for HDV, and often produces a much more 'fragile' signal...

I'm unaware of any HDD based HD camcorder (apart from the JVC GZ-HD7)  that utilises anything like the full potential of AVCHD. Most apply such heavy levels of compression in an attempt to attain long record times they're  pretty much not usable for anything beyond slightly complex home movies. That may well change, as there's no reason why 'HDV on disc' isn't very very possible...  For that reason (at the moment) I'd recommend a good HDV camera such as the Z1 or FX1 over an HDD based machine....

Answer 2

I spend hours editing every day and High Definition is never a must. It really depends on the quality you want. Often, I even end up downconverting my HD footage into SD (standard definition) because of hard drive space and because I don't need the quality. If you want to go into it as a serious hobby, I would consider High Definition as "future-proofing". If you want a good semi-professional camera, look into the Sony series. The A1U, which I own, is great for some independent filmaking, and it's in HD. You have manual control over focus and zoom as well as control over exposure right at your fingertips, so if you want to do some serious filming it could be good for you.

Onto the technical side:

Depending on how much editing you're thinking of doing, I don't think your computer will be enough, mostly because of hard drive space. One single project for me takes up around 100 GB, yours would probably be around 50GB.

I don't know how good your CPU (processor) is neither. I use a quad-core running at 2.66GHz, although you should be fine with anything that runs fairly fast. HD footage is pretty bulky so if your processor is slow be ready for long wait times.

You'll also need some good software - since you have a Mac, you might want to try out final cut pro.

So yeah, for High Definition you definetly want a MiniDV camera, which films on tapes. This will conserve almost all your quality. HDD cameras (hard disk drive) film onto hard drives, which means they have to compress the footage in order to be able to record it. Try to avoid these if quality is important to you.