Good camcorder?

[Raybdbomb]

I need to buy a decent camcorder for my wedding. Doesn't have to be great. Can someone suggest one, sub $1k that will do the job?

Let me know if this isn't the right place to ask, "video" just seemed the most fitting.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: Raybdbomb
I need to buy a decent camcorder for my wedding. Doesn't have to be great. Can someone suggest one, sub $1k that will do the job?

Let me know if this isn't the right place to ask, "video" just seemed the most fitting.

Sub 1k will get you a great camera. The Panasonic 3CCD cameras like the GS250 and the Canon Optura 60 are good. Try Camcorderinfo is a great place to start. For wedding and honeymoon stuff, low light performance is very important. I do not recommend hard drive cameras as keeping your movies becomes difficult. If you plan to edit them, DVD style cameras are not optimal in most cases.

 

[Raybdbomb]

The GS250 looks nice...

So can you transfer the video from the miniDV onto your computer via the Firewire? I wasn't able to tell by the information...

 

[junkyardDawg]

Originally posted by: Raybdbomb
The GS250 looks nice...

So can you transfer the video from the miniDV onto your computer via the Firewire? I wasn't able to tell by the information...

yeah, you'll need lots of HD space though

http://www.videohelp.com/ has many guides for beginners and the tools section has lots of programs(many free) to get you started

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: Raybdbomb
The GS250 looks nice...

So can you transfer the video from the miniDV onto your computer via the Firewire? I wasn't able to tell by the information...

Absolutely. That is the preferred workflow for DV and HDV video, through Firewire. USB connectors have been flaky and most cameras that do have it, use it for stills only. Firewire cards (get a TI chipset if you can) are less than $40 and if you great a Creative Labs Audigy2 -ZS card, it is included.

And junkyardDawg is referring to the fact that DV (miniDV is a tape type, there is also DVCPro and Digital8 - MiniDV tapes are also used in HDV cameras) is ~13GB/hr. But with 250GB drives now under $100, it is not such a big deal anymore.

 

[Raybdbomb]

So it's basically insert it as firewire, and copy over a .avi file, or use a special tool?

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: Raybdbomb
So it's basically insert it as firewire, and copy over a .avi file, or use a special tool?

Your editor will have a capture tool. VirtualDub will do it as stand-alone. The more you pay, the more options you get. Basic editors have a VCR style capture tool where you queue it to the capture point and hit record. My editor, Avid Liquid, has that option, but I use a logging method where I preview the video marking all of the sections I want. I later tell it to batch capture all of those and it then captures them while I do something else (fix dinner, swap over to Animation:Master and work on titles or such, play solitare...).

 

[Raybdbomb]

very good, thanks