Need advice on buying a camcorder

[steppinthrax]

OK

This is the deal, I'm going to be using a camcorder for making training videos. These videos will be shot indoors under fluorescence light conditions and be mainly on equipment training.

The video produced will be hosted on the web in reduced quality. There will be video editing done, such as merging different videos, creating cut scenes, some special effects. But I will be doing this type of editing using video editing software.

So my problem so far is picking the appropriate camcorder format. I'm leaning towards Mini-DVD. But I imagine it would just make more work since a Mini-DVD camcorder encodes it to DVD format. Therefore if I want to do any editing I have to rip the DVD which takes time.

I was told it's just better to go Mini-DV tape. Although it's an older format it's digitally recorded on DV tape and you can easily transfer a video to your computer.

I'm also interested in the brand. Which companies make good camcorders (i.e. Cannon, Olympus, Sony, Panasonic???)

 

[mikefarinha]

When I was doing research I found the website camcorderinfo.com very useful. It seems that they prefer the Mini-DV due to its better encoding codex and the fact that the tapes last much longer than DVDs.

As far as best manufacture, I think Canon and Sony are near the top. I prefer Canon over Sony for personal reasons.

 

[steppinthrax]

Originally posted by: mikefarinha
When I was doing research I found the website camcorderinfo.com very useful. It seems that they prefer the Mini-DV due to its better encoding codex and the fact that the tapes last much longer than DVDs.

As far as best manufacture, I think Canon and Sony are near the top. I prefer Canon over Sony for personal reasons.

I was looking at Cannon and Sony they seem to make nice camcorders. Yes I'm more settled on Mini-DV. I had someone recomend me a hard drive camcorder but I'm kind of concerned that the hard drive will go bad inside???

 

[zinfamous]

I've had a Canon Optura for 5+ years now. No complaints. My Bro and his wife bought a Sony HDD camcorder ~2 years ago to take video of their kid. As far as I know, they haven't had problems either. I'm still of the "less moving parts=better" camp, but to each his own.

I could be wrong, but I also think that the HDD cameras have auto compression software in order to record onto the disc drive. I know that when I download files from mini DV tapes straight onto my computer using Premiere, they are about 1 gig/minute uncompressed. The HDD camcorders record far more film time than the disc drives would allow for files of this size. Sure, if the codec is done well, it may not matter...but I'm also in the "uncompressed master" camp.

 

[gsellis]

For training videos, I would probably only consider the Sony DSR-PD170. 1 Lux response, dual XLR audio (wired and wireless mics for audio capture of the speaker, and out of an AV system). Match that with a Bogen 503 head (other question). They are tough and built to news gathering standards. You have great control of the camera with servo-manual focus and zoom, built-in mixer, and again, the best light response for indoors and dark of about any camera under $20k.

You can find them use as folks are moving to HDV (which is not that good in lower light without supplimental lighting).