Re: camcorder (was bad news, good news, bad news)

["Tony K" <bigtonyk@gmail.com>]

Thanks for the thoughts on formats.  I'll probably wind up getting another handycam off of ebay to transfer my D8 tapes. After that, probably miniDV.  I'm just not sure about the compression and all the other nit picky stuff with dvd or hd.  

I wound up borrowing a friends Hi8 handycam for the weekend gymnastics meet.  Good thing, since my daughter won first place on floor for the Region 7 (PA,NJ,DE,MD,VA, WV) area.  I'd have been in the doghouse for a long time if I hadn't gotten that on tape!  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hovmdjFwE4

I hadn't realized that the newer cameras had such good anti-jitter in them til I used an older model.  I thought I was a lot steadier than that! :)  Turns out it wasn't my steady hands!  haha

Thanks again,
Tony

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 6:14 AM, Goddard, Duncan <goddard.duncan@mtvne.com> wrote:

>>Duncan?  What's your take on this level of camcorder media?<<

tape will be around so long as there's someone still breathing in sony's
consumer division. one thing they hate to do is sell you something &
have you walk away, not needing them for anything else.

every time we think "tape is dead", even in the broadcast world where
large files are routinely transcoded, converted & exchanged amongst
systems many miles apart, people still love the feel of a nice warm
cassette when they've spent all day editing at $300/hour or whatever.

but I digress. on a purely practical note, it's much easier & cheaper to
carry a bag of new or used spare tapes than it is to carry a spare
hard-drive or memory stick. dv stock is quite hardy & withstands re-use
quite well. it's also much easier to find in weird, out-of-the-way
locations. sony & the big stock manufacturers have taken care of that!

I caution against HD-DV for broadcast use, but only because it isn't
really HD, & will fall foul of distributor guidelines concerning native
resolution & the like. otherwise, it's amazing bang-for-buck.
mini-DV is an excellent format, frequently let down by the quality of
the lenses it's shot through, & the poor production-values that often
attend low-cost technology. the sony vx-1000 is a design-classic, in my
view...

(I could spend all day on this, but I have to write a delivery
specification document for HD material......)

duncan.