Desipio Message Board

Don't those Mino cameras also lack any ability to zoom?

Quote from: PenFoe on December 21, 2008, 01:57:14 PM
DPD.

As a soon-to-be-father, figure it's time to get a camcorder.
Looks like the best ones are HD with a 30-60GB hard drive, pricing ranging from $650-$1200 or so.

That's a little steep, so the questions:

1. Is it definitely worth it to get HD?
2. Do I need one that has such a large hard drive, or are the mini-DVDs still viable options?
3. Is this fairly new technology and I can expect to see prices decrease in the immediate future (2-3 months?)

First off, assuming that you're looking for a small model with a flip-out screen, I'd avoid the hard drive-based camcorders. There are many, many camcorders on the market that record straight to an SD or SDHC flash memory card. Really, the fewer moving parts you can get in a camcorder, the better -- with a hard drive, you always have the risk of a platter or spindle going bad, or data getting corrupted. Depending on the camera, you can get two hours of recording onto a single card -- or even more. And flash memory is ridiculously cheap nowadays, too.

As for high-def versus standard-def, a lot of that depends on your computer specs. Modern computers can handle native HD video editing a lot better than they could even two years ago, but it can still be a dog. My 1-year-old MacBook Pro, with a Core 2 Duo and 2GB of RAM, can still dog sometimes when working with HD video. Just about any jalopy on the market can handle SD video editing, and you still have to consider the delivery method: Sure, you can capture and edit HD video, but do you have an HDTV? Are you going to be putting HD-resolution videos on the Web? Are you writing to Blu-ray Disc?

As for price reductions, I don't think so. Memory prices and CCD / CMOS prices are largely stabilized, for the time being. Prices should be stable for the next 8 - 12 months or so, I would think.

For an SD camcorder, I'd recommend the Canon FS100, FS10 (same as the 100, but with onboard memory in addition to memory cards) or the JVC GZ-MS100 (which has better video quality than those Canons, but a bit of a clunkier interface). All of those are in the $300-$550 range.

For HD, you cannot go wrong with Canon's Vixia HF100. We have two of them in our office for when interns are sent out to grab footage of this, that or the other, and at about $600 each from B&H Photo-Video, they've been ridiculously good investments.

Also, as another note, keep in mind that digital video can get very big very quickly. With a standard tape-based camcorder recording to MiniDV tapes, an hour of raw video is 13.8 GB. Newer compression types with the drive- and memory card-based camcorders reduce that size significantly for the actual capturing / recording, but once they're transferred to a computer and an editing program, the filesizes balloon again. It's a good idea to have an external hard drive or two that are dedicated exclusively to video work. (Ideally, you want one drive for your raw video, and another drive for your scratch / rendering files, to increase efficiency.)

Don't buy a camera from a brick-and-mortar store. Buy from B&H (www.bhphotovideo.com) or Full Compass (www.fullcompass.com). Adorama is good, too.

Chuck, you're in Iowa City? Let me know the next time you travel through Dubuque, I'll buy you a beer.

He shot the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFOlkAmM43o

We were in one of the boxes on Sunday.

My friend is the mariachi.

Alcohol was involved.

Quote from: helloWorld on April 07, 2007, 03:12:26 AM

Quote from: Kermit on April 06, 2007, 04:49:53 PM

Quote from: Timmy B on April 06, 2007, 04:45:24 PM

Quote from: JD, Too on April 06, 2007, 04:38:25 PM

Quote from: ChuckDickens on April 06, 2007, 04:35:11 PM

Quote from: JD, Too on April 06, 2007, 04:19:00 PM

Quote from: ~Apex on April 06, 2007, 04:13:34 PM
Still waiting for that link...

Here it is.  What you've ALL been waiting for!  Slaky's blog!

Anyone know of place that's hiring?

Also, I closed it quickly. Was that a man having sex with an octopus?

Sorry. 

It's a scorpion.  That's TimmyB doing the loving, I heard.  Slaky took the picture, though.  And Kermit cleaned the sheets because he always has to clean up TimmyB's messes.

What can I say? She was a squirter.

How foolish it was of me to think that image couldn't get worse.

It is a horrible image and I would prefer never to see it agaiin.

and I will not be checking this thread again, as I know there is a great deal of negative here (JD's jorts excluded of course).  I negative Timminy and the scorp. 

Don't be negativin'. It's a Saturday. There's no need for Hatorade.

Quote from: EG on April 06, 2007, 04:49:20 PM

Quote from: Timmy B on April 06, 2007, 04:45:24 PM

Quote from: JD, Too on April 06, 2007, 04:38:25 PM

Quote from: ChuckDickens on April 06, 2007, 04:35:11 PM

Quote from: JD, Too on April 06, 2007, 04:19:00 PM

Quote from: ~Apex on April 06, 2007, 04:13:34 PM
Still waiting for that link...

Here it is.  What you've ALL been waiting for!  Slaky's blog!

Anyone know of place that's hiring?

Also, I closed it quickly. Was that a man having sex with an octopus?

Sorry. 

It's a scorpion.  That's TimmyB doing the loving, I heard.  Slaky took the picture, though.  And Kermit cleaned the sheets because he always has to clean up TimmyB's messes.

What can I say? She was a squirter.

Sorry to disappoint you, but that was a male scorpion.

I was wondering why it burns when I go to the bathroom.

Quote from: JD, Too on April 06, 2007, 04:38:25 PM

Quote from: ChuckDickens on April 06, 2007, 04:35:11 PM

Quote from: JD, Too on April 06, 2007, 04:19:00 PM

Quote from: ~Apex on April 06, 2007, 04:13:34 PM
Still waiting for that link...

Here it is.  What you've ALL been waiting for!  Slaky's blog!

Anyone know of place that's hiring?

Also, I closed it quickly. Was that a man having sex with an octopus?

Sorry. 

It's a scorpion.  That's TimmyB doing the loving, I heard.  Slaky took the picture, though.  And Kermit cleaned the sheets because he always has to clean up TimmyB's messes.

What can I say? She was a squirter.

Quote from: JD, Too on April 06, 2007, 03:42:02 PM

Quote from: Kermit on April 06, 2007, 03:39:10 PM

Quote from: TJ on April 06, 2007, 11:15:31 AM
Or maybe a better solution would be to suggest that a Denial of Service attack on ESPN for a few days could maybe send a message.

TJ, the more I'm thinking about this, the more pissed I'm getting.  I'm encouraging HJE readers to completely boycott all things ESPN.  If Cowherd doesn't want to take blogs seriously and thinks he can just f@#$ around with them, I think bloggers should show him what a powerful community we can be.  We can be powerful, right?

In what way?

We did survive carloszno1fan.

Quote from: The Paul Popovich Experience on December 21, 2006, 09:26:05 PM
Or Dubuque Star.

Hey, now ... we Dubuquers are proud of the Star Brewery.

Isn't that Warsteiner Premium (or Fresh, I forget the name) just their N/A brew?

Nice.

Quote from: Bad Kermit on December 21, 2006, 01:41:37 PM

Quote from: Timmy B on December 21, 2006, 01:14:33 PM

Quote from: Bad Kermit on December 20, 2006, 01:50:58 PMand I'll also add Warsteiner (actually at the top of my list).

Verum or dunkel?

Verum is usually what's available, but I prefer dunkel.  Not that I don't like verum.

I can't drink the Warsteiner verum ... I don't generally like pilsners at all, and the Warsteiner just tastes far too bitter for me.

The dunkel, on the other hand, tastes like beer was meant to be made no other way. What a wonderful beverage (brought a six-pack to last night's employee Christmas party, actually).

Quote from: Bad Kermit on December 20, 2006, 01:50:58 PMand I'll also add Warsteiner (actually at the top of my list). 

Verum or dunkel?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJzU3NjDikY