Since I have been in the market for a high definition camcorder, I
have done some research comparing the two formats. I have read many
threads on various newsgroups and forums and consolidated my findings.
I have posted these findings at http://skarkada.googlepages.com/minidvvsharddisc%3Aprosandcons

My intention is to help other people save some time in their research.
Please take a few minutes to review the document and post any
recommendations here. I will try to update the Web page with the
suggestions.

Thanks for your time.

(In case you are wondering, I haven't decided on a high-def camcorder
yet. It has to be either HV20 or SR1.)

I am in the excat same situation as you and are trying to decide which 
storage formate i am gonna invest in, the only difference bieng that i 
probably know much less about it than you, since ive only spend a few hours 
researching so far and havent ever owned a videocamera.

Anyways i have a question for your comparesion (which i thought was very 
informative):

In the future and sharing section you say that you would need to keep the 
tapes as backup and that sharing is hard (due to it bieng on tape i asume). 
My idear if i bought a miniDV camera was to transfer all the data onto my 
computer and edit it from the harddisk, and try to save the movies as files 
on the harddisk and not on a tape. Am i completly missing a point here and 
is that not possible ? (if it is i would say that sharing would be easier 
and backing up data could be done on more futurefriendly medias)

 wrote in message 
news:1182965751.035702.130510@n2g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
> Since I have been in the market for a high definition camcorder, I
> have done some research comparing the two formats. I have read many
> threads on various newsgroups and forums and consolidated my findings.
> I have posted these findings at 
> http://skarkada.googlepages.com/minidvvsharddisc%3Aprosandcons
>
> My intention is to help other people save some time in their research.
> Please take a few minutes to review the document and post any
> recommendations here. I will try to update the Web page with the
> suggestions.
>
> Thanks for your time.
>
> (In case you are wondering, I haven't decided on a high-def camcorder
> yet. It has to be either HV20 or SR1.)
>

That is what I used to think about tapes. Transfer the tape content to
hard disk and then reuse the tape. After reading many discussions, I
have learnt that one is supposed to keep the tape as backup.

Relatively speaking, sharing the footage from a hard drive based
camcorder is much faster and easier. From what I have read, with Sony
SR1, these are the steps:
1. Transfer the clip to your computer's hard disk
2. Open Sony's application
3. Right mouse click on the file and burn either a regular DVD or a HD
DVD
(It may not be that simple, though.)

With MiniDV, you have to capture the clip first. Getting to that clip
on the tape could become tedius with all the rewinding and fast
forwarding. Then, you should know when exactly to stop. Then, you have
to remember to fast forward to blank spot for future recording;
otherwise you will overwrite existing footage. All these comments are
based on my old VHS-C camcorder that I have stopped using 3 years ago.
Probably latest tape camcorders are intelligent.

My current camcorder uses DVD media. I don't like the picture quality
at all. I recently read a few articles that said DVD lifetime is
anywhere between 2 years and 10 years.

wrote in message 
news:1182972094.679040.298000@k29g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
> That is what I used to think about tapes. Transfer the tape content to
> hard disk and then reuse the tape. After reading many discussions, I
> have learnt that one is supposed to keep the tape as backup.
>
> Relatively speaking, sharing the footage from a hard drive based
> camcorder is much faster and easier. From what I have read, with Sony
> SR1, these are the steps:
> 1. Transfer the clip to your computer's hard disk
> 2. Open Sony's application
> 3. Right mouse click on the file and burn either a regular DVD or a HD
> DVD
> (It may not be that simple, though.)
>
> With MiniDV, you have to capture the clip first. Getting to that clip
> on the tape could become tedius with all the rewinding and fast
> forwarding. Then, you should know when exactly to stop. Then, you have
> to remember to fast forward to blank spot for future recording;
> otherwise you will overwrite existing footage. All these comments are
> based on my old VHS-C camcorder that I have stopped using 3 years ago.
> Probably latest tape camcorders are intelligent.
>
> My current camcorder uses DVD media. I don't like the picture quality
> at all. I recently read a few articles that said DVD lifetime is
> anywhere between 2 years and 10 years.

 Copying a mini dv to disc is no more difficult then copying from a hdd 
camera.
DV is higher quality then what will be on disc as that has to be compressed. 
Editing is better from DV for that reason Then rendered to DVD. The tapes 
are relatively cheap so keeping the original so that you could edit it 
differently at some latter day can be worth while Depending on abilities.
and must editing software can control the camera via the firewire.
I think in the case of Adobe premier it only downloads a draft quality until 
you have done all you cuts and edits then controls the camera to get the 
bits you wanted at best quality and does the render.

I'm also studying different types of camcorders for a purchase and have 
never owned one.

So, the question arises- why can't that make a hard drive camcorder which 
does not have any more compression than the DV tape camcorders? I suppose 
the answer is that doing so would eat up too much of the hard drive too 
quickly? But hard drives are getting bigger and cheaper- so I should think, 
given the advantages of using a hard drive, that it won't be long before 
they'll make hard drive camcorders without the heavy compression?

Tape of any sort seems like obsolete technology.

I understand the difference in compression between digital still imagery but 
not video imagery. Tape has no compression at all? And, just how much 
compression do the hard drives use?

Somewhere online I read a review of new systems and the reviewer said he saw 
little difference between the quality of high end tape and hard drive 
camcorders so maybe the issue is moot or soon will be.

Joe



"Trev" <trevbowdenAT.dsl.pipex.COM> wrote in message 
news:AoadnWVJINAmVB_bnZ2dnUVZ8vWdnZ2d@pipex.net...
>
>  wrote in message 
> news:1182972094.679040.298000@k29g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
>> That is what I used to think about tapes. Transfer the tape content to
>> hard disk and then reuse the tape. After reading many discussions, I
>> have learnt that one is supposed to keep the tape as backup.
>>
>> Relatively speaking, sharing the footage from a hard drive based
>> camcorder is much faster and easier. From what I have read, with Sony
>> SR1, these are the steps:
>> 1. Transfer the clip to your computer's hard disk
>> 2. Open Sony's application
>> 3. Right mouse click on the file and burn either a regular DVD or a HD
>> DVD
>> (It may not be that simple, though.)
>>
>> With MiniDV, you have to capture the clip first. Getting to that clip
>> on the tape could become tedius with all the rewinding and fast
>> forwarding. Then, you should know when exactly to stop. Then, you have
>> to remember to fast forward to blank spot for future recording;
>> otherwise you will overwrite existing footage. All these comments are
>> based on my old VHS-C camcorder that I have stopped using 3 years ago.
>> Probably latest tape camcorders are intelligent.
>>
>> My current camcorder uses DVD media. I don't like the picture quality
>> at all. I recently read a few articles that said DVD lifetime is
>> anywhere between 2 years and 10 years.
>
> Copying a mini dv to disc is no more difficult then copying from a hdd 
> camera.
> DV is higher quality then what will be on disc as that has to be 
> compressed. Editing is better from DV for that reason Then rendered to 
> DVD. The tapes are relatively cheap so keeping the original so that you 
> could edit it differently at some latter day can be worth while Depending 
> on abilities.
> and must editing software can control the camera via the firewire.
> I think in the case of Adobe premier it only downloads a draft quality 
> until you have done all you cuts and edits then controls the camera to get 
> the bits you wanted at best quality and does the render.
>

"Joe" wrote ...
> I'm also studying different types of camcorders for a purchase and have 
> never owned one.
>
> So, the question arises- why can't that make a hard drive camcorder which 
> does not have any more compression than the DV tape camcorders? I suppose 
> the answer is that doing so would eat up too much of the hard drive too 
> quickly? But hard drives are getting bigger and cheaper- so I should 
> think, given the advantages of using a hard drive, that it won't be long 
> before they'll make hard drive camcorders without the heavy compression?

I would be very surprised if it ever happens. Concurrently with
the cost-effectiveness (size/weight/capacity/cost) of small hard
drives, we appear to have ever more compressed storage
methods foisted upon the consumer.  In the same manner
that MP3 seems to be the audio "quality standard" of the latest
generation of high-tech consumers.

> Tape of any sort seems like obsolete technology.

It still can't be beat for capacity, convienence, and proven
reliability.  It is still far and away the media of choice for most
of our planet's data.

> I understand the difference in compression between digital still imagery 
> but not video imagery. Tape has no compression at all?

Tape has whatever compression was written to it. If you are
talking about DV video specifically, it is spatially compressed
about 5:1, and has no temporal compression.

> And, just how much compression do the hard drives use?

Roughly the same compression as DVD video.  Several x
more compression (both spatial and temporal) than DV,
for example.

> Somewhere online I read a review of new systems and the reviewer said he 
> saw little difference between the quality of high end tape and hard drive 
> camcorders so maybe the issue is moot or soon will be.

I could believe that under ideal conditions. In the real world,
however, it is baloney.

"Richard Crowley"  wrote in message 
news:5eg3ekF398atgU1@mid.individual.net...
> "Joe" wrote ...
>
>> Somewhere online I read a review of new systems and the reviewer said he 
>> saw little difference between the quality of high end tape and hard drive 
>> camcorders so maybe the issue is moot or soon will be.
>
> I could believe that under ideal conditions. In the real world,
> however, it is baloney.
It depends on the quality of the device.
There have been broadcast quality hard drive recorders
around for quite some time. The drives are removable
so you use them as temporary storage as in news gathering.
It would probably take a pretty good eye to see the difference
between it and Betacam SP. But, it's not inexpensive.
http://www.avid.com/resources/articles/bc_ikegami_avid.pdf

I don't think that is what we are talking about here.
This is probably about those sub $1000 consumer cameras.
If compared to DV, DV would win.

It's all relative

David

Well, as much as I like convenience, I also like quality.

About a decade ago when digital cameras were catching on with consumers- I 
had a tough decision- to buy a top of the line 35 mm or a consumer digital. 
At that time consumer digital cameras were not cheap and not very good- I 
ended up with a Nikon F100, a premium 35 mm and also got extra lenses, fancy 
tripod, fancy camera case, etc. For the same amount of money I could have 
gotten a digital camera that by today's standards would be a toy.

But, I'm very impressed with the quality I see from friends using fairly 
inexpensive digital cameras. With my 35 mm, to use the pictures on the net- 
I had to scan them which lost quality and which resulted in pictures 
inferior to what you can get from modern $300 digital cameras. I just some 
pictures of my house which is for sale with a digital and they're much 
better than those I took with my Nikon F100- seeing those fine pictures 
really makes me realize that I want quality imagery and will sacrifice the 
convenience- so maybe I'll go with tape after all- from what I've read in 
this newsgroup, that seems to be the consensus if quality is more important 
than convenience.

Joe


"David McCall"  wrote in message 
news:87Bgi.2236$t95.515@trndny01...
>
> "Richard Crowley"  wrote in message 
> news:5eg3ekF398atgU1@mid.individual.net...
>> "Joe" wrote ...
>>
>>> Somewhere online I read a review of new systems and the reviewer said he 
>>> saw little difference between the quality of high end tape and hard 
>>> drive camcorders so maybe the issue is moot or soon will be.
>>
>> I could believe that under ideal conditions. In the real world,
>> however, it is baloney.
> It depends on the quality of the device.
> There have been broadcast quality hard drive recorders
> around for quite some time. The drives are removable
> so you use them as temporary storage as in news gathering.
> It would probably take a pretty good eye to see the difference
> between it and Betacam SP. But, it's not inexpensive.
> http://www.avid.com/resources/articles/bc_ikegami_avid.pdf
>
> I don't think that is what we are talking about here.
> This is probably about those sub $1000 consumer cameras.
> If compared to DV, DV would win.
>
> It's all relative
>
> David
>
>

"Joe"  wrote in message news:ThCgi.9701$9b5.112@trndny05...
> Well, as much as I like convenience, I also like quality.
>
> About a decade ago when digital cameras were catching on with consumers- I 
> had a tough decision- to buy a top of the line 35 mm or a consumer 
> digital. At that time consumer digital cameras were not cheap and not very 
> good- I ended up with a Nikon F100, a premium 35 mm and also got extra 
> lenses, fancy tripod, fancy camera case, etc. For the same amount of money 
> I could have gotten a digital camera that by today's standards would be a 
> toy.
>
> But, I'm very impressed with the quality I see from friends using fairly 
> inexpensive digital cameras. With my 35 mm, to use the pictures on the 
> net- I had to scan them which lost quality and which resulted in pictures 
> inferior to what you can get from modern $300 digital cameras. I just some 
> pictures of my house which is for sale with a digital and they're much 
> better than those I took with my Nikon F100- seeing those fine pictures 
> really makes me realize that I want quality imagery and will sacrifice the 
> convenience- so maybe I'll go with tape after all- from what I've read in 
> this newsgroup, that seems to be the consensus if quality is more 
> important than convenience.
>
> Joe
>
>
 True but remember when edited and saved on a DVD for viewing on the telly 
it has lost some detail as its now compressed to what the mini DVD or HDD 
would have been. But if you had edited and saved the later two forms again 
to DVD you would Lose some even detail.

wrote in message news:1182965751.035702.130510@n2g2000hse.googlegroups.com...

> Since I have been in the market for a high definition camcorder, I
> have done some research comparing the two formats. I have read many
> threads on various newsgroups and forums and consolidated my findings.
> I have posted these findings at http://skarkada.googlepages.com/minidvvsharddisc%3Aprosandcons
>
> My intention is to help other people save some time in their research.
> Please take a few minutes to review the document and post any
> recommendations here. I will try to update the Web page with the
> suggestions.
>
> Thanks for your time.
>
> (In case you are wondering, I haven't decided on a high-def camcorder
> yet. It has to be either HV20 or SR1.)

In looking over your web page, I noticed a couple of things that
may not be correct. Under "Quality", the Mini-DV compression
rate is 5:1 (not none), but it is frame-by-frame, with a clever error
correction system in place that covers well most small drop-outs.
Under "Convenience 1", you are not limited to 1 hour of
recording time with tape - 90-minute tapes are available (these
have equal image and sound quality, but may risk a slightly higher
drop-out rate, which is rarely a problem with well maintained
gear), and the shooting camera can be FireWire connected to
a cheap second Mini-DV camcorder in VCR mode ready to
record a second 1.5 hours of continuous recording on tape (3
hours total!). Having a cheap second camera also likely solves
the "Future" problem...
-- 
David Ruether
 d_ruether@hotmail.com
 http://www.donferrario.com/ruether

wrote in message 
news:1182965751.035702.130510@n2g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
> Since I have been in the market for a high definition camcorder, I
> have done some research comparing the two formats. I have read many
> threads on various newsgroups and forums and consolidated my findings.
> I have posted these findings at 
> http://skarkada.googlepages.com/minidvvsharddisc%3Aprosandcons
>
> My intention is to help other people save some time in their research.
> Please take a few minutes to review the document and post any
> recommendations here. I will try to update the Web page with the
> suggestions.
>
> Thanks for your time.
>
> (In case you are wondering, I haven't decided on a high-def camcorder
> yet. It has to be either HV20 or SR1.)
>

Your website contains at least one glaring error (I'll ignore, for the 
moment, some of the "not quite the whole story" assertions):

"If the camcorder dies, what good is the tape backup? You have to buy 
another similar camcorder if you ever need to access those tapes. What if a 
similar camcorder is not available in 2027?"

That's completely wrong.  A miniDV tape, recorded at SP, will play on any 
other miniDV camcorder, unless the machine it was recorded on was defective, 
i.e. heads out of alignment.  An LP tape will _probably_ work on other 
machines (I've never had any trouble), but an SP tape definitely will --  
miniDV is a standard.

Tape is also, bar none, the best archiving medium around.

wrote in message 
news:1182972094.679040.298000@k29g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
> That is what I used to think about tapes. Transfer the tape content to
> hard disk and then reuse the tape. After reading many discussions, I
> have learnt that one is supposed to keep the tape as backup.
>
> Relatively speaking, sharing the footage from a hard drive based
> camcorder is much faster and easier. From what I have read, with Sony
> SR1, these are the steps:
> 1. Transfer the clip to your computer's hard disk
> 2. Open Sony's application
> 3. Right mouse click on the file and burn either a regular DVD or a HD
> DVD
> (It may not be that simple, though.)
>
> With MiniDV, you have to capture the clip first. Getting to that clip
> on the tape could become tedius with all the rewinding and fast
> forwarding. Then, you should know when exactly to stop. Then, you have
> to remember to fast forward to blank spot for future recording;
> otherwise you will overwrite existing footage. All these comments are
> based on my old VHS-C camcorder that I have stopped using 3 years ago.
> Probably latest tape camcorders are intelligent.

Oh, for crying out loud, this is really the blind leading the blind.

1.  Yes, capture of miniDV is real time and a hard disk transfer is, 
potentially, faster.

2.  You don't capture "clips" from a miniDV tape by finding what you want in 
the camera and then trying to capture it.  You either (a) do an initial log 
_on_the_computer_ and then capture only the clips you want (and there is 
software that can do this at relatively high speeds) or, (b) capture the 
whole tape and let your capture software automatically split scenes based on 
time code or optical scene change detection.  Then you can do what you want 
with the clips.

3.  You do not EVER delete a clip from the middle of a miniDV tape and then 
try to re-use it.  You shouldn't reuse tapes, period.  There's absolutely no 
reason to do so.  Tapes are cheap -- they're consumables -- and your video 
is irreplaceable as you can never go back in time.

Your experience with your VHS-C camcorder has absolutely no relevance to 
this process.


>
> My current camcorder uses DVD media. I don't like the picture quality
> at all. I recently read a few articles that said DVD lifetime is
> anywhere between 2 years and 10 years.

I havd DVD-Rs that went bad after 6-months.  I have 12-year old miniDV tapes 
that are in perfect condition.  I have 30 year old analog tapes that look as 
good as the day they were recorded.  Tape is robust and the best medium for 
archiving.

>

"Joe"  wrote in message news:MxAgi.2232$t95.2091@trndny01...
> I'm also studying different types of camcorders for a purchase and have 
> never owned one.
>
> So, the question arises- why can't that make a hard drive camcorder which 
> does not have any more compression than the DV tape camcorders?

MiniDV uses the DV-25 standard, which requires approximately 13.7 gigabytes 
for an hour of video.  They could make a hard drive camcorder that uses this 
standard, but a machine with a reasonable amount of storage would require a 
relatively large and more expensive hard drive.

Camcorder manufacturers have made a deliberate decision to limit video 
quality in consumer machines, particularly at the low end.  They did this 
for two reasons.  First, they think that most consumers don't care -- all 
they're doing is the occasional kid's birthday party or vacation video and, 
for that, quality isn't sought or required.  I think they're wrong, but I 
have to buy prosumer gear to get the quality that I require.  Second, such 
manufacturers as Sony, Canon and Panasonic deliberately limit video quality 
of their consumer lines because, for digital machines, they could easily 
produce consumer camcorders that would match the quality of their prosumer 
and professional offerings.  They don't want to compete with themselves for 
their higher-priced lines so they intentionally produce low-quality 
machines.


> I suppose the answer is that doing so would eat up too much of the hard 
> drive too quickly?

That's only part of the reason.  A 120 gigabyte hard drive would work just 
fine.  However, the mini-form factor that camcorder manufacturers think 
consumers want requires very small hard drives, and few are available beyond 
30 gigabytes.  That would give only slightly over two hours at DV-25 data 
rates.


> But hard drives are getting bigger and cheaper- so I should think, given 
> the advantages of using a hard drive, that it won't be long before they'll 
> make hard drive camcorders without the heavy compression?

Unlikely.

>
> Tape of any sort seems like obsolete technology.

Not really, particularly if you're concerned with archival quality.  Tape is 
robust -- it's not susceptible to impact damage or heat the way hard drives 
are.  Damage to tape is recoverable.  Damaged hard drives can only be 
recovered by experts with clean rooms, if at all.

>
> I understand the difference in compression between digital still imagery 
> but not video imagery. Tape has no compression at all? And, just how much 
> compression do the hard drives use?

MiniDV uses DV-25, which is a non-temporal (see below) lossy compression 
that yields about 5 to 1 compression rates.  The data rate is 25 mbits per 
second.

Standard defintion hard drive camcorders use either mpeg2 or mpeg4, both of 
which are lossy, temporal compression formats.  "Temporal compression" means 
that reference frames are used to calculate the change in image over time, 
with only changed data stored.  This allows much greater compression, but 
also makes it much more difficult to edit.  Compression rates are variable, 
but the highest quality compression will yield at least 10 to 1.  Most 
consumer hard drive camcorders limit data rates to those of DVD, i.e. no 
more than 10 mbps.

>
> Somewhere online I read a review of new systems and the reviewer said he 
> saw little difference between the quality of high end tape and hard drive 
> camcorders so maybe the issue is moot or soon will be.

The reviewer is an idiot.  The difference between standard definition miniDV 
and standard defintion consumer mpeg2/4 machines is obvious and dramatic. 
Note, however, that camcorder manufacturers can, and do, build lousy miniDV 
machines that can produce horrendously poor video.  Video quality is a 
combination of compression technology, lens quality, sensor size and density 
and overall electronics quality.  Junk is junk, regardless of storage 
medium.

>
> Joe
>
>
>
> "Trev" <trevbowdenAT.dsl.pipex.COM> wrote in message 
> news:AoadnWVJINAmVB_bnZ2dnUVZ8vWdnZ2d@pipex.net...
>>
>>  wrote in message 
>> news:1182972094.679040.298000@k29g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
>>> That is what I used to think about tapes. Transfer the tape content to
>>> hard disk and then reuse the tape. After reading many discussions, I
>>> have learnt that one is supposed to keep the tape as backup.
>>>
>>> Relatively speaking, sharing the footage from a hard drive based
>>> camcorder is much faster and easier. From what I have read, with Sony
>>> SR1, these are the steps:
>>> 1. Transfer the clip to your computer's hard disk
>>> 2. Open Sony's application
>>> 3. Right mouse click on the file and burn either a regular DVD or a HD
>>> DVD
>>> (It may not be that simple, though.)
>>>
>>> With MiniDV, you have to capture the clip first. Getting to that clip
>>> on the tape could become tedius with all the rewinding and fast
>>> forwarding. Then, you should know when exactly to stop. Then, you have
>>> to remember to fast forward to blank spot for future recording;
>>> otherwise you will overwrite existing footage. All these comments are
>>> based on my old VHS-C camcorder that I have stopped using 3 years ago.
>>> Probably latest tape camcorders are intelligent.
>>>
>>> My current camcorder uses DVD media. I don't like the picture quality
>>> at all. I recently read a few articles that said DVD lifetime is
>>> anywhere between 2 years and 10 years.
>>
>> Copying a mini dv to disc is no more difficult then copying from a hdd 
>> camera.
>> DV is higher quality then what will be on disc as that has to be 
>> compressed. Editing is better from DV for that reason Then rendered to 
>> DVD. The tapes are relatively cheap so keeping the original so that you 
>> could edit it differently at some latter day can be worth while Depending 
>> on abilities.
>> and must editing software can control the camera via the firewire.
>> I think in the case of Adobe premier it only downloads a draft quality 
>> until you have done all you cuts and edits then controls the camera to 
>> get the bits you wanted at best quality and does the render.
>>
>

Firstly, thank you all for your inputs. Some of you seem to be
assuming that I have already taken a decision agains MiniDV. That is
not true.

> A miniDV tape, recorded at SP, will play on any
> other miniDV camcorder, unless the machine it was recorded on was defective,
> i.e. heads out of alignment.  An LP tape will _probably_ work on other
> machines (I've never had any trouble), but an SP tape definitely will --
> miniDV is a standard.

I have read in many forums and discussions that the life of MiniDV is
up to 40 years. Say, my camcorder dies in 2037. What is the guarantee
that there will still be some camcorder in the market that can read
miniDV?

>
> 2.  You don't capture "clips" from a miniDV tape by finding what you want in
> the camera and then trying to capture it.  You either (a) do an initial log
> _on_the_computer_ and then capture only the clips you want (and there is
> software that can do this at relatively high speeds) or, (b) capture the
> whole tape and let your capture software automatically split scenes based on
> time code or optical scene change detection.  Then you can do what you want
> with the clips.
>

Please note that that response was related to sharing ability. Feature
described in (a) is attractive. I didn't know such a feature exists.
(b) won't work for sharing. Consider this scenario: A family visits
you and your children and visiting children are playing well. You take
some photos and some videos. You quickly want to copy the pictures and
video clips to a CD or DVD and give it to them before they leave.
There is still some blank tape left and the tape also contains footage
of events that the visitors are not interested in. In this situation,
I can burn them a CD with JPEG and MPEG files in under 20 minutes
using my existing miniDVD camcorder. Capturing the whole tape is not
going to work.

> 3.  You do not EVER delete a clip from the middle of a miniDV tape and then
> try to re-use it.  You shouldn't reuse tapes, period.  There's absolutely no
> reason to do so.  Tapes are cheap -- they're consumables -- and your video
> is irreplaceable as you can never go back in time.

Well, having the ability to delete unwanted footage is a good thing.
Yes, you can't do it easily with a tape. That is a negative in tape
and positive on hard drive.

> Your experience with your VHS-C camcorder has absolutely no relevance to
> this process.
>

OK.

>
> I havd DVD-Rs that went bad after 6-months.  I have 12-year old miniDV tapes
> that are in perfect condition.  I have 30 year old analog tapes that look as
> good as the day they were recorded.  Tape is robust and the best medium for
> archiving.
>

I agree that tape is a good archive and that is one of the positives
in my pros and cons table.

On Jun 28, 8:55 am, "David Ruether"  wrote:
> In looking over your web page, I noticed a couple of things that
> may not be correct. Under "Quality", the Mini-DV compression
> rate is 5:1 (not none), but it is frame-by-frame, with a clever error
> correction system in place that covers well most small drop-outs.
> Under "Convenience 1", you are not limited to 1 hour of
> recording time with tape - 90-minute tapes are available (these
> have equal image and sound quality, but may risk a slightly higher
> drop-out rate, which is rarely a problem with well maintained
> gear),

I have updated the Web page with the proints you brought up.

> and the shooting camera can be FireWire connected to
> a cheap second Mini-DV camcorder in VCR mode ready to
> record a second 1.5 hours of continuous recording on tape (3
> hours total!). Having a cheap second camera also likely solves
> the "Future" problem...

Interesting concept. Can the second "cheap" camcorder do its work even
if the main camcorder is high definition?

Thanks for taking the time to feedback.

It's an interesting theory that Sony, Canon and Panasonic deliberately
limit the quality of their video recorders but is there any hard
evidence for this?  If one of them did this unilaterally, the other
two would out-compete them and they would lose sales.  If they all
covertly agreed to do it together, this would be a very anti-
competitive practice and almost certainly illegal.

But with a modern world economy, it seems rather easy to avoid anti 
competitive actions by governments. Just consider the oil industry.




 wrote in message 
news:1183051326.920262.16830@q69g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> It's an interesting theory that Sony, Canon and Panasonic deliberately
> limit the quality of their video recorders but is there any hard
> evidence for this?  If one of them did this unilaterally, the other
> two would out-compete them and they would lose sales.  If they all
> covertly agreed to do it together, this would be a very anti-
> competitive practice and almost certainly illegal.
>

wrote in message 
news:1183048876.495967.282370@c77g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
>
> Firstly, thank you all for your inputs. Some of you seem to be
> assuming that I have already taken a decision agains MiniDV. That is
> not true.
>
>> A miniDV tape, recorded at SP, will play on any
>> other miniDV camcorder, unless the machine it was recorded on was 
>> defective,
>> i.e. heads out of alignment.  An LP tape will _probably_ work on other
>> machines (I've never had any trouble), but an SP tape definitely will --
>> miniDV is a standard.
>
> I have read in many forums and discussions that the life of MiniDV is
> up to 40 years. Say, my camcorder dies in 2037. What is the guarantee
> that there will still be some camcorder in the market that can read
> miniDV?

First, as I've noted, I have analog video tape that is 30+ years old and 
pristine.  I'd be surprised if miniDV didn't exceed that rather 
dramatically.

As for whether miniDV camcorders (or camcorders using miniDV format tapes) 
will be around in 2037, I cannot say.  However, long before that, you will 
have moved your video data to a different archival format.  Any format that 
results in image degradation could hardly be considered archival.  For this 
reason alone, DVDs are not a suitable format for storing miniDV video --  
either you'd have to use a lot of DVDs (which could hold only 22 minutes or 
so of DV-25 video), or you'd have to compress to mpeg which will degarde the 
video quality.

What many pros are doing now is archiving DV-25 on hard drives.  Hard drives 
are relatively cheap and can be easily dropped into an external case.  They 
do require monitoring, however, because a failure of the drive would 
compromise, completely, the video stored on it.

None of this has anything to do with the point that I raised, i.e. any 
miniDV camcorder can "read" tapes recorded on any other miniDV camcorder at 
SP speeds.


>
>>
>> 2.  You don't capture "clips" from a miniDV tape by finding what you want 
>> in
>> the camera and then trying to capture it.  You either (a) do an initial 
>> log
>> _on_the_computer_ and then capture only the clips you want (and there is
>> software that can do this at relatively high speeds) or, (b) capture the
>> whole tape and let your capture software automatically split scenes based 
>> on
>> time code or optical scene change detection.  Then you can do what you 
>> want
>> with the clips.
>>
>
> Please note that that response was related to sharing ability.

I assume that by "sharing" you mean giving video to others to view.  If you 
are selecting clips, you are already engaging in editing, albeit in a rather 
crude fashion.  Once the video is on a computer, it is such a simple matter 
to pull the clips into an editing package and select and trim what you want 
to share and the burn to DVD that it makes absolutely no sense to try and 
pull of selected clips from the camcorder.


> Feature
> described in (a) is attractive. I didn't know such a feature exists.

Take a look at Scenealyzer Live which is an extremely powerful but 
inexpensive capture program.  As I recall, the Studio editing packages can 
do a high-speed log and, I suspect, many other consumer editing programs can 
as well.

As an example of a suggested work-flow, when I travel I shoot roughly 
one-hour of video every two days (though frequently more).  I'll return from 
a typical trip with 12 to 14 hours of tape.  Once home, I'll pick a Saturday 
or Sunday when I'm going to be around the house and start the capture to my 
computer (I keep a cheap miniDV camcorder for this purpose, so as to avoid 
wear-and-tear on my prosumer machine).  I'll start the transfer going and 
then go away for an hour or so -- eat breakfast, watch TV, go for a walk, 
whatever.  Then I'll return and start the next one.  Capture is completely 
automated and unattended.  By the end of the day, I've got all 14 hours in 
the computer.  I can do a quick review of the Scenealyzer captures if I want 
and delete unwanted clips right from within the program.  However, usually 
I'll just pull everything into my editor (I use Adobe Premiere Pro) and then 
start the edit process.  Now, I do a lot heavier editing than what you've 
described -- I want to create a souvenir/memory of our trip that will be 
something I want to keep for a lifetime, so I put a lot of attention into 
story, correcting the video, transitions, titles, compositing, etc.  You may 
not want to do that.  However, I also create short sequences that I share 
with friends, upload to Youtube, etc.  It's very easy to make my selection 
from the captured clips within the editor, drop them on the timeline, throw 
in transitions as necessary and then export (I don't burn directly to DVD 
from the editor because I want the highest quality so I transcode using a 
standalone program and then an authoring program -- you don't have to do 
that, however as virtually all editors will let you burn a DVD directly from 
the timeline).


> (b) won't work for sharing. Consider this scenario: A family visits
> you and your children and visiting children are playing well. You take
> some photos and some videos. You quickly want to copy the pictures and
> video clips to a CD or DVD and give it to them before they leave.

How much video have you shot?  If it's just a few minutes, it will take only 
a few minutes to capture.

> There is still some blank tape left and the tape also contains footage
> of events that the visitors are not interested in.

IMHO, that's bad practice -- I don't mix subjects on tape.  As I said, tape 
is cheap.  Think of it as a notepad -- there's no reason not to use a blank 
sheet of paper to record a new thought, rather than economizing by trying to 
write very small and put all sorts of unrelated topics on one page.

> In this situation,
> I can burn them a CD with JPEG and MPEG files in under 20 minutes
> using my existing miniDVD camcorder. Capturing the whole tape is not
> going to work.

Not if you insist on filling up a tape.  Why would you do that?

>
>> 3.  You do not EVER delete a clip from the middle of a miniDV tape and 
>> then
>> try to re-use it.  You shouldn't reuse tapes, period.  There's absolutely 
>> no
>> reason to do so.  Tapes are cheap -- they're consumables -- and your 
>> video
>> is irreplaceable as you can never go back in time.
>
> Well, having the ability to delete unwanted footage is a good thing.

Why?  Why not just throw in a new tape?

> Yes, you can't do it easily with a tape. That is a negative in tape
> and positive on hard drive.

I can't think of any reason why you'd want to do that.  On a hard drive 
machine, your storage is limited to the capacity of the hard drive, until 
you dump your video into a computer.  On a tape machine, your storage is 
unlimited.  Fill up one tape?  Just throw in another -- they're cheap.

>
>> Your experience with your VHS-C camcorder has absolutely no relevance to
>> this process.
>>
>
> OK.
>
>>
>> I havd DVD-Rs that went bad after 6-months.  I have 12-year old miniDV 
>> tapes
>> that are in perfect condition.  I have 30 year old analog tapes that look 
>> as
>> good as the day they were recorded.  Tape is robust and the best medium 
>> for
>> archiving.
>>
>
> I agree that tape is a good archive and that is one of the positives
> in my pros and cons table.
>

wrote in message 
news:1183051326.920262.16830@q69g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> It's an interesting theory that Sony, Canon and Panasonic deliberately
> limit the quality of their video recorders but is there any hard
> evidence for this?

Yes, though it's circumstantial.  Sony's new ACVHD high-def machines use a 
codec that is specced to a bandwidth of 25 mbps.  However, Sony's consumer 
implementations of ACVHD arbitrarily limit that bandwidth to between 12 and 
17 mbps, depending on the model.  There is no reason for this arbitrary 
limit and it results in signficant motion artifacts and other undesireable 
concommitants of over-compression.  With respect to the Sony line, the 
change in philosphy occured after Sony retired the TRV900.  This was an 
excellent 3ccd camcorder, with good low-light sensitivity and a nice, 
noise-free, saturated image.  In fact, the camcorder was so good that many 
small event videographers were buying it, rather than the prosumer VX1000 
which cost roughly 50% more.  Sony's next iteration of camcorders consisted 
of the VX2000 (which I have) and the TRV950.  The VX2000 was significant 
improvement over the VX1000 -- it has outstanding low-light characteristics, 
and a rich, noise-free, very saturated and beautiful video image.  The 
TRV950, however, added all sorts of silly gimmicks, e.g. Bluetooth, but had 
dramatically reduced low-light capability, a relatively noisey and poorly 
saturated image (the result of using smaller, higher density sensors) and 
was unsuitable for prosumer applications like weddings and small event 
videography.  Sony has maintained this clear demarcation in quality 
throughout its subsequent introductions, e.g. the prosumer HDV machines 
offer dramatically better high-def video than its consumer ACVHD machines 
which, as I noted above, have arbitrarily-limited data bandwidth.

Canon and Panasonic have done, essentially, the same thing.

>  If one of them did this unilaterally, the other
> two would out-compete them and they would lose sales.  If they all
> covertly agreed to do it together, this would be a very anti-
> competitive practice and almost certainly illegal.

They haven't conspired to do this.  Canon's prosumer offerings were never 
threatened by Canon's consumer machines -- Canon did not (and, for all I 
know, still does not) offer a 3ccd consumer camcorder.  There was also a 
greater spread in price point for Canon.  Its XL1 and XL2 were (and are) 
more expensive than Sony's VX2000 and VX2100.  Canon's GL2 was competitive 
with the VX2000 in price, though not offering as good an image.

Sony "paved the way" for lowered consumer expectations with respect to video 
quality.  The other manufacturers simply followed suit.

>

On Jun 28, 1:07 pm, "PTravel"  wrote:
> On a tape machine, your storage is
> unlimited.  Fill up one tape?  Just throw in another -- they're cheap.
>

I think I am beginning to see your point of view now.

Well, I'm sure learning a lot from you folks!

So, let's say I'm willing to spend up to $1,500- I want high quality video 
and the ability to edit it on my new high end computer- in particular I want 
to video out door stuff, especially forests in New England. (I'm a forester 
and want to film forestry activities). I want a camera that is fairly 
rugged.

Any suggestions? Should I just not think about hi-def? Or should I go for 
that too, for the future? I'm not likely to be able to afford to upgrade 
frequently.

I know that getting good exposure settings in forests with my Nikon F100 35 
mm was difficult- so a video camera that can give me good exposures is a big 
plus.

Joe

Have a look at the SD memory card high definition AVCHD camcorder from
Panasonic.. the HDC-SD1:

http://tinyurl.com/2d8cwy

It should be fairly rugged because there are no moving parts.

Nice image quality, too.

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

On Jun 28, 12:32 pm, "Joe"  wrote:
> I want a camera that is fairly
> rugged.

> Joe

>  "PTravel" wrote:
>> On a tape machine, your storage is
>> unlimited.  Fill up one tape?  Just throw in another -- they're cheap.

Not only cheap, but require ZERO downloading time to get the
camcorder ready for another hour (or whatever) of shooting
(unlike any hard-drive based device).  Same issue with flash-
memory based cameras, audio recorders, etc. The media are
expensive and require either field-downloading or a huge budget
for "media".

wrote ...
> I have read in many forums and discussions that the life of MiniDV is
> up to 40 years. Say, my camcorder dies in 2037. What is the guarantee
> that there will still be some camcorder in the market that can read
> miniDV?

1) HISTORY
There are no known video tape formats ever made/used
that are orphaned yet. There are always people out there
with "antique" equipment who can copy an obsolete format
onto whatever you wish.

2) BACKUPS
There is nothing to prevent you from taking your mini-DV tape
archives (or whatever) and copying them to whatever new
format is popular when DV is finished. Although I anticipate
the DV will have a long run. At least as long as VHS has had.

> ...Consider this scenario: A family visits
> you and your children and visiting children are playing well. You take
> some photos and some videos. You quickly want to copy the pictures and
> video clips to a CD or DVD and give it to them before they leave.
> There is still some blank tape left and the tape also contains footage
> of events that the visitors are not interested in. In this situation,
> I can burn them a CD with JPEG and MPEG files in under 20 minutes
> using my existing miniDVD camcorder. Capturing the whole tape is not
> going to work.

If instant consumer-viewing is a primary requirement, then
get a mini-DVD based camcorder. It will have the same
reduced quality as the hard-drive camcorders suffer from,
but you have made an informed tradeoff decision.

wrote...
> It's an interesting theory that Sony, Canon and Panasonic deliberately
> limit the quality of their video recorders but is there any hard
> evidence for this?

The published specifications of the cameras compared to the
potential bandwidth of the codecs they are using.  This is not a
new discovery. It has been discussed (and griped about) for
months (years?)

> If one of them did this unilaterally, the other
> two would out-compete them and they would lose sales.

They all have motivation to keep the consumer lined "dumbed-down"
in order to protect their higher-end markets.

> If they all covertly agreed to do it together, this would be a very anti-
> competitive practice and almost certainly illegal.

There's nothing to prohibit you from coming along and offering
high-bandwidth consumer camcorders.  In the list of conspiratorial,
anti-competitive issues in the world, this one certainly doesn't make
the top-10 list.

On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:21:48 GMT, "Joe"  wrote:

>So, the question arises- why can't that make a hard drive camcorder which 
>does not have any more compression than the DV tape camcorders? I suppose 
>the answer is that doing so would eat up too much of the hard drive too 
>quickly?

The long answer is: camera-manufacturers don't want to cut into the sales
of their professional products!
(which is the only right answer, by the way ;-) ).

cheers

-martin-
-- 
Official website "Jonah's Quid" http://www.jonahsquids.co.uk

On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 23:21:23 GMT, "Joe"  wrote:

>With my 35 mm, to use the pictures on the net- 
>I had to scan them which lost quality and which resulted in pictures 
>inferior to what you can get from modern $300 digital cameras.

Nonsense! If you would have bought a decent scanner, the quality of the
scanned pictures off a negative, is a million times better than that of a
$300 digital camera. Even the best digital camera's are still behind good
old fashioned negative.

cheers

-martin-
-- 
Official website "Jonah's Quid" http://www.jonahsquids.co.uk

On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 09:55:40 -0400, "David Ruether"
 wrote:

>Under "Convenience 1", you are not limited to 1 hour of
>recording time with tape - 90-minute tapes are available (these
>have equal image and sound quality, but may risk a slightly higher
>drop-out rate, which is rarely a problem with well maintained
>gear), and the shooting camera can be FireWire connected to
>a cheap second Mini-DV camcorder in VCR mode ready to
>record a second 1.5 hours of continuous recording on tape (3
>hours total!). Having a cheap second camera also likely solves
>the "Future" problem...

Even better is an external firewire connected drive (like the Firestores),
where you can record hours and hours and hours.....

-m-
-- 
Official website "Jonah's Quid" http://www.jonahsquids.co.uk

On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 11:17:46 -0700, "PTravel" 
wrote:

>However, Sony's consumer 
>implementations of ACVHD arbitrarily limit that bandwidth to between 12 and 
>17 mbps, depending on the model.  There is no reason for this arbitrary 
>limit and it results in signficant motion artifacts and other undesireable 
>concommitants of over-compression.

Of course there is a reason, and that is to keep the resulting quality
similar to HDV. Or else all producers would rush out to buy one of these
camera's, instead of IMX50 or something like that. Market protection (like
you said in an earlier post).

-m-
-- 
Official website "Jonah's Quid" http://www.jonahsquids.co.uk

"Richard Crowley"  wrote in message 
news:5eihmkF3913lfU1@mid.individual.net...
>  wrote ...
>> I have read in many forums and discussions that the life of MiniDV is
>> up to 40 years. Say, my camcorder dies in 2037. What is the guarantee
>> that there will still be some camcorder in the market that can read
>> miniDV?
>
> 1) HISTORY
> There are no known video tape formats ever made/used
> that are orphaned yet. There are always people out there
> with "antique" equipment who can copy an obsolete format
> onto whatever you wish.

I've heard that 2" helical scan reel-to-reel machines are in short supply. 
;)

I actually keep around an old Beta unit, as well as a 3/4" Umatic -- you 
never know.

"Martin Heffels"  wrote in message 
news:l3g883higu3gr80e3mnmerr5g6rdm56b0f@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 11:17:46 -0700, "PTravel" 
> wrote:
>
>>However, Sony's consumer
>>implementations of ACVHD arbitrarily limit that bandwidth to between 12 
>>and
>>17 mbps, depending on the model.  There is no reason for this arbitrary
>>limit and it results in signficant motion artifacts and other undesireable
>>concommitants of over-compression.
>
> Of course there is a reason, and that is to keep the resulting quality
> similar to HDV. Or else all producers would rush out to buy one of these
> camera's, instead of IMX50 or something like that. Market protection (like
> you said in an earlier post).

Except that the quality of the ACVHD machines isn't comparable to HDV, at 
least not based on what I've read.  The ACVHD machines are reported to 
exhibit rather profound motion artifacts when panning or shooting complex 
fast moving subjects.  Everything I've read (and the sample footage I've 
seen) suggests that, while HDV has enough motion artifact issues to preclude 
commercial studio work, they're far better than the ACVHD machines.

I think ACVHD is limited to establish a "consumer" benchmark for HD, with 
HDV defining the "prosumer" limit.


>
> -m-
> -- 
> Official website "Jonah's Quid" http://www.jonahsquids.co.uk

"PTravel" wrote ...
> "Richard Crowley" wrote...
>>  wrote ...
>>> I have read in many forums and discussions that the life of MiniDV 
>>> is
>>> up to 40 years. Say, my camcorder dies in 2037. What is the 
>>> guarantee
>>> that there will still be some camcorder in the market that can read
>>> miniDV?
>>
>> 1) HISTORY
>> There are no known video tape formats ever made/used
>> that are orphaned yet. There are always people out there
>> with "antique" equipment who can copy an obsolete format
>> onto whatever you wish.
>
> I've heard that 2" helical scan reel-to-reel machines are in short 
> supply. ;)

I guess it depends on how you define: "short supply".
There are enough of them so that you have a choice
of which vendor to send your tape to for dubbing to
the new format of your choice.

> I actually keep around an old Beta unit, as well as a 3/4" Umatic --  
> you never know.

There you go...

wrote in message news:1183049507.236087.209200@w5g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> On Jun 28, 8:55 am, "David Ruether"  wrote:

>> In looking over your web page, I noticed a couple of things that
>> may not be correct. Under "Quality", the Mini-DV compression
>> rate is 5:1 (not none), but it is frame-by-frame, with a clever error
>> correction system in place that covers well most small drop-outs.
>> Under "Convenience 1", you are not limited to 1 hour of
>> recording time with tape - 90-minute tapes are available (these
>> have equal image and sound quality, but may risk a slightly higher
>> drop-out rate, which is rarely a problem with well maintained
>> gear),

> I have updated the Web page with the proints you brought up.

>> and the shooting camera can be FireWire connected to
>> a cheap second Mini-DV camcorder in VCR mode ready to
>> record a second 1.5 hours of continuous recording on tape (3
>> hours total!). Having a cheap second camera also likely solves
>> the "Future" problem...

> Interesting concept. Can the second "cheap" camcorder do its work even
> if the main camcorder is high definition?

I don't know - but since the FireWire connection and recording deck
are just passing and storing digital info and not processing it, it seems
likely that it would work so long as the HD camera used normally
records on D25 tape...
-- 
David Ruether
 d_ruether@hotmail.com
 http://www.donferrario.com/ruether

"PTravel"  wrote in message news:5eicafF381m07U1@mid.individual.net...
>  wrote in message news:1183051326.920262.16830@q69g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...

>> It's an interesting theory that Sony, Canon and Panasonic deliberately
>> limit the quality of their video recorders but is there any hard
>> evidence for this?

> Yes, though it's circumstantial.  Sony's new ACVHD high-def machines use a codec that is specced to a bandwidth of 25 mbps. 
> However, Sony's consumer implementations of ACVHD arbitrarily limit that bandwidth to between 12 and 17 mbps, depending on the 
> model.  There is no reason for this arbitrary limit and it results in signficant motion artifacts and other undesireable 
> concommitants of over-compression.  With respect to the Sony line, the change in philosphy occured after Sony retired the TRV900. 
> This was an excellent 3ccd camcorder, with good low-light sensitivity and a nice, noise-free, saturated image.  In fact, the 
> camcorder was so good that many small event videographers were buying it, rather than the prosumer VX1000 which cost roughly 50% 
> more.  Sony's next iteration of camcorders consisted of the VX2000 (which I have) and the TRV950.  The VX2000 was significant 
> improvement over the VX1000 -- it has outstanding low-light characteristics, and a rich, noise-free, very saturated and beautiful 
> video image.  The TRV950, however, added all sorts of silly gimmicks, e.g. Bluetooth, but had dramatically reduced low-light 
> capability, a relatively noisey and poorly saturated image (the result of using smaller, higher density sensors) and was 
> unsuitable for prosumer applications like weddings and small event videography.  Sony has maintained this clear demarcation in 
> quality throughout its subsequent introductions, e.g. the prosumer HDV machines offer dramatically better high-def video than its 
> consumer ACVHD machines which, as I noted above, have arbitrarily-limited data bandwidth.

> Canon and Panasonic have done, essentially, the same thing.

>>  If one of them did this unilaterally, the other
>> two would out-compete them and they would lose sales.  If they all
>> covertly agreed to do it together, this would be a very anti-
>> competitive practice and almost certainly illegal.

> They haven't conspired to do this.  Canon's prosumer offerings were never threatened by Canon's consumer machines -- Canon did not 
> (and, for all I know, still does not) offer a 3ccd consumer camcorder.  There was also a greater spread in price point for Canon. 
> Its XL1 and XL2 were (and are) more expensive than Sony's VX2000 and VX2100.  Canon's GL2 was competitive with the VX2000 in 
> price, though not offering as good an image.
>
> Sony "paved the way" for lowered consumer expectations with respect to video quality.  The other manufacturers simply followed 
> suit.

This is a nice summation - and, BTW, my last good camera is FS, a TRV900
in perfect condition, listed at www.donferrario.com/ruether/fs-camcorders.htm
(I've had to get out of video and photography due to health issues...).
-- 
David Ruether
 d_ruether@hotmail.com
 http://www.donferrario.com/ruether

On 2007-06-27, Joe  wrote:
> I'm also studying different types of camcorders for a purchase and have 
> never owned one.
>
> So, the question arises- why can't that make a hard drive camcorder which 
> does not have any more compression than the DV tape camcorders? I suppose 
> the answer is that doing so would eat up too much of the hard drive too 
> quickly? But hard drives are getting bigger and cheaper- so I should think, 
> given the advantages of using a hard drive, that it won't be long before 
> they'll make hard drive camcorders without the heavy compression?
>
> Tape of any sort seems like obsolete technology.

Tell that to they guys in the server room. They use DLT tapes for backing
up data. tapes is still state of the art for storage.

"PTravel"  wrote in message 
news:5eicafF381m07U1@mid.individual.net...
>
>  wrote in message 
> news:1183051326.920262.16830@q69g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...


>> It's an interesting theory that Sony, Canon and Panasonic 
>> deliberately
>> limit the quality of their video recorders but is there any 
>> hard
>> evidence for this?
>
> Yes, though it's circumstantial.

<snip>

If there was any doubt as to your profession before, there is 
none now;-0)

Circumstantial = Hard;-0)

Not meant as a flame, more as a roast to your lucid and 
enlightening posts, much appreciated.

As a video newbie, I'm interested in knowing the meaning of ACVHD and HDV.

Thanks,
Joe


"PTravel"  wrote in message 
news:5ejjtgF39f8t6U1@mid.individual.net...
>
> "Martin Heffels"  wrote in message 
> news:l3g883higu3gr80e3mnmerr5g6rdm56b0f@4ax.com...
>> On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 11:17:46 -0700, "PTravel" 
>> 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>However, Sony's consumer
>>>implementations of ACVHD arbitrarily limit that bandwidth to between 12 
>>>and
>>>17 mbps, depending on the model.  There is no reason for this arbitrary
>>>limit and it results in signficant motion artifacts and other 
>>>undesireable
>>>concommitants of over-compression.
>>
>> Of course there is a reason, and that is to keep the resulting quality
>> similar to HDV. Or else all producers would rush out to buy one of these
>> camera's, instead of IMX50 or something like that. Market protection 
>> (like
>> you said in an earlier post).
>
> Except that the quality of the ACVHD machines isn't comparable to HDV, at 
> least not based on what I've read.  The ACVHD machines are reported to 
> exhibit rather profound motion artifacts when panning or shooting complex 
> fast moving subjects.  Everything I've read (and the sample footage I've 
> seen) suggests that, while HDV has enough motion artifact issues to 
> preclude commercial studio work, they're far better than the ACVHD 
> machines.
>
> I think ACVHD is limited to establish a "consumer" benchmark for HD, with 
> HDV defining the "prosumer" limit.
>
>
>>
>> -m-
>> -- 
>> Official website "Jonah's Quid" http://www.jonahsquids.co.uk
>

"Bill's News"  wrote in message 
news:4688808b$0$4671$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
>
> "PTravel"  wrote in message 
> news:5eicafF381m07U1@mid.individual.net...
>>
>>  wrote in message 
>> news:1183051326.920262.16830@q69g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>>> It's an interesting theory that Sony, Canon and Panasonic deliberately
>>> limit the quality of their video recorders but is there any hard
>>> evidence for this?
>>
>> Yes, though it's circumstantial.
>
> <snip>
>
> If there was any doubt as to your profession before, there is none now;-0)

It does seem to sneak in, doesn't it? ;)

In a court of law, circumstantial evidence is both admissible and as 
probative as direct evidence, i.e. both are "hard" evidence.  An example of 
circumstantial evidence that I frequently give juries:  If you go bed at 
night and there's no snow on the ground, but wake up to find your 
neighborhood under 4 inches, that is circumstantial evidence that it snowed. 
There may be other explanations, e.g. someone came around with a snowmaker 
and covered your neighborhood, the laws of physics changed during the night, 
etc., but the best inference is the most simple one: snow fell.


>
> Circumstantial = Hard;-0)
>
> Not meant as a flame, more as a roast to your lucid and enlightening 
> posts, much appreciated.

Thanks!

>
>

"Joe"  wrote in message news:p29ii.3112$za5.1915@trndny09...
> As a video newbie, I'm interested in knowing the meaning of ACVHD and HDV.
>
> Thanks,
> Joe

AVCHD (I repeatedly made typos in my prior posts) and HDV are lossy temporal 
compression codecs that implement high-definition video.  "Compression" 
means that less data than is actually produced by the video source is used 
to store the video.  "Lossy" means data is lost in the compression process, 
i.e. the displayed compressed image will have less detail than the original 
source.  "Temporal" means that, in addition to compressing frame-by-frame, 
subsequent (and sometimes prior) frames are compressed by calculating how 
they differ from a reference frame and only the differences are stored.

HDV uses mpeg2, the same codec as is used for DVDs.  AVCHD uses mpeg4, which 
is newer and, supposedly, more efficient (I haven't seen comparisons between 
the two codecs).  Sony and Panasonic are two manufacturers who have 
introduced high-def camcorders that use AVCHD.  Their AVCHD machines are 
restricted to their consumer line and have artificially-limited bandwidth 
that results in pronounced motion artifacts and other image degradation.  A 
number of manufacturers, including Sony, make HDV machines, but these are 
available only in their prosumer lines.  These machines have no arbitrary 
bandwidth limitation and, generally, produce video that is far superior to 
the consumer AVCHD machines.  This is not the result of any particular 
problem with AVCHD, but with the way that it has been implemented, i.e. at 
limited, low bandwidth, and with the camera's sensors and lenses.



>
>
> "PTravel"  wrote in message 
> news:5ejjtgF39f8t6U1@mid.individual.net...
>>
>> "Martin Heffels"  wrote in message 
>> news:l3g883higu3gr80e3mnmerr5g6rdm56b0f@4ax.com...
>>> On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 11:17:46 -0700, "PTravel" 
>>> 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>However, Sony's consumer
>>>>implementations of ACVHD arbitrarily limit that bandwidth to between 12 
>>>>and
>>>>17 mbps, depending on the model.  There is no reason for this arbitrary
>>>>limit and it results in signficant motion artifacts and other 
>>>>undesireable
>>>>concommitants of over-compression.
>>>
>>> Of course there is a reason, and that is to keep the resulting quality
>>> similar to HDV. Or else all producers would rush out to buy one of these
>>> camera's, instead of IMX50 or something like that. Market protection 
>>> (like
>>> you said in an earlier post).
>>
>> Except that the quality of the ACVHD machines isn't comparable to HDV, at 
>> least not based on what I've read.  The ACVHD machines are reported to 
>> exhibit rather profound motion artifacts when panning or shooting complex 
>> fast moving subjects.  Everything I've read (and the sample footage I've 
>> seen) suggests that, while HDV has enough motion artifact issues to 
>> preclude commercial studio work, they're far better than the ACVHD 
>> machines.
>>
>> I think ACVHD is limited to establish a "consumer" benchmark for HD, with 
>> HDV defining the "prosumer" limit.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> -m-
>>> -- 
>>> Official website "Jonah's Quid" http://www.jonahsquids.co.uk
>>
>

Thanks for that explanation.

I'm not surprised that some manufactures would artificially lower the 
quality of their product to avoid competing with their high end products. 
However, just for the sake of argument- if one didn't do this- and word got 
out that Company X was producing a far superior consumer camcorder- they'd 
win the competition. As far as reducing the competition with their own high 
end products- I should think that many other factors make their high product 
a high end product- such as better lenses, larger higher quality CCD, more 
solidly built camera,  more and better features of all kinds. If what you 
say is true- it would be interesting to see this argument supported by, for 
example, Videomaker magazine or some other industry wide group.

Not that I have much doubt of what you say- or that I am a strong supporter 
of industry- but it's a serious accusation and I'd like to see who else 
agrees. And, if I owned a camcorder company, I'd think I'd prefer to buck 
the trend and produce a superior product and make more money doing it.

Joe

"PTravel"  wrote in message 
news:5esldtF3a18ntU1@mid.individual.net...
>
> "Joe"  wrote in message news:p29ii.3112$za5.1915@trndny09...
>> As a video newbie, I'm interested in knowing the meaning of ACVHD and 
>> HDV.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Joe

On Mon, 02 Jul 2007 19:59:40 GMT, "Joe"  wrote:

>I'm not surprised that some manufactures would artificially lower the 
>quality of their product to avoid competing with their high end products. 
>However, just for the sake of argument- if one didn't do this- and word got 
>out that Company X was producing a far superior consumer camcorder- they'd 
>win the competition.

Trouble is, the punters don't want a better camcorder.  They want
features.

"Joe" wrote...
> Thanks for that explanation.
>
> I'm not surprised that some manufactures would artificially lower the 
> quality of their product to avoid competing with their high end products. 
> However, just for the sake of argument- if one didn't do this- and word 
> got out that Company X was producing a far superior consumer camcorder- 
> they'd win the competition. As far as reducing the competition with their 
> own high end products- I should think that many other factors make their 
> high product a high end product- such as better lenses, larger higher 
> quality CCD, more solidly built camera,  more and better features of all 
> kinds. If what you say is true- it would be interesting to see this 
> argument supported by, for example, Videomaker magazine or some other 
> industry wide group.
>
> Not that I have much doubt of what you say- or that I am a strong 
> supporter of industry- but it's a serious accusation and I'd like to see 
> who else agrees.

It seems like common knowledge. I've never seen any serious
refutation of the evidence.  The number speak for themselves,
don't they?  What's to parse?

> And, if I owned a camcorder company, I'd think I'd prefer to buck the 
> trend and produce a superior product and make more money doing it.

I suspect that if you had a board of directors and a staff of marketing
people, things might look different.

"Laurence Payne" wrote ...
>  "Joe" wrote:
>>I'm not surprised that some manufactures would artificially lower the
>>quality of their product to avoid competing with their high end products.
>>However, just for the sake of argument- if one didn't do this- and word 
>>got
>>out that Company X was producing a far superior consumer camcorder- they'd
>>win the competition.
>
> Trouble is, the punters don't want a better camcorder.  They want
> features.

Indeed. And furthermore, have you been following the discussion
of the Sony HVR-V1U sound problem that Mark Weiss is reporting
over on rec.video.desktop and rec.arts.movies.production.sound?
It looks like Sony are artifically "dumbing down" the audio section
to match the video.  There is no other sensible explanation for
the remarkably poor performance and then Sony's defense of it.

"Joe"  wrote in message news:MOcii.6444$DM4.6375@trndny06...
> Thanks for that explanation.
>
> I'm not surprised that some manufactures would artificially lower the 
> quality of their product to avoid competing with their high end products. 
> However, just for the sake of argument- if one didn't do this- and word 
> got out that Company X was producing a far superior consumer camcorder- 
> they'd win the competition.

They'd win the competition for the consumer market, but they'd still be 
competing against their own prosumer gear.  The prosumer market is very 
profitable as the margins on the equipment are much higher.

> As far as reducing the competition with their own high end products- I 
> should think that many other factors make their high product a high end 
> product- such as better lenses, larger higher quality CCD, more solidly 
> built camera,  more and better features of all kinds.

Prosumer equipment has fewer "features," but that's another discussion.  As 
you note, it is a combination of glass, sensors and electronics, as well as 
compression codec and bandwidth, that contributes to video quality. Consumer 
gear, particularly low-end gear, compromises on all of this.  However, 
scrimping on glass, sensors and electronics saves the manufacturer money. 
There is no cost savings in limiting bandwidth.  The only reason for doing 
so is to deliberately produce an inferior image.


> If what you say is true- it would be interesting to see this argument 
> supported by, for example, Videomaker magazine or some other industry wide 
> group.

Videomaker depends on advertising of consumer gear for its livelihood. 
Similarly, Robin Liss' website tends to cheerlead because of its dependence 
on review gear from the manufacturers.  Liss' site, however, has the 
information you're looking for if you read between the lines, e.g. 
"low-light performance, while good, exhibited significant noise and wasn't 
very saturated . . .", etc.

>
> Not that I have much doubt of what you say- or that I am a strong 
> supporter of industry- but it's a serious accusation and I'd like to see 
> who else agrees. And, if I owned a camcorder company, I'd think I'd prefer 
> to buck the trend and produce a superior product and make more money doing 
> it.

All I know is that I would have liked to get a miniDV camcorder with video 
as good as the TRV900.  When I got around to purchasing one, there was not a 
single consumer model, including Sony's own TRV900 replacement, that 
remotely approached this level of quality.  Instead, I had to buy a prosumer 
model that cost a lot more, not because I have aspirations to be a 
professional videographer (I don't), but because I wanted high-quality 
video.  Now, as I contemplate moving to high-def, I'm faced with the same 
situation.  AVCHD machines (which are all consumer HD machines) all have 
limited bandwidth, resulting in poor quality video.  HDV machines (which are 
only prosumer machines) don't have limited bandwidth and produce much, much 
higher quality video.  Again, I'm going to have to go the prosumer route 
because of specific marketing decisions by the camcorder manufacturers.

>
> Joe
>
> "PTravel"  wrote in message 
> news:5esldtF3a18ntU1@mid.individual.net...
>>
>> "Joe"  wrote in message news:p29ii.3112$za5.1915@trndny09...
>>> As a video newbie, I'm interested in knowing the meaning of ACVHD and 
>>> HDV.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Joe
>

"Laurence Payne" <lpayne1NOSPAM@dslDOTpipexDOTcom> wrote in message 
news:bbni839b899mn4t47ebsusplg1jispkfm3@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 02 Jul 2007 19:59:40 GMT, "Joe"  wrote:
>
>>I'm not surprised that some manufactures would artificially lower the
>>quality of their product to avoid competing with their high end products.
>>However, just for the sake of argument- if one didn't do this- and word 
>>got
>>out that Company X was producing a far superior consumer camcorder- they'd
>>win the competition.
>
> Trouble is, the punters don't want a better camcorder.  They want
> features.

That should be "features" in quotes because a lot of what is marketed as a 
feature really isn't.  For example, "digital zoom" is pure fraud as it 
results in severe image degradation and pixelation.  High optical zoom is 
also pointless, as no one can handhold above 10x or 12x and get a usable 
video (I try to use a tripod for everything, even at wide angle).

"Richard Crowley"  wrote in message 
news:5et5f3F39gpr7U1@mid.individual.net...
> "Laurence Payne" wrote ...
>>  "Joe" wrote:
>>>I'm not surprised that some manufactures would artificially lower the
>>>quality of their product to avoid competing with their high end products.
>>>However, just for the sake of argument- if one didn't do this- and word 
>>>got
>>>out that Company X was producing a far superior consumer camcorder- 
>>>they'd
>>>win the competition.
>>
>> Trouble is, the punters don't want a better camcorder.  They want
>> features.
>
> Indeed. And furthermore, have you been following the discussion
> of the Sony HVR-V1U sound problem that Mark Weiss is reporting
> over on rec.video.desktop and rec.arts.movies.production.sound?
> It looks like Sony are artifically "dumbing down" the audio section
> to match the video.  There is no other sensible explanation for
> the remarkably poor performance and then Sony's defense of it.

I've been reading the cross-posts here and find it very disturbing.  I'm 
still not convinced that he didn't just receive a couple of bad cameras.  If 
you recall, Sony denied for a long time that there was a hiss problem with 
the PD150/170.  It took the BBC documenting a hardware mod to bypass the AGC 
before Sony fixed the problem, and still wouldn't repair older models.

>
>

On 7/02/2007, PTravel posted this:
> "Joe"  wrote in message news:MOcii.6444$DM4.6375@trndny06...

<SNIP>

> Prosumer equipment has fewer "features," but that's another discussion.  As 
> you note, it is a combination of glass, sensors and electronics, as well as 
> compression codec and bandwidth, that contributes to video quality. Consumer 
> gear, particularly low-end gear, compromises on all of this.  However, 
> scrimping on glass, sensors and electronics saves the manufacturer money. 
> There is no cost savings in limiting bandwidth.  The only reason for doing so 
> is to deliberately produce an inferior image.

There is one possible way that restricting bandwidth might save money. 
Higher bandwidth requires higher processor speeds and probably more RAM 
as well, and thus is more expensive. Maybe...

I have no idea if the difference is enough to matter in the given 
situation, however. For no particular reason, I just wanted to point 
out a possibility that might get the mfrs off the hook.

Of course, there's an application of Occam's Razor here: namely, that 
they really do it on purpose, as you guys seem to think :-)

-- 
Gene E. Bloch (Gino)
letters617blochg3251
(replace the numbers by "at" and "dotcom")

Please keep in mind, all of you, that I'm completely green at all of this 
video stuff- but, where do you draw the line between consumer and prosumer? 
Is there some price range?

BTW, I've checked out many of the web sites and discussion boards you folks 
have referred to- and they're great! I'll just keep researching until I can 
make a good decision. Whenever I spend more than $100, I want to be sure 
it's the right choice.

Joe


"PTravel"  wrote in message 
news:5et9omF3ahqnhU1@mid.individual.net...
>
> "Joe"  wrote in message news:MOcii.6444$DM4.6375@trndny06...
>> Thanks for that explanation.
>>
>> I'm not surprised that some manufactures would artificially lower the 
>> quality of their product to avoid competing with their high end products. 
>> However, just for the sake of argument- if one didn't do this- and word 
>> got out that Company X was producing a far superior consumer camcorder- 
>> they'd win the competition.
>
> They'd win the competition for the consumer market, but they'd still be 
> competing against their own prosumer gear.  The prosumer market is very 
> profitable as the margins on the equipment are much higher.
>
>> As far as reducing the competition with their own high end products- I 
>> should think that many other factors make their high product a high end 
>> product- such as better lenses, larger higher quality CCD, more solidly 
>> built camera,  more and better features of all kinds.
>
> Prosumer equipment has fewer "features," but that's another discussion. 
> As you note, it is a combination of glass, sensors and electronics, as 
> well as compression codec and bandwidth, that contributes to video 
> quality. Consumer gear, particularly low-end gear, compromises on all of 
> this.  However, scrimping on glass, sensors and electronics saves the 
> manufacturer money. There is no cost savings in limiting bandwidth.  The 
> only reason for doing so is to deliberately produce an inferior image.
>
>
>> If what you say is true- it would be interesting to see this argument 
>> supported by, for example, Videomaker magazine or some other industry 
>> wide group.
>
> Videomaker depends on advertising of consumer gear for its livelihood. 
> Similarly, Robin Liss' website tends to cheerlead because of its 
> dependence on review gear from the manufacturers.  Liss' site, however, 
> has the information you're looking for if you read between the lines, e.g. 
> "low-light performance, while good, exhibited significant noise and wasn't 
> very saturated . . .", etc.
>
>>
>> Not that I have much doubt of what you say- or that I am a strong 
>> supporter of industry- but it's a serious accusation and I'd like to see 
>> who else agrees. And, if I owned a camcorder company, I'd think I'd 
>> prefer to buck the trend and produce a superior product and make more 
>> money doing it.
>
> All I know is that I would have liked to get a miniDV camcorder with video 
> as good as the TRV900.  When I got around to purchasing one, there was not 
> a single consumer model, including Sony's own TRV900 replacement, that 
> remotely approached this level of quality.  Instead, I had to buy a 
> prosumer model that cost a lot more, not because I have aspirations to be 
> a professional videographer (I don't), but because I wanted high-quality 
> video.  Now, as I contemplate moving to high-def, I'm faced with the same 
> situation.  AVCHD machines (which are all consumer HD machines) all have 
> limited bandwidth, resulting in poor quality video.  HDV machines (which 
> are only prosumer machines) don't have limited bandwidth and produce much, 
> much higher quality video.  Again, I'm going to have to go the prosumer 
> route because of specific marketing decisions by the camcorder 
> manufacturers.
>
>>
>> Joe
>>
>> "PTravel"  wrote in message 
>> news:5esldtF3a18ntU1@mid.individual.net...
>>>
>>> "Joe"  wrote in message 
>>> news:p29ii.3112$za5.1915@trndny09...
>>>> As a video newbie, I'm interested in knowing the meaning of ACVHD and 
>>>> HDV.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Joe
>>
>

Hi, I wish I had time to read more of this forum, but I'm in Vietnam
at the moment travelling with friends but work have told me I need to
decide whether they are moving to hard drive cameras from Mini DV (i
work in the media dept of a 6th form college- never off duty!)

We use premiere pro there and therefore I think we need uuncompressed
DV-AVI. Am I right in thinking the only HD option supporting that
format is professional ($2000+) P2 or Firestore technologies? thankyou
so much for any help or thoughts you can give, sorry again if this has
been covered :)
Luke

"Joe"  wrote in message news:_ypii.1732$4e5.1509@trndny07...
> Please keep in mind, all of you, that I'm completely green at all of this 
> video stuff- but, where do you draw the line between consumer and 
> prosumer? Is there some price range?

I'm not sure of the answer to that.  "True" prosumer gear is easily 
identified by its features: XLR inputs for mikes, zebra bars for exposure, 
full manual, etc.  Sony and Canon make more consumer-friendly versions of 
some of their prosumer gear, e.g. Sony's VX2000 and VX2100 are 
"consumerized" versions of the PD150 and PD170, and Canon's GL2 is more 
consumer-oriented than the XL2.

However, some manufacturers (Panasonic comes to mind) have made produced 
what are purely consumer machines that are dressed up to appear to be 
prosumer equivalents, e.g. Panny's 3CCD consumer line (I don't recall