[Gllug] Camcorders

[damion.yates at gmail.com]

On Mon, 7 Dec 2009, Jason Clifford wrote:

> On Mon, 2009-12-07 at 04:35 +0000, Lucian @ lastdot.org wrote:
> > I want to buy a camcorder and I haven't owned one so far, I have no
> > experience with such devices. I don't really need "HD" quality, but
> > I'd like a cam that would work decently inside & outside and doesn't
> > require any crapware installed on my PC.  Could you do any "linux
> > friendly" (my PC runs Centos only) recommendations that would fit a
> > 200-300 quid budget?
> 
> Perhaps look for a straight forward Mini-DV camcorder with a firewire
> (ieee 1394) port and a similar port on your PC (you can buy one for
> very little).
> 
> I have such a setup, bought many years ago, and it's great. I simply
> plug it into my PC, fire up kino and import/edit etc as I wish to.
> 
> It's very simple and it works well.

I completely agree with this.  I very recently got £150 sony minidv
after my last one (~£250 6 years ago) broke.  I tried out several
options and realised MiniDV SD is the best (okay to be fair I gain
compatibility with some existing tapes, but I was able/willing to switch
to HDD or SD), Especially when taking price in to account.

My 2nd daughter's home birth was filmed in HD with a MiniDV compatible
camera, the dvgrab cmdline tool created mpeg4/aac .ts (mpeg transport
streams) which play unaltered on my PS3, I'd need to transcode to
something else to do NLE.  If money wasn't an issue I'd go MiniDV HD but
check for one good at low-light.

Some notes:
- A lot are terrible quality in low-light.  Even just indoors in an
  evening with the lights on.

- Ultimately as you need to review what you've filmed, you'll need to
  play through a whole video and do some NLE (I like Kino), so the
linear tape drawback of MiniDV is minor, especially as they are VERY low
cost for one of the best quality video captures you'll see.

- Definitely avoid MiniDVD, there are almost no reasons these ones are
good.
 
- You'll find ffmpeg and friends will be able to convert anything, from
  any camera you can buy (really don't assume this is actually any
easier in MacOS/Windows either) to DV format for editing in kino.

- HD makes really large files which are hard to store and edit for no
  real gain (are you that good a director/cameraman?) at massive price
increase.

I've been doing video stuff for leasure, on Linux only, for years,
Making SVCDs then DVDs with fancy menus etc.  I now just leave files on
my DNLA serving NAS for playback on the PS3.  Its is a very time
consuming hobby, especially making stuff work on Linux, however I have
friends with Windows and MacOS and it _really_ doesn't get any easier.

Damion
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