Bought Top Dawg II and need camera advice

[limeyx]

Hello,

Thank you for all the helpful information and great advice.

@ Limeyx You bring a good point to the table. I am land locked in Indiana. A large portion of my diving is in the lakes and quarries in the midwest. I do 1 exotic dive per year. Last year was Cayman Brac and this year is Bonaire. Maybe the 900 or 950 is a good all round solution. Is HD that much better than SD? Would like to hear the communities thoughts on that.

@ DRbill I bought the back monitor with my TDII just for that very reason. I figured I wouldn't do to well trying to look through a view finder while filming.

Thank you for taking time to help. Have a great day.

Honestly, I am still evaluating how much better my 3CCD HD camera is compared to my single CCD SD camera.

HD still has distribution "issues" (burning HD-DVD or Blu-ray) but apparently even when down-converted to a regular DVD, looks better than an SD camera.

The biggest thing I am learning:

- HD is inherently not as good as SD in lowlight right now
- HD is *really* *really* big (fills my entire 24" LCD screen)
- With HD, I find I need to adjust white balance/manual gain to get a good picture -- I am not sure if the Top Dawg Housing can do that because the LANC protocol does not support it.

I am putting together a short movie where I can mix/match some SD/HD footage -- maybe I can put something up next week.

I am convinced HD is the way forward, and from my perspective, I wont invest any more $ into SD

EDIT: With the LCD on the TDII housing. 99% chance the LCD is 4:3 aspect ration. HD is inherently widescreen which means what you are filming will be a bit outside the LCD (same thing if you put an SD cam into "fake" 16:9 format)
(just an FYI -- this can be irritating as you can get errant fins of buddies on the tape but not on the LCD etc...)

 

[wilbkr1]

Happy New Year!

Christmas has come and gone and my wife gave me the green light to go ahead and buy my camera. ( I must have been good this year) I want to make one last call for advice before making my selection. Currently I am leaning towards the HC3 but am concerned that I should consider the HC1. Has anyone had time to use either of the two cameras and fill comfortable sharing their thoughts? Thank you for your help!!!

 

[diversteve]

We've been discussing that exact thing here:

http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=171834

PM if you have HC1 questions...

 

[wilbkr1]

Hello,

Recieved my HC3 a week ago, and all I can say is this thing is small.(Very Nice) While reading the user manual I realized I need to use I-link/firewire to transfer video to my computer. Since my laptop does not have an I-link/Firewire port I have to buy a Firewire PCMCIA card. Can someone confirm that the Hc3 uses a 6pin cable and make recommendations on a brand of PC card and if I can transfer data at 800 mbps or only 400 mbps from the Hc3. Thank you for all the help.

 

[marshallkarp]

My Sony Handicam TRV-33 transfers video to my laptop through Firewire. One could use USB, but don't, the quality is not as good as firewire, or so I have been told. Anyway, I bought a PCMCIA laptop card for the transfer and it works fine. I think it is a Belin. Also, you may need an external hard drive as the HD movie files are real big and eat up internal hard drive space in a hurry. You will want a firewire external hard drive, do not get a USB external hard drive. I bought my first external hard drive and it was USB. I could see why they recommend firewire as USB did present chopy video problems for me. Luckily, Radio Shack had a $20 firewire enclosure, so I took the hard drive out of the USB external drive and installed it in the new firewire enclosure. Works fine.

 

[paulpost]

From what you said that your laptop doesn't have a built in fire wire port I assume it is an older model. Before buying a card go and see what are the minimum requirements of different NLE software and compare with yours, you may end up like me buying a new computer just for editing.

 

[drbill]

Most laptops use 5400 rpm hard drives. They're OK for caturing short video segments, but you'll probably find you'll need a 7300 rpm external drive to capture video successfully.

I'm waiting for the HC7 now.

 

[wilbkr1]

Hello,

Thanks for the input.

@ marshallkarp- Thank you for the advice on the external HD thought and the quality issue with USB.

@ PaulPost- System is a Latitude D810, last years model for Dell. With the way technology developes would consider that an older model? Dell is one of my suppliers and beefed the machine up but I did not think of adding firewire at the time I ordered it.

Before buying a card go and see what are the minimum requirements of different NLE software and compare with yours.

Hate to look like a newb, but could you clarify what NLE software stands for and explain in greater detail what you are recommending me to do. Thank you very much for your help.

Additional input is greatly appreciated.

 

[paulpost]

NLE stands for non-linear editing, in other words after you download the clip to your hard drive you can cut it up in small pieces and move them around.
Very affordable NLE software $99 and up are Adobe Elements 3 that handle HD or Ulead video studio 10plus, if you go to this websites you'll find what are the minimum requirements. From my own experience I can tell you that most of this requirements are not enough. My computer has a 2.8 Ghz core, 1 Gig of RAM, high end video card and I was not able to download HD clips with Ulead VS 10plus. Now I've bought a dual core tower 2.2 Ghz each 2gigs of ram and use it for editing only and works fine. But do not take it for granted. The good part is that you can download a trial NLE program for 30 days and you can test it whether is working or not.

 

[wilbkr1]

Hey again,

@ Drbill- I was very excited to see the quality of the video when I jacked the camcorder directly into my HD TV. It looked awesome. Hope it does aswell underwater. Do you know when the HC7 is due to come out?

@ PaulPost- Here are the specks on my system. Tell me what you think please.

Processor: Pentium(R) M dual core processor 2.26GHz
Ram: 2 GB
Storage: 100 GB @ 7200 rpm
Video: ATI Radeon x600 with 128 MB memory
800 FSB

Do you think this will get me off and running for a bit? Thank you for your input, it helps alot.