Wife Wants A Video Camera?

[DaFireMedic]

If you get an HD camera, you MUST have a high-end computer to edit the video with, the latest in editing software, a Blu-ray burner, and an HDTV. If any of the pieces in this equation are missing, your final output won't be HD! .

This is not entirely true anymore. Most newer computers can handle HD now. I'm editing HD on a $600 HP desktop thats a little over a year old. It handles the .m2t files from my HV20 with no problem. If I need to export to a lossless codec for other work, it will make all but the fastest computers stutter a bit. But if you are having trouble editing in real time, you can make "proxy files" of lower quality to edit with, then replace the file for the final render, leaving all of your cuts, effects, etc. in place. Then, as Ronscuba said, you can upload in full HD to Vimeo or Stage 6 (I use Vimeo, if only for ease of use). I do not have an HDTV yet, but thats never been a concern for me. I shoot everything in HD, and downconvert if I don't need it to stay HD.

HD camcorders now are far beyond SD in terms of video quality, and with the cost coming down, theres very little reason to choose SD over HD. With an HD camcorder, you can also shoot SD for now, and wait until you have any of the other HD pieces that you want in place before using HD.

 

[haha49]

I completely agree with Robin about getting an HD camera. If you get an HD camera, you MUST have a high-end computer to edit the video with, the latest in editing software, a Blu-ray burner, and an HDTV. If any of the pieces in this equation are missing, your final output won't be HD! Furthermore, if (with any of the software that is available) you download your HD video into your software and then burn your project to a Standard DVD, you will be VERY disappointed. Believe me, I have a lot of experience in this. If you go HD, go all the way. Otherwise, stay with some of the very good DV cameras that are available. The Sony PC-1000 and the Light & Motion Mako housing is probably one of the lightest and best camera setups I've ever seen or used. The results are phenomenal, and the package is relatively small and easy to travel with. At this point, you'd have to get the Sony PC-1000 on Ebay, which you should be able to do at a very good price.

you can put a high def vidio on a dvd if you have a computer that is hdcp compatable and its pluged into a hdcp moniter or hd tv you can watch it in high def the down side is you run out of space on a dvd very fast as you have to burn it as a data disk to keep the high def quality.. now i have a high end computer i have a high def tv and i burn some high def vidios off the net onto my dvds it looks like junk in a dvd player but plug in a media computer with hdcp onto that 52 and then the dvds look aswome..

 

[Papa_Bear]

FYI, a one hour HD 1920x1080i .AVI video file is about 12 gigabytes and as you can see will not fit on a SD DVD 4.3 Gigabyte disk! So you have to convert it to a format that will or burn it to Blu-Ray up to 45 Gigabytes! The conversion controls the quality, you can compress a 11gig .Avi into a 720p-HD .mov file and get the bottom end of HD on a SD DVD playable on all DVD's and it looks great on an upscaling DVD player with HDMI cable.
BTW you arn't getting true HD into the computer without HDMI connection, you are getting 1440x1080i with fire-wire! It just isn't fast enough to transfuse at the 25mb HD rate required for 1920x1080p the highest quality HD to date!

 

[Marinevisions]

It just isn't fast enough to transfuse at the 25mb HD rate required for 1920x1080p the highest quality HD to date!

This may be true for most cameras, but the Panasonic HVX200 records HD at 100Mbps and the new Sony PMW-EX1 has a selectable rate of 25 or 35.