Cameras

[DrRita]

Thought I'd start the ball rolling here ......

Do any of you out there do any of your own filming, editing, sound etc? If so what equipment and software do you use?

I just bought a new Canon HV20. HV20 @ Circuit City (http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Canon-High-Definition-Camcorder-HV20/sem/rpsm/oid/171434/catOid/-13063/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do?WT.mc_n=461057&WT.mc_t=U&cm_ven=PAID%20SEARCH&cm_cat=ADVERTISING.COM&cm_pla=CATEGORY%20-%20IMAGING-%3ECLASS%20-%20CAMCORDER&cm_ite=187875%20PURCHASE%20KEYWORD-CANON%20HV20&cm_keycode=461057) It's a great little camera that does a really good job for under $1000. I wanted the canon XH A1 at Newegg (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16830120080) but at about $3000, I decided to wait until I had more experience.

Anyone want to weigh in?

[wgjones3]

The only experience I have is with SD 3CCD cams. Canon's XL2 line is excellent. The thing I like about the XL2 is the lens interchangeability. I mean, the lens that comes with the camera is heavy and shoots a great image. But I also like having the powered XLR ports in back. The on-board mic is basically useless for a professional shoot, but with a proper shotgun mic, it's very easy to shoot a TV-quality clip.

It's hard to justify spending $3000+ for a DVD-quality cam when the same money gets you 1080p HD these days, but that XL2 is one niiiiiice camera for the money.

[DrRita]

I understand that the HDD Cams that go directly to hard drive or DVD are difficult to do editing. I haven't tried yet but I was told that you can only move full scenes, not frames. Have you heard anything?

[wgjones3]

If your cam has a firewire out, you should be able to control how you upload.

I can only tell you how we did editing with the Mini-DV decks.

First off, if you've got a $3000 Mini-DV camera, you do not want to be logging footage with that camera, because it puts a lot of wear on the tape mechanism. The cheapest Sony Mini-DV Handicam also serves as a logging deck for Final Cut, all the features are integrated so that you can control the camera through Final Cut via firewire, and at around $250, you can go through five of those little cameras for the same price as an actual logging deck. The church has had a Sony Mini-DV cam for a logging deck since October of '06, it's used to upload 3 to 6 complete tapes per week, and it's still going like a champ.

In Final Cut, once you've got your logging deck connected via firewire, there's a log and capture manager that lets you scrub through the tape. You can either upload the whole tape, which takes about 10 gigs of hard drive space if I remember right, or you can set in and out points for scenes you want. If your cam had a time code generator, then Final Cut can be set to pull out each scene separately based on time code breaks. However, if you're setting in and out points, with a Mini-DV deck, you need to give it anywhere from 3 to 10 seconds slack on each end so that the mechanism can wind up and spool down. With the log and capture, you can go through a whole deck, set as many in-out scenes as you want, and then have Final Cut pull the video up as a batch. Out of an hour-long tape, you may set only 15 minutes of uploaded footage in 25 different scenes.

Now, with DVD cams, the problem I've heard is that there is no uploading of footage, you get a finalized DVD out of the camera and then you have to rip that using Handbrake or some other program into an AVI or raw DV stream. With the hard drive cam, I don't know, but it should let you hook up via firewire or USB. I've never used USB for DV capture, but I was told when I started that USB runs off a shared bus and doesn't give you the same quality of capture as firewire, which has a dedicated bus for each port. If the cam is compatible with the software you're using, it should give you complete control to scrub through and log whatever you want. Additionally, the HDD camera may let you use the camera itself as a log bin and edit the footage without uploading it, though I don't think I'd suggest that because of the wear it puts on the camera's drive.

With Final Cut, Premiere CS3, or any other professional NLE package, you should be able to look on the support website and find a list of products that are supported for video upload.