Affordable Camera With These Specs...?

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horseradish

Hello everyone.

I'm pretty new to filmmaking and I have a few questions. Firstly, I'd like to buy a camcorder that's of solid quality but not insanely expensive. I'm looking to spend $2,000.00 MAX (if monthly payment is an option). And obviously I'd prefer to spend considerably less than that if possible. So, what I'm wondering is, does anyone know of a camcorder that falls within the above price range, and that possesses the following specs?:

-3 CCD's with progressive scan
-ability to shoot at 24p
-a microphone-in jack
-manual controls for iris, shutter, focus, and white balance
-ability to shoot at very low (1/60 or less) and very high (1/2000 or more) shutter speed

With regard to the 3 CCD's, does anyone know if there is a camcorder within the above price range that has CCD's near in size to those of a broadcast camcorder (1/2 inch - 2/3 inch)? I notice that the JVC GZ-HD7 has 1/5 inch CCD's. Does such a size allow for good low-light performance? How does the HD7 perform when shooting an outdoor night scene? Also, I notice that the Canon HV20 uses a CMOS censor. Does the CMOS censor perform as well in low-light conditions as 3 CCD's? Does it capture color as well?

By the way, I'm willing to compromise on the quality of the image stabilization, as I'm planning on purchasing a solid tripod anyway. Don't know if that would factor into finding a cheaper camcorder that has all the other specs, but I just thought I'd throw it out there.

My second-to-last question relates to HD. I read once that it is unwise to buy an HD camcorder because of the limitations on software compatibility. Is this true? And will I be able to use such editing programs as Premier (or whatever is the top-notch editing program now) without having to make costly upgrades to my computer (I have a Dell XPS 410)? Does shooting in HD cause headaches for the low-budget filmmaker that would otherwise be avoided through the use of SD?

Here is my last paragraph of questions (for now): is it true that it is better to shoot with a camcorder that records to miniDV than it is to shoot with a camcorder that records to a built-in hard drive? I read once that this is so. Is it less practical these days to record to miniDV tapes? If so, why?

Please excuse this novella. I greatly appreciate all responses given. Thanks a lot and bog bless.

-horseradish
 
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Ok, I'm not up on all the consumer cameras, but I do watch as more professional features creep down into the lower price ranges. You can have 24p, but you'll probably have to settle for a CMOS sensor. I do not believe that will be a problem. You cannot have a 1/2" 3CCD camera for under $15K AFAIK. You can get a used 1/3" 3CCD camera in your price range, but I'm pretty sure you'll have to go for a used camera to get 24p in that camera.

I'm pretty sure you can find your manual controls and microphone jack. The HV20 and HV30 have those things (someone correct me if I'm wrong ... I'm not looking at a spec sheet), although they aren't as conveniently located as on a larger camera.

Regarding shooting on harddrive vs. tape. The hard drive option makes for a more convenient work flow and it allows data to be written out faster, so the camera can do less compression. I'm not sure that any of the consumer cameras write less compressed video to their hard drives, but in the prosumer and professional markets, a hard drive or solid state drive allow you to record video at 100Mbps and faster, where miniDV tape is limited to much lower data rates.

Regarding your software compatibility question, the cameras that I've had the opportunity to play with and research have mostly been able to output (through firewire) standard definition, even if you recorded in high definition. Having the camera convert for you might take away the workflow advantage of recording to hard drive, but it will allow you to work in standard definition and still have the high definition recording to fall back on, if you ever need or want it.

Regarding low light handling; you can't use "quality" and "low light" in the same sentence when you are talking about photography (including the motion variety). The camera records the light that comes through it's lens. Without light there is no image, with limited light, there is a limited image. Use lots of light whenever possible. If you're shooting live or documentary footage and you have no choice, then you'll have to forgo quality.

Doug
 
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Thanks Doug. I figured I was dreaming when I talked of purchasing a camcorder with 1/2" CCD's for two grand or less. But I'd be willing to buy a used camcorder, as you suggested. Can you recommend a reliable site that might offer good used camcorders? For instance, is there a site specifically devoted to selling used film gear (I'm dreaming again)?

What do you mean when you say, "...the camera can do less compression."? What is compression? For that matter, what does that whole paragraph mean? Please forgive my lack of computer knowledge.

So when you offer that I might use firewire as a means to covert HD to SD, are you admitting that software compatibility is indeed an issue with HD camcorders?

About shooting in low-light: Have you ever seen Brokeback Mountain? Remember that one brief, broad shot where Gyllenhaal's character is sitting by a campfire and the moon is casting a glow over the landscape before him? If you're familiar with what I'm talking about, then, as far as you know, would you say that that shot was achieved using mega high-powered lighting located high above and out of view? Or was that shot achieved with no artificial lighting at all, but only because Ang Lee was using some mega expensive camera?

Thanks again.

-Horseradish
 
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I buy used gear from B&H Photo because they are the only ones I trust. They test it and stand behind it. I have not looked lately to see what they had there.

Regarding compression and storage, let me try to explain this without using too many numbers. Let's just say you're shooting 1280x720 progressive @ 24 frames per second. I pick that format because it's sort of in the middle, and there are about 1 million pixels per frame. Since we need a Red, Green, and Blue component for each pixel, we have about 3 million bytes per frame. Plus we have audio, but lets ignore audio for now. If we want to record 24 frames each second and each frame is 3 million bytes, we need to lay down 72 million bytes per second (with no audio). Let's put that 72,000,000 number in perspective ....

A standard def miniDV camera records about 2,500,000 bytes per second to miniDV tape (plus audio). That is about as fast as that tape deck can record, and if we made it record a lot faster, the tape would have to move a lot faster and we'd only get 20 minutes on a 1 hour tape.

So, our miniDV tape can record 2,500,000 per second of our video data and we have 72,000,000 to record. I'd say we're in trouble. We have two choices; 1) we write to something that can take all of our video data, or 2) we come up with a way of squeezing the image data (compressing it) without completely trashing the image quality, however we are going to make some compromises and be very clever to get our 72M down to 2.5M.

The use of MPEG2 compression does most of the work, but we're still really crushing that beautiful image. I'm sure you've seen compression artifacts (think YouTube). If we took option 1, we still need some compression, because 72MB/second is too much for most storage systems. The actual math for 1280x720@24 frames comes to about 222GB/hour without audio. If we throw a little, imperceptible compression at it, we can get it down around 100GB/hour, which we can do on a fast hard drive, but we could never don on miniDV tape.

BTW: a 1 hour miniDV tape stores about 13.5GB, including audio.

Ok, so I lied about not using too many numbers. What you need to understand it that if video were stored in it's full glory, it would take a lot of space. However, thanks to clever processing, we can squeeze it without degrading the image too much. By the same token, all video compression is a compromise.

Someone else will have to answer your question about Brokeback Mountain. I haven't seen it, and I wouldn't speculate on how they shot that seen. It's extremely unlikely that they shot it by moonlight. Hopefully, someone else can give you the scoop on that particular setup.

Doug
 
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So, essentially, in order to save large amounts of data without compromising too much on quality, one must limit compression as much as possible, correct? And to do that one would be wise to invest in a storage system big enough to contain all that data, thereby reducing the need for compression? Hence the advantage of a hard drive over a miniDV tape, since the former can store a lot more data than the latter?

But I'm still confused on one thing: Ultimately I'll want to save the film I make to my computer. Since consumer pc's generally have much larger hard drives than consumer camcorders, won't compression not be an issue anyway once I transfer the data saved to the camcorder's hard drive/miniDV tape to the computer? Or is it that I'm stuck with the compressed quality caused by the camcorder, regardless of the pc that I subsequently transfer the data to? The foregoing questions may sound stupid, but I only ask them because it seems (correct me if I'm wrong) that most camcorders within the price range that I specified have hard drives that are only 60GB or less. Since you say that shooting at 1280X720@24 fps comes out to around 222GB/hour, or 100GB/hour after compression, then would not a 60GB hard drive be inadequate for recording at such quality?

Thanks.

-horseradish
 
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Compression algorithms these days are pretty good. Almost all high definition content is compressed (VC1, H.264, MPEG2-HD) because of the astronomical amount of storage space uncompressed data requires. Just look at the difference in size between a bitmap image (.BMP) and one that is high-quality JPEG compressed (.JPG or .JPEG). It's the same concept in moving images with the addition of look ahead compression (methods of computing differences frame to frame so static images are compressed by a great deal since several areas of the image don't change over several frames - it only has to record the data once). Just because it's compressed doesn't automatically mean it's junk. A Blu-ray disc holds ~50GB of data with several audio tracks (some uncompressed) and the video looks fantastic. Granted, it's not 4Kx4K that the uber expensive cinema cameras can produce, but 1280x720@24fps (720p24) compressed should be good enough for most projects. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Even broadcast high-definition signals are compressed, often so much so that you get macroblocking with fast moving content (my biggest annoyance, which is why I invested in HD-DVD and Blu-ray).

You're going to need compression no matter what. Just limit the number of conversions throughout your workflow to preserve the quality as much as possible before you get to the final render. Recording straight to hard drive eliminates one such step. My camcorder (Canon XL1s) records native NTSC 60i, so I capture in this format and edit in this format (NTSC DV) throughout my workflow and then transcode depending on my target distribution medium (usually 480p30 unless it's web bound).
 
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horseradish, this discussion on compression is getting off the track. You wanted to know about tape vs. hard drive, and I was trying to explain that the hard drive was less limited in the data rates it could record. Unless you're going to purchase a high end camcorder, the data is going to be compressed a lot, anyway. If the camcorder has a built in 60GB HD, it's likely that it uses more compression than a miniDV tape system.

Regarding copying to the computer; you can never get back data/quality that was squeezed out of the image with compression. As you suggested, you are "stuck" with what the camera records, which is compressed. And, as Vince explained, there is always going to be some compression, but don't let anyone tell you that compression doesn't come with a price in terms of quality. On the other hand, if you want to avoid heavy compression, you'll need something like a Red One camera or a high end HD camera.

Don't get hung up on compression. You should probably be more concerned about workflow. Obviously tape requires longer to capture, but tape also gives you automatic archival storage of the original recording, which I find to be valuable.

One example of a camera that records with more quality than HDV is the Panasonic HVX-200, but it is out of your price range. I believe the low end consumer cameras all use as much or more compression than HDV.

Sorry for having confused the heck out of this discussion.

Regarding the GL-2; I used a GL-1 a long time ago and I was impressed with the image quality. It had some usability issues, some of which were corrected in the GL-2. The GL-2 uses 1/4" CCDs and I'm not sure about 24p. You may want to look around, if you're not in a hurry. I think you can get a good price on a 1/3" CCD camera if you are patient.

Doug
 
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I may still be confused, Doug, but I feel there's a discrepency here. In your second reply you mentioned that a one hour miniDV tape can store roughly 13.5GB of data. That considered, why then would a camcorder with a 60GB HD use more compression than a miniDV tape system?

-horseradish

p.s. Vince, I don't follow...
 
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How many hours does it store on the hard drive? The consumer camcorders with internal hard drives that I am familiar with use AVCHD compression. They will store about 1.1 hours per 10GB of disk space shooting in high quality mode. The AVCHD compression is an H.264 (MPEG4) compression algorithm that is very efficient. For a consumer on vacation, if they can't take extra tapes, they need to be able to record for at least a few hours. By comparison, the Panasonic AG-HVX200 can only store about 4 minutes on a 4GB P2 card, at it's highest quality setting. That would be 1 hour on a 60GB HD.

In the consumer world, highly compressed is good. If you're going to do a lot of color correction, etc., then highly compressed is bad.

Regarding what Vince said, he is correct that inter-frame compression algorithms (recording differences from frame to frame) can be very efficient and produce high quality video at small file sizes, he is losing sight of the fact that delivery formats can play tricks that don't work as well when the compression is applied at the point of origin and the video must go through several image processing steps and then be recompressed for final delivery. The DCT steps discard lots of useful detail, and adding compression on top of compression is doubling your losses.

Having said all that, I'm shooting HDV on a Canon XH-A1. Although there are limitations, I love the format, and I especially love the price. When I can afford a Red One, or an AG-HVX200 I'll desert my XH-A1 on the side of the road, but until then, it will shoot DV (standard def), or HDV and it makes beautiful pictures.

Ok, have I contradicted myself enough times to make you hate me, yet?

Doug
 
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Doug, not sure where I was losing sight. In my workflow, I only do it one time, and that's when transcoding from NTSC DV to MPEG2.

Incidentally, if you bring up DCT then you may as well bring up motion-compensated inter-frame prediction, I-frames, P-frames, GOP, etc. Either way, we will continue to lose and confuse our audience. :)
 
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You're right Vince, of course, but that comment was mostly meant mostly for you. For years I preached that MPEG compression was for final delivery, but now we are using it for acquisition. It truly is a desperate measure that should be avoided when you can afford it.

Doug
 
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