Best Medium Priced Camcorders
HD Camcorders : which do you recommend?
I am going to buy myself a HD Camcorder for family use. Which are the best to look at in terms of quality (most imporant), user friendlyness, future proofing and storage media. Price is not really an issue this time.
It’s hard to go too wrong with an HD digital camcorder these days. But there are some choices to make. Keep in mind, though, that pretty much ANY HD camcorder will give you results superior to the SD pro-gear of a few years back.
HD is basically broken down into two types: HDV and AVCHD. HDV is high definition MPEG-2 recorded to tape (same tapes used in DV camcorders) at higher-than-broadcast bitrates, but slightly lower resolution. The standard HDV resolution is 1440×1080/60i (interlaced, 60 fields per second, same as broadcast HDTV on most channels), which is a bit down from the usualy 1920×1080 resolution. Some camcorders also do progressive at 30p (30 frames per second, progressive) or 24p.
These days, in the consumer market, I would recommend Canon’s HDV units. The older HV20 has been the highest rated consumer camcorder by most accounts in 2007; the newer HV30 is an update of that, and also quite excellent.
The alternative is AVCHD, which is still kind of emerging. This is used in most of the “tapeless” camcorders, which include DVD, Blu-Ray, hard disc drive (HDD), and flash memory recording. AVCHD is not encumbered by the mechanical requirements of tape… it’s very “computer friendly”, so many different resolutions are possibly, usually including 1920×1080 at 60i and often 24p.
However, a few caveats. Being a newer format, the encoders aren’t always as good, so you may find sometimes you get more artifacts with AVCHD than HDV. In this year’s cameras, though, that’s probably not enough to worry about. Editing tools are also less evolved, so you can run into compatibility issues… once you pick your model, do a little research to see that it works with the programs you use (or selected some that are known to work with your camera, if you’re new to video).
Quality wise, it’s all potentially the same. DVD is currently the most popular consumer format (SD and HD combined), but I don’t recommend it — you get only about 20 minutes of DVD recording at the highest quality. And the little 8cm DVDs are still relatively pricey. Blu-Ray would solve this, but so far only Hitachi makes a Blu-Ray camcorder, and it’s quite pricey.
HDD has some following (it’s likely to replace tape this year as 2nd most popular), and it may be fine depending on your needs. The advantage is a large permanent store, good for at least several hours of recording. The downside is that the HDD will eventually fail, and could be the first thing that breaks if you drop your camcorder. Anyone using HDD will need some means of video backup (save to DVD-R, extra USB HDD on your PC, etc).
Flash memory was questionable a year ago, but that’s where I’d buy, if I were buying an AVCHD camcorder today. It’s replaceble.. you can always add more storage if you need with. With 8GB flash cards nearly $20 online, and 16GB (about the size of an 80 minute DV tape) dropping below $50, you could have a few of these, and probably use them in your PC, your PDA, your digital camera, too.
So for AVCHD at consumer prices, I would buy the Canon HF100 (the HF10 is the same thing, but with 16GB of flash built-in). One main consideration… Canon’s sensor actually delivers 1920×1080. You’ll find some camcorders, while recording 1920×1080 sized images, actually work from somewhat smaller sensors and just scale up… they look great, sure, but these will look just a bit better. Of course, as with HDD, you’ll need to provide a means of backup, but you also get the immediate transfers to your PC, which is pretty sweet (versus waiting in realtime for an HDV transfer over Firewire).
Audio Test: Canon M300 vs Samsung H204
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