HD HDD domestic camcorders!

[Dave]

I've only just noticed that these exist!

For those not sure what all those Hs and Ds stand for.... well I'm talking about domestic camcorders that record in High Definition onto a internal Hard Disk Drive, so no tapes!

Does anyone know much about these, or has anyone used one?

They seem to be around £500 for a Sony one. Says they record in 1080 HD... but fails to say whether that's progressive (proper HD) or Interlaced (not as good by a long way).
Weirdly the Sony cams also say they record 5.1 sound! Mental! The only way that can be possible is if the cam has 5 or 6 mics distributed around external casing of the camcorder....

... which leads me to another question. Because there is no tape drive, do you think they have eradicated the familiar whir you get from using the buit in cam mics on domestic camcorders?
Surely the hard drive has to spin, but how quiet is it? Could it be inaudible to the built in mics? If so, it all sounds very tempting!

Perhaps Shane can get his hands on one for testing!

[onsuper8]

High Def - Hard Disc Drive...

It all well and good but they can suffer from heavy compression to keep the file sizes manageable. An HD frame has approaching 4 times the info in a standard frame so there's some hefty maths going on in those things to squeeze it all in! Saying that HD on MiniDV tape is compressed also - if you want the real deal, spring for one of these (after robbing a bank)...

www.red.com/cameras

[Dave]

May 16, 2008 20:28:34 GMT onsuper8 said:

High Def - Hard Disc Drive...

It all well and good but they can suffer from heavy compression to keep the file sizes manageable. An HD frame has approaching 4 times the info in a standard frame so there's some hefty maths going on in those things to squeeze it all in! Saying that HD on MiniDV tape is compressed also - if you want the real deal, spring for one of these (after robbing a bank)...

www.red.com/cameras

Haha.... but I'm a domestic user through and through! I don't doubt that there is a lot of compression going on, but reports on the image quality are good.... and reports on the 5.1 sound are good too, which still baffles me.

I'm not bothered about fancy pro-gear in the slightest, it's not for me, I'm just pointing out that for people like me, their are options becoming available.

I'm not even that fussed about HD. I see you can get hard disk drive based standard definition camcorders too.

[onsuper8]

I just got a MiniDV HD camcorder and the quality is bonkers for the money - its amazing how they jam everything in such a small case!

[oui3d]

It all comes down to how you plan to use them. Domestically it's probably fine but if you were doing production stuff, even corporates they're a mare.

Once youve edited the footage what do you do? dump it to DVD? How long do DVD±Rs last? what if you need to go back and tweak? Hard Drives have a limited lifespan. What if you've got another job?

Sticking to HDV/DV til a Tefal head comes up with a better way to store footage than tape! Got my 1st MiniDV from Millennium eve and that plays perfectly. I got DVD±Rs 2 years old that give me grief!

I have a liking for the little Canon MiniDVs, They have a mic input and a shoe adaptor. So you can put your own mic on and eliminate DV Hum.