Is there such a thoing as HDTV camcorders?

01-01-2006, 15:02

Hi is there such a thing as HDTV camcorders where, you can do screen shots etc on your computer in HD quality.

Thanks ever so much
Potatolegs

Also what resolution is HDTV?

russellelly · 01-01-2006, 15:09

You can get HD camcorders, yes, Sony make one (or two) consimer models, there was a review on DS of one not long ago (AlanJ reviewed it IIRC).

You've lost me with the screen shots thing though

HD resolution is a minumum of 720 lines, upto 1080 lines.

01-01-2006, 15:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by russellelly

You can get HD camcorders, yes, Sony make one (or two) consimer models, there was a review on DS of one not long ago (AlanJ reviewed it IIRC).

You've lost me with the screen shots thing though

HD resolution is a minumum of 720 lines, upto 1080 lines.

Sorry should have explained myself better - I take a lot of movies with camcorder and do screen shots from the film - of say fireworks etc and save them as jpegs - would be handy if screenshots of film were even better quality..
I have a digi camera too but would be added bonus for when I am doing movies.
Thanks ever so

Trevor · 01-01-2006, 17:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by potatolegs

Hi is there such a thing as HDTV camcorders where, you can do screen shots etc on your computer in HD quality.

Thanks ever so much
Potatolegs

Also what resolution is HDTV?

Don`t know what you mean , but here is a link to the fantastic camcorder what sony do

Amazon.co.uk link

russellelly · 01-01-2006, 18:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by potatolegs

Sorry should have explained myself better - I take a lot of movies with camcorder and do screen shots from the film - of say fireworks etc and save them as jpegs - would be handy if screenshots of film were even better quality..
I have a digi camera too but would be added bonus for when I am doing movies.
Thanks ever so

Ahh, got you now. I'm sure they would be of better quality, HD resoltion for 1080i is around 2MP, versus about 0.3MP for SD TV. Any screencaps I've seen from HD sources look better, whether my calculations are accurate is a different matter though

craggers · 01-01-2006, 19:20

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...=97431&_LOC=UK

01-01-2006, 21:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by craggers

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...=97431&_LOC=UK

Thanks for info everyone..

Wow that camcorder is cheaper than my first camcorder I bought - 4 years ago.

IWhen you export using say imovie on mac though, the movie on the computer will only show up the same as standard TV, is that correct?

So for screen shots it wouled be no difference as I dont have a HD computer???

russellelly · 01-01-2006, 21:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by potatolegs

Thanks for info everyone..

Wow that camcorder is cheaper than my first camcorder I bought - 4 years ago.

IWhen you export using say imovie on mac though, the movie on the computer will only show up the same as standard TV, is that correct?

So for screen shots it wouled be no difference as I dont have a HD computer???

There's not really such a thing as an 'HD Computer', what you need to display HD is a well specced computer and a monitor with a good enough resolution.

The minimum requirements for a Mac are available at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide...endations.html, though editing might need a bit more. The latest version of iMovie is called iMovieHD as it supports HD (it's in the latest version of iLife).

Resolution will need 1920x1080 to get the full benefit, but even resolutions between SDTV and 1080i will look better.

This article might give some insight - http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds25723.html

01-01-2006, 21:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by russellelly

There's not really such a thing as an 'HD Computer', what you need to display HD is a well specced computer and a monitor with a good enough resolution.

The minimum requirements for a Mac are available at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide...endations.html, though editing might need a bit more. The latest version of iMovie is called iMovieHD as it supports HD (it's in the latest version of iLife).

Resolution will need 1920x1080 to get the full benefit, but even resolutions between SDTV and 1080i will look better.

This article might give some insight - http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds25723.html

Thanks for info.

I have IMAC G5 20' 1680*1050, and I found some trailers in HDTV - it did look better

camaj · 01-01-2006, 21:58

Chances are your computer monitor is good enough to display HD video.

I'd suggest looking at that new panasonic HD camcorder, it's meant to be better than the HDV ones but it uses P2 memory cards instead of tape. I guess you're supposed to transfer the footage to HDD after every take because they only hold about 4mins of footage

dfx · 13-01-2006, 19:12

The Sony HC1 is the best consumer choice right now (or the slightly more expensive A1, which has XLR audio connections, for better audio).

If you have more money/want a professional camcorder, look at Sony's Z1, which costs about £3,000 and has become the standard camcorder for most documentary use (even in standard definition as it is cheap, widescreen-native, does DV, DVCAM and HDV [1080i] and delivers really good pictures; nice reasonably wide angle lens too).

For film making, look at JVC's HD101, a 720p camcorder, with changeable lens (the standard one isn't great), battery life is poor, so needs battery upgrade, which makes it more expensive - looks impressive though.

Canon's new XL-H1 has a 20x standard lens (changable), is more expensive and can deliver uncompressed HD (via HS-SDI - if you have a full broadcast studio or OB van).

The Panasonic HVX200 isn't available here yet, but will be about as expensive as the Canon. Records DVCPRO HD instead of HDV, so no compression artefacts (although we haven't seen anything nasty from HDV yet), and requires either expensive P2 (solid state Flash memory) cards or a Firestore hard disk drive (about £1,000) to record in HD.

Have a look at http://www.urbanfox.tv/articles/came...dv_review.html for a good buying guide and comparison chart for the HD/HDV camcorders.

If you want to edit in HDV, iMovie handles it pretty well, although the compression means that iMovie (and Final Cut Express) have to transcode into an intermediate format to give frame-accurate editing (because HDV only records a full frame image every 12 frames, the rest contain, at best, only what has changed between frames). This means that if you save it back out to tape, it can take quite a while. You'd need Final Cut Pro to edit in native HDV (or in DVCPRO HD). Sony Vegas, Premiere or Avid Express Pro HD do the business if you're stuck with Windows.

Dell's 24-inch LCD screen (2405FPW) is 1920x1200 and is perfect for editing HD, and cheaper than Apple's cinema displays.

HTH.

ALanJ · 14-01-2006, 18:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by potatolegs

Sorry should have explained myself better - I take a lot of movies with camcorder and do screen shots from the film - of say fireworks etc and save them as jpegs - would be handy if screenshots of film were even better quality..
I have a digi camera too but would be added bonus for when I am doing movies.
Thanks ever so

Sony and a number of other manufacturers have just announced a large number of new DV video cameras which all boast higher resolution chips that standard DV.

I think Sony have a few that are 3Megapixels for still images stored to memory card. What is recorded to tape is still DV quality.

As far as the Sony HC1 is concerned the more I use it the more impressed I am. I recently dumped to my PC an hour of DV and and hour of HDV and on a PCs screen (1920x1200) the difference is astonishing.

On a TV the difference isn't quite as extreme but it is still noticeable.

I have been using Ulead's Video Studio 9 and more recently their Video Suite 8 which both come with HDV plug-ins what is amazing is that Video Studio 9 is a £50 package and it does a very adequate job.

HDV does make editing difficult as someone else said but the varios software tools generally these days deal with it without making a big fuss over it.

As far as displaying it is concerned any computer monitor with a resolution greater than 1920x1080 will work fine as I mentioned my portable is running 1920x1200 and it is certainly adequate to get a good idea of the picture quality.

Considering that 10 years ago a high (but not top end) DV camcorder was around the same price as the HC1 is not (£1,200-£1,400) you get a great deal of quality for the money.

It isn't a perfect camera and in low light conditions there is a degredation on the resolvable detail but still excellent.

As dfx says it is definatly a consumer model while the other manufacturers (and Sony) have bigger bulkier HD pro-sumer / pro camcorders that offer HDV or similar they are about 3 times the size of the HC1 and its stablemate the HA1 (the A1 offers as well as external mic / XLR inputs the option to record in DVCAM mode which might be useful as a second camera for current broadcast work).

Overall these cameras produce excellent pictures and there is inixensive software to edit on if you don't fancy spending half the price of the camera on editing software

The biggest problem until Blu-Ray recorders and players appear is that you either have to play out via your PC or download back to tape for playback which isn't ideal.

But that is a small downside in conparison to what I know will happen in a few years time when we look back at DV images in the same way as we might look back on our parents / grandparents super 8 movies.

ic1male · 15-01-2006, 20:55

I'm confused by the literature on these HDV camcorders which says the resolution is 1440x1080. This is a 4:3 aspect ratio. Why aren't they in proper widescreen at 1920x1080?

technologist · 15-01-2006, 21:31

They are like this to get the datarate low enough - but they do 16*9 with rectangular pixels.....

ALanJ · 17-01-2006, 08:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by ic1male

I'm confused by the literature on these HDV camcorders which says the resolution is 1440x1080. This is a 4:3 aspect ratio. Why aren't they in proper widescreen at 1920x1080?

They are proper wide screen. For some reason even some of the pro cameras are only 1440x1080.

01-01-2006, 15:02	#1
potatolegs Posts: n/a	Is there such a thing as HDTV camcorders? Hi is there such a thing as HDTV camcorders where, you can do screen shots etc on your computer in HD quality. Thanks ever so much Potatolegs Also what resolution is HDTV? Last edited by potatolegs : 01-01-2006 at 15:22.

13-01-2006, 19:12	#11
dfx Forum Member Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: London Posts: 10	HD camcorders The Sony HC1 is the best consumer choice right now (or the slightly more expensive A1, which has XLR audio connections, for better audio). If you have more money/want a professional camcorder, look at Sony's Z1, which costs about £3,000 and has become the standard camcorder for most documentary use (even in standard definition as it is cheap, widescreen-native, does DV, DVCAM and HDV [1080i] and delivers really good pictures; nice reasonably wide angle lens too). For film making, look at JVC's HD101, a 720p camcorder, with changeable lens (the standard one isn't great), battery life is poor, so needs battery upgrade, which makes it more expensive - looks impressive though. Canon's new XL-H1 has a 20x standard lens (changable), is more expensive and can deliver uncompressed HD (via HS-SDI - if you have a full broadcast studio or OB van). The Panasonic HVX200 isn't available here yet, but will be about as expensive as the Canon. Records DVCPRO HD instead of HDV, so no compression artefacts (although we haven't seen anything nasty from HDV yet), and requires either expensive P2 (solid state Flash memory) cards or a Firestore hard disk drive (about £1,000) to record in HD. Have a look at http://www.urbanfox.tv/articles/came...dv_review.html for a good buying guide and comparison chart for the HD/HDV camcorders. If you want to edit in HDV, iMovie handles it pretty well, although the compression means that iMovie (and Final Cut Express) have to transcode into an intermediate format to give frame-accurate editing (because HDV only records a full frame image every 12 frames, the rest contain, at best, only what has changed between frames). This means that if you save it back out to tape, it can take quite a while. You'd need Final Cut Pro to edit in native HDV (or in DVCPRO HD). Sony Vegas, Premiere or Avid Express Pro HD do the business if you're stuck with Windows. Dell's 24-inch LCD screen (2405FPW) is 1920x1200 and is perfect for editing HD, and cheaper than Apple's cinema displays. HTH.

01-01-2006, 15:09	#2
russellelly Forum Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Scotland Posts: 10,720	You can get HD camcorders, yes, Sony make one (or two) consimer models, there was a review on DS of one not long ago (AlanJ reviewed it IIRC). You've lost me with the screen shots thing though HD resolution is a minumum of 720 lines, upto 1080 lines.

01-01-2006, 15:24	#3
potatolegs Posts: n/a	Quote: Originally Posted by russellelly You can get HD camcorders, yes, Sony make one (or two) consimer models, there was a review on DS of one not long ago (AlanJ reviewed it IIRC). You've lost me with the screen shots thing though HD resolution is a minumum of 720 lines, upto 1080 lines. Sorry should have explained myself better - I take a lot of movies with camcorder and do screen shots from the film - of say fireworks etc and save them as jpegs - would be handy if screenshots of film were even better quality.. I have a digi camera too but would be added bonus for when I am doing movies. Thanks ever so

01-01-2006, 17:00	#4
Trevor Guest Join Date: Jul 2001 Posts: 377	Quote: Originally Posted by potatolegs Hi is there such a thing as HDTV camcorders where, you can do screen shots etc on your computer in HD quality. Thanks ever so much Potatolegs Also what resolution is HDTV? Don`t know what you mean , but here is a link to the fantastic camcorder what sony do Amazon.co.uk link

01-01-2006, 18:59	#5
russellelly Forum Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Scotland Posts: 10,720	Quote: Originally Posted by potatolegs Sorry should have explained myself better - I take a lot of movies with camcorder and do screen shots from the film - of say fireworks etc and save them as jpegs - would be handy if screenshots of film were even better quality.. I have a digi camera too but would be added bonus for when I am doing movies. Thanks ever so Ahh, got you now. I'm sure they would be of better quality, HD resoltion for 1080i is around 2MP, versus about 0.3MP for SD TV. Any screencaps I've seen from HD sources look better, whether my calculations are accurate is a different matter though

01-01-2006, 19:20	#6
craggers Forum Member Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Preston Posts: 3,605	http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...=97431&_LOC=UK

01-01-2006, 21:09	#7
potatolegs Posts: n/a	Quote: Originally Posted by craggers http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...=97431&_LOC=UK Thanks for info everyone.. Wow that camcorder is cheaper than my first camcorder I bought - 4 years ago. IWhen you export using say imovie on mac though, the movie on the computer will only show up the same as standard TV, is that correct? So for screen shots it wouled be no difference as I dont have a HD computer???

01-01-2006, 21:29	#8
russellelly Forum Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Scotland Posts: 10,720	Quote: Originally Posted by potatolegs Thanks for info everyone.. Wow that camcorder is cheaper than my first camcorder I bought - 4 years ago. IWhen you export using say imovie on mac though, the movie on the computer will only show up the same as standard TV, is that correct? So for screen shots it wouled be no difference as I dont have a HD computer??? There's not really such a thing as an 'HD Computer', what you need to display HD is a well specced computer and a monitor with a good enough resolution. The minimum requirements for a Mac are available at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide...endations.html, though editing might need a bit more. The latest version of iMovie is called iMovieHD as it supports HD (it's in the latest version of iLife). Resolution will need 1920x1080 to get the full benefit, but even resolutions between SDTV and 1080i will look better. This article might give some insight - http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds25723.html

01-01-2006, 21:56	#9
potatolegs Posts: n/a	Quote: Originally Posted by russellelly There's not really such a thing as an 'HD Computer', what you need to display HD is a well specced computer and a monitor with a good enough resolution. The minimum requirements for a Mac are available at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide...endations.html, though editing might need a bit more. The latest version of iMovie is called iMovieHD as it supports HD (it's in the latest version of iLife). Resolution will need 1920x1080 to get the full benefit, but even resolutions between SDTV and 1080i will look better. This article might give some insight - http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds25723.html Thanks for info. I have IMAC G5 20' 1680*1050, and I found some trailers in HDTV - it did look better

01-01-2006, 21:58	#10
camaj Forum Member Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 813	Chances are your computer monitor is good enough to display HD video. I'd suggest looking at that new panasonic HD camcorder, it's meant to be better than the HDV ones but it uses P2 memory cards instead of tape. I guess you're supposed to transfer the footage to HDD after every take because they only hold about 4mins of footage

14-01-2006, 18:13	#12
ALanJ Forum Member Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: London Posts: 2,957	Quote: Originally Posted by potatolegs Sorry should have explained myself better - I take a lot of movies with camcorder and do screen shots from the film - of say fireworks etc and save them as jpegs - would be handy if screenshots of film were even better quality.. I have a digi camera too but would be added bonus for when I am doing movies. Thanks ever so Sony and a number of other manufacturers have just announced a large number of new DV video cameras which all boast higher resolution chips that standard DV. I think Sony have a few that are 3Megapixels for still images stored to memory card. What is recorded to tape is still DV quality. As far as the Sony HC1 is concerned the more I use it the more impressed I am. I recently dumped to my PC an hour of DV and and hour of HDV and on a PCs screen (1920x1200) the difference is astonishing. On a TV the difference isn't quite as extreme but it is still noticeable. I have been using Ulead's Video Studio 9 and more recently their Video Suite 8 which both come with HDV plug-ins what is amazing is that Video Studio 9 is a £50 package and it does a very adequate job. HDV does make editing difficult as someone else said but the varios software tools generally these days deal with it without making a big fuss over it. As far as displaying it is concerned any computer monitor with a resolution greater than 1920x1080 will work fine as I mentioned my portable is running 1920x1200 and it is certainly adequate to get a good idea of the picture quality. Considering that 10 years ago a high (but not top end) DV camcorder was around the same price as the HC1 is not (£1,200-£1,400) you get a great deal of quality for the money. It isn't a perfect camera and in low light conditions there is a degredation on the resolvable detail but still excellent. As dfx says it is definatly a consumer model while the other manufacturers (and Sony) have bigger bulkier HD pro-sumer / pro camcorders that offer HDV or similar they are about 3 times the size of the HC1 and its stablemate the HA1 (the A1 offers as well as external mic / XLR inputs the option to record in DVCAM mode which might be useful as a second camera for current broadcast work). Overall these cameras produce excellent pictures and there is inixensive software to edit on if you don't fancy spending half the price of the camera on editing software The biggest problem until Blu-Ray recorders and players appear is that you either have to play out via your PC or download back to tape for playback which isn't ideal. But that is a small downside in conparison to what I know will happen in a few years time when we look back at DV images in the same way as we might look back on our parents / grandparents super 8 movies.

15-01-2006, 20:55	#13
ic1male Guest Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 1,900	I'm confused by the literature on these HDV camcorders which says the resolution is 1440x1080. This is a 4:3 aspect ratio. Why aren't they in proper widescreen at 1920x1080?

15-01-2006, 21:31	#14
technologist Forum Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: London Posts: 7,519	They are like this to get the datarate low enough - but they do 16*9 with rectangular pixels.....

17-01-2006, 08:00	#15
ALanJ Forum Member Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: London Posts: 2,957	Quote: Originally Posted by ic1male I'm confused by the literature on these HDV camcorders which says the resolution is 1440x1080. This is a 4:3 aspect ratio. Why aren't they in proper widescreen at 1920x1080? They are proper wide screen. For some reason even some of the pro cameras are only 1440x1080.

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Is there such a thoing as HDTV camcorders?