I will throw this out to those who hopefully know a lot more than me on this subject. 

Want to get a video camera, price £300-£400.
Only pre-requisite is that it is dvd cam.

Suggestions please?

Thanks

Dave

I would suggest you forget all about the DVD bit. They are not that good and only use 8cm DVD's which cost £9,000,000 each disk.

Go for a Canon XM1. I had two and they were superb. DV in/out plus 3CCD and flourite lens. XSuperb cameras and quality is unbeatable without getting into DVcam.

Not that I know anything about filming of course. yes another string to my bow......

I vote Sony too for cameras, good picture the super steady shot stuff they have is very good. Most of them have nice touch lcd screen's and fairly priced too.

I know Sony is not what it used to be, and some people can't stand them (Jamie?)

From my experiance they are good little camera's the DVD Re-write ones are brilliant because there is no transfer involved.

Remember you need a fairly meaty PC to do any video editing, with lots of storage. When capturing video from a normal camera with a DV tape, 1 hour of video uncomressed will be huge!!! talking over 10Gb's

You then have to compress it down to smaller size to fit on CD / DVD and that takes a long time, the higher the compression the longer it takes. And Tbh its all farting around and is a pain.

If you are not going Hi Def I would fully recommend a mid range Sony MiniDV, I have one, purchased after a lot of research and it is excellent.
No camera on the fly encode will match good PC software on a two pass encode.

tunnie wrote on 28. Jul 2006 at 22:54:

I refuse to have Sony stuff in the house any more. Overpriced junk, and never do what it says on the tin 

I used to only consider Sony, and was happy with it. But in about the last 4yrs, every single piece of Sony equipment - DVD players, TVs, cameras, even their bloody alarm clocks have fundamental problems.  Some, like the well publicised issues with their 100hz Wega CRT TVs Sony fixed elsewhere in the world, but Sony UK refused, stating to fix the faults on the stuff they sold was too expensive.

I cheapo, no brand, Tesco special always outperforms Sony's overpriced, incapable junk.

TheBoy wrote on 28. Jul 2006 at 23:39:


I have some Sony stuff in my house including an alarm clock (no probs there) and a 100hz 32" Wega CRT Tv......altho i have to admit im on the 3rd one......1st one had a deguassing prob on install (it wouldnt!)....2nd one lasted 2 weeks....guns went out of alignment...(3 images all at the same time, red blue, green) 3rd one has been fine for ummm must be 8/9 years (bought it when they first came out whenever that was and has survived 4 house moves)

And i also must admit i got a 4yo Sony portable CD/Radio/Tape in bits at the moment, i suspect a dry joint on the PSU board....as it powers on ok if you flex the PSU board.....but then since ive had it the radio has been on for at least 10hours a day practically everyday.....so carnt complain really.

I havent bought anything Sony recently so carnt really comment if they have recent build quality issues.

My Wega 100hz TV - the 4th one they have given me - has out of focus on left of screen (to the point of teletext being unreable), geometry wise, the top of the picture is 1" smaller than the bottom, and I have interference bands scrolling right to left all the time. As the is the 4th I've had, Sony UK have said thats just the way it is 

My Sony alarm clock, which works OK, but is so bright it lights up the room. What a crap design.

I had a Sony DVD player, multiregion, but couldn't play NTSC disks.

There is always a story behind Sony junk now. Used to be good stuff, worse than the cheap Goodmans/Aiwa type rubbish now.