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Digital Video Forum Discuss camcorders, HD video, HD DSLRs, video editing, DV software, and video techniques. Your DV forum moderator is Skyman.
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  1. #1
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    Nov 2008
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    Camcorder advice : Tapeless, Mick jack, Low light, Hot shoe.

    I`d like to get some camcorder advise.
    Things I need:
    1. Tapeless – I want to avoid encoding of any kind. I need an immediate access to the video. This is so important for me. I`d like to avoid any strange file type camcorders which necessitate, again – re-encoding to another format.
    2. Mick jack – a must.
    3. Low light performance – much more important to me than resolution or overall video quality. My main object is a very dark object . My environment is Indoors.
    4. Hot shoe – I need an external light. I could skip that one and fix another source of light.

    Things I can do without:
    1. Resolution and overall video quality. The outcome is eventually uploaded to the web (FLV)
    2. Battery hours, Hard Disk/Flash card size have no real value to me – I`m shooting very short sequences – daily.
    3. Ergonomics, Menu issues, IS, weight and size are negligible – It`s a tripod/static set up and a very relaxed shoot.
    I appreciate your help, thank you.

  2. #2
    Moderator Skyman's Avatar
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    Re: Camcorder advice : Tapeless, Mick jack, Low light, Hot shoe.

    I think I would need some more specific information about what your intended workflow is. there are a couple of cameras out there that record straight to flv, but I don't think any of them support external microphones. otherwise with tape, memory card, dvd and hard drive basaed cameras you still need to convert the footage. how long this takes will really depend on the software and computer you use. most cameras have a hot shoe mount and a microphone jack plug if you need a better microphone, then you would have to start looking at cameras that have an xlr plug and this puts you in the broadcast range and starts moving towards tape based systems. As for low light recording, well this really varies from camera to camera however having a lens that lets in a lot of light will help a lot. The lower light gets the more whatever you record is going to look muddy and suffer from "gain grain" where the video signal is boosted electronically to the point of distortion. So really you need to decide what features are most important as it will be very hard to find a camera that meets all the needs on your list.

  3. #3
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    Re: Camcorder advice : Tapeless, Mick jack, Low light, Hot shoe.

    I apologize for answering so lately - I had to reinstall windows this week - hence the delay. Thank you, Skyman for your response. I did a bad job of explaining myself as far as it touchs the FLV issue. I Do not need a camcorder that encodes directly to FLV. This I would do myself. I just want to save myself the extra conversion of tape to harddisk by going HDD. My next question would be : Dropping the issues of encoding and of low light(I`ll solve lighting seperately), can I find a non-prosumer HDD camcorder that has an XLR input ? I know that there are adapters (some including phantom) but if there`s a HDD camcorder that has it built in which is not in the pro level - I`d go fot it.
    Thank you and sorry again for the delay.

  4. #4
    Moderator Skyman's Avatar
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    Re: Camcorder advice : Tapeless, Mick jack, Low light, Hot shoe.

    Basically no. Your best bet if you need his is either a prosumer camera or if portability isn't an issue a small 4 channel mixer you can take a line out of to the camera

  5. #5
    Junior Member
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    Re: Camcorder advice : Tapeless, Mick jack, Low light, Hot shoe.

    I understand, thanks.

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