Calling all computer geeks . . . Camcorders & disks

[Terre]

I'm trying to decide what camcorder to buy. It will be my first purchase. In doing research, I've decided to buy one that has a hard drive, and uses DVD-RW disks. The reason I want one of these is because I don't want to deal with the installation of a firewire on two computers, or cable connections. I understand that I can't do any fancy editing, but that's not such a big issue.

Here's my question, silly as it is: Most, if not all, of these hard drive camcorders use 3" (8cm) DVD disks which are smaller than the standard 4.75" (12cm). Our computers use the 12cm disks. How do the 8cm disks work in our computers? They are smaller than what our computers take. I don't get it.

Any help in understanding this would be GREATLY appreciated.

Since I'm posting in the GD forum, and we're not talking about an earth-shattering issue, this post is bound to drop like a stone. So even if you don't know the answer, or don't want to bother with it, would you mind kicking every now and then?

Thanks.

[B Calm]

1. Computers take both sizes

[Wickerman]

2. look at your tray of your DVD player

it has a space for the 12cm and an inset inside that. That is where your 8cm disks go.

[emulatorloo]

3. Terre, installing firewire on a computer is not a big deal

The firewire cards are cheap, and windows has built-in support for them.

I think you will regret not going that route. I guarentee you that you would enjoy doing basic editing of your footage on the computer (you don't want to put Aunt Edith to sleep w boring home movies, do you),

--

[Terre]

10. I just don't want to make a mistake

by starting to tinker with the insides, ya know?

Maybe I'll do some Googling and see what an installation entails. I really would like to be able to do a little more than just basic stuff.

[ClassWarrior]

11. Get a Mac. It comes installed...

...like most everything else.

NGU.

[Terre]

12. I should have had done that

a long time ago, but after over 20 years on a PC, I would think it a not-so-easy, and time-consuming transition for me. I have a hard time as it is using Firefox on a regular basis. I'm one of those stick-in-the-mud users.

[Poiuyt]

17. Using a Mac is very intuitive and easy to use, especially for video and graphics

[emulatorloo]

38. Lots of PC motherboards come with it now too. EOM

[emulatorloo]

37. Terre, you just put the PCI card into the slot on the motherboard. Not much

to it. Maybe you have a computer-savy friend who could help you do it.

[Mika]

13. Make sure you get Firewire 800!

For full bandwidth tranfer of dig. video a Firewire 800 bus and Firewire 800 hard drive (Oxford 922 chipset) is the real way to go.


I use this..
http://ezq.com/product_info.php?products_id=72

[Terre]

16. Thank Mika

I'll look into it.

:yourock: and that goes for EVERYONE!

[JohnnyRingo]

4. Yep...Like BCalm sez,

Look in your DVD tray and notice the smaller indent in the center for the 3' discs.

[Drum]

5. Disc-loading.

It matters how your drives and DVD players load the discs: does a tray slide out and you pop in the disc, or---as in a car---do you feed/eject the disc through a thin slit? In the case of the former, most are also slotted-for and can accomodate the smaller discs. In the latter case, I don't think they always work with the minis.

:shrug:

[Rosemary2205]

6. the little disks play fine in my pc and on the dvd player

We've had a couple of dvd players be a tempermental about playing them but mostly the small DVD's play fine. If you look at the tray for the dvd you'll see there's actually a smaller circle built in that you likely never noticed before. Just center the small disk in that circle and you are good to go.

[Warpy]

7. Open up your CD/DVD drive now

See the two ridges in the tray?

The big one is for standard disks. The little one is for the three inchers.

[karlrschneider]

25. You mean the cup holder?

:rofl:


(Some years ago, a tech rep said a caller actually thought that was the purpose)

[Terre]

8. OH!! LOL

I kept looking at the inside of the tray last night. I always thought that the interior indent was just a part of the way it needed to be for the regular disks to work!

LOL - Silly me. THANKS!

[magellan]

9. Get a camera that uses smart disks too

Ours takes both 8cm DVD and smart disk. The nice thing about the smart disks is you just pop them out of your camera and into a reader attached to your computer via USB. The readers are inexpensive.

[Sydnie]

14. I want to get a camera that works well for making youtube videos

Anyone have any suggestions on one that can do both family type movies (vcr's were so easy in that respect) that also would be easy to use to make online video presentations easy? :shrug:

[Terre]

15. Good question

I didn't want to muddy-the-waters with another question in my post, so I'm glad you asked it. I'd be interested in learning what others recommend as well.

I'm sure there will be as many recommendations as there are DU'ers, but suggestions would be a nice place to start.

Personally, I don't want to spend much more than between $500-$600, and less than that would be ideal.

[Poiuyt]

18. Personally, I would recommend that you NOT get a DVD camcorder

For three reasons. First, the DVD format is a compressed format. That means that you will lose quality right from the beginning. This becomes more apparent as you go through the different steps of editing.

Second, the DVD format is about to become obsolete as High Definition takes over. This will also affect most of the different recording formats that are out there today, but the degradation of quality from a compressed format will be more apparent.

Third, I have questions about the durability of a DVD camcorder out in the field. I don't have any direct knowledge to back this up, but my intuition tells me that any little piece of dust on the DVD surface that's spinning at 10,000 rpm (or whatever) would cause problems.

And as I mention above, using even the simplist Macintosh would have built in firewire and preinstalled editing software (iMovie). Very intuitive and very easy to use.

I am a professional video producer, so if you have any questions, please feel to PM me.

[Terre]

20. Thanks Poiuyt

I'm strapped budget-wise at the moment. Unfortunately, the "moments" never seem to end.

What we really need is a second car, but my son needs to use one for his last senior semester Media class for some project they'll be doing. All the school rentals have been rented. *sigh* So, I would not even contemplate the purchase right now, except for that.

How I EVER graduated High School is beyond me.

So, assuming I'm not gonna be able to afford BOTH a Mac AND a recorder, what would you recommend? And thanks for the offer to PM ya. Unless we get too complicated, I'd like to keep the conversation where others may take advantage of your advice.

:)

[Poiuyt]

22. Here's an inexpensive option -

I have a friend who has a little cheap camcorder. It's about the size of a deck of cards, uses flash memory, and connects to your computer by USB. Cost is between $100-150. Quality isn't too good (forget doing Super Bowl commercials) but they look OK on youtube. You never said what you wanted the camera for, but this would be a good start. It's small size means that it will get used. You can just slip it in your pocket and not have to make a big production out of shooting. Check out bestbuy's web site for examples.

[Terre]

24. That sounds reasonable

My son's computer has IEEE 1394 (I don't) and has a USB 2.0, so it looks like his computer is ready to go for flash memory?

As I mentioned in my post above, he really needs this for a senior project he'll be doing for his Media class. A small one really sounds good because he'll be taking it to Seattle when he visits a friend. I just hope he doesn't "lose" it.

[Poiuyt]

29. An IEEE 1394 connection IS firewire

Whoops. Never mind. I see that you knew that

[Greyhound]

19. Don't know if the cost for the DVD camcorder is greater or not, but

for about $40 - $50 you can get a USB card reader that will let you read from any of the brazillion card formats out there and then you can have the best of all worlds.

ETA: as another poster pointed out, the DVD format is going to make you spend hundreds of $ on a dead-end format that will almost certainly have reliability issues. Something to consider.:shrug:

[Terre]

21. Looks like I need to get going here

As I mentioned above, I need to get this for my son, and we need it all done by the 16th of this month.

Between a firewire, and a USP card reader (I'd need both right?), I may just buy what I need and ask my computer tech guy in town to install them. I hate monkeying around with the insides, UNLESS it's REALLY EASY.

Thanks for the info greyhound. I'll start looking around for one of those as well.

[Greyhound]

23. This is outside my expertise, but I don't think that a firewire connection is required

unless you need the speed. USB 2.0 is very fast and I can't imagine that you would require it. USB is great just because it is universal and independent of the system (Windoze, Mac, Linux). I'm a software geek so I may well be wrong about hardware issues (Firewire), but if you have a USB port, that's all you need. Buy the reader, plug it in, jump through any hoops to get your system to see it and you're good to go.

[Terre]

26. OK - I'm feeling a bit more comfortable

about my options now. As I mentioned in a comment above, my son's computer has the Firewire, AND a USB 2.0, and he's basically the one that's gonna use it. Unfortunately, mine doesn't, but it's almost 2 years older.

If I'm understanding all the give and take, and based on my son's computer configuration, I can pretty much purchase anything - within reason of course. ;)

Here's a question that you should feel at home with: Any recommendations for an video image editing program?

[Greyhound]

32. I do mostly back-end corporate stuff, so again I'm not a final authority

But for <$100 Ulead VideoStudio 10+ is what I'd go with. As you may have already learned, video editing apps can cost hundreds, even thousands, of dollars, so for the sub $100 price it is a good deal. Another good choice is Adobe's Premiere Elements, also very capable and Adobe has been in the game longer than just about anybody else, my only reservation about them is that in the last 6- 8 years their apps have become more and more bloated and unwieldy, and require significant resources (so if you're using a 3 year old e-machine it may be too much for your system), but that is a personal opinion, after all, photoshop is still the standard by which image editing is measured (ask swamprat about that, LOL), and sinco Adobe's roots are in Apple (again, the system of choice for virtually every professional), it is definitely worth looking into.

[Terre]

33. Great!! Just what I needed

I see mention of ULead often, but until now I've never really paid attention to anything video related.

I'm gonna have to bookmark this thread. And at the rate I'm going, I may even hit my 1000th post right here!

:bounce:

[in_cog_ni_to]

27. I think you upload directly from the camcorder to the computer. I just nixed the DVD camcorder

because you don't get much time on a disk. 20 minutes? if I recall? I ended up buying a Sony DCR SR-100 Hard Drive camcorder. It takes 30 hours of video and 3 megapixel pics. I do have a 5 megapixel camera, but if I don't want to take 2 cameras with me, I do have an option for taking pics on my camcorder. No disks and no tapes to mess with. I love it.

Anyway...as for the DVD 3" disks...you upload to computer to an editing program, then download to the larger disk that will work in your computer and DVD players. Just make sure you read your DVD manual and make sure sure you buy the correct DVD that will play in your particular DVD player. Not all disks work in all DVD players.

[Terre]

28. Thanks in_cog_ni_to

That was quite helpful. I'll go take a look at your camcorder. Simplicity rules.

[in_cog_ni_to]

30. If mine isn't what you're looking for

dollar wise...it's in the $900 range, there are other hard drive camcorders I looked at too. JVC has a really nice one. Sony also makes one with a smaller hard drive, but I can't remember how much it was. My favorite place to shop for camcorders online is Circuit City because users give FEEDBACK on them. It gives you a really good idea of what you're buying. I really do enjoy not having to deal with tapes and disks. I just upload to my DVD recorder and have my new disk. It's really sweet. When you upload, you clear the hard drive and you're back to square one...loads of space for pics and video.:)

[Terre]

31. Yeah - just saw the price

Sort of an ouch for me. I'll head on over to Circuit City's website and see what they have. Right now I've just been checking out the reviews and feedback over at CNet.

[in_cog_ni_to]

34. If you find a camcorder you want, check out EBAY BEFORE you buy!

That's where I ended up buying mine. I got a package DEAL. An extra battery, a charger, a wide angle lens, a 2X lens, an adapter for the lenses, a table top tripod, a floor tripod, a LCD cleaning kit and a case...for the same price as what the camcorder ALONE sells for elsewhere. I would have had to buy a case and I always buy an extra battery and charger..to be prepared, so that was a GREAT deal for me. You can find brand new camcorders for great prices on EBAY. Check it out beofre you buy!:hi:

[Terre]

35. Heh :o) I ALWAYS do

eBay is my "fourth" home - after DailyKos, DU and Firedoglake.

[in_cog_ni_to]

36. Excellent!

:thumbsup:

[jmowreader]

39. Why can't you do fancy editing?

It seems to me that if you copied the file from the 8cm DVD to your computer, you could do anything you liked with it.