Video

[patrick56]

Ordered a Canon DC95 dvd-videocamera as I think it is less sensitive as it is using 8cm dvd discs compared to the old tape cassette with a much more complex mechanism. Has anybody been using cameras like this on trips and what is the most important things to remember using them?

[Redboots]

Originally Posted by patrick56

Ordered a Canon DC95 dvd-videocamera as I think it is less sensitive as it is using 8cm dvd discs compared to the old tape cassette

I went for a sony that uses mini DV tape. MUCH more robust media than any size of DVD.

John

[mmaarten]

I got myself a Sony DCR-SR60. It stores 7 hour of high quality video on a 30 Gb hard-disk. No moving part for tape or disks.
It films in normal or wide-screen, PAL or NTSC.
Each scene is stored as a separate clip, DVD-quality.
Together with a 100 U$ piece of software (Ulead studio) you have a complete movie-lab.
If I would have had one of these babies when I was 20 and in audio-visual-school I would now (20 years later) be a famous movie-maker.

My next trip will be completely documented... If I can find a camera-adaptive-fellow-traveler that is...

Maarten

[Mr. Ron]

Originally Posted by mmaarten

I got myself a Sony DCR-SR60. It stores 7 hour of high quality video on a 30 Gb hard-disk. No moving part for tape or disks.
It films in normal or wide-screen, PAL or NTSC.
Each scene is stored as a separate clip, DVD-quality.
Together with a 100 U$ piece of software (Ulead studio) you have a complete movie-lab.
If I would have had one of these babies when I was 20 and in audio-visual-school I would now (20 years later) be a famous movie-maker.

My next trip will be completely documented... If I can find a camera-adaptive-fellow-traveler that is...

Maarten

Actually, your camera contains a rotating hard-disk, does it not? I've been considering one of these, but opted for the mini-dv due to the fact that the hard-disk drives were fairly new technology last year and i would like to here some others experiences before i shelled out the cash for one. A few things that turns me off hard-drive cameras is this: your nearly at the end of your hard-disk, then you drop your camera, or maybe crash?? All your precious video is gone, never to be found again, unless you have the money for data recovery. Mini-DV has higher quality video than hard-drive because of the compression ratio. An hour of Mini-DV is aprox. 15-18GB. of drive space in High Definition. I also likie the idea that you have a solid hard-copy of your video right from the start, and nearly all editing software suports Mini-DV. With Hard-drive, you are forced to have a computer to dump your hard-drive onto disk, an option many people don't aprove of.
...this is all information i gathered from deep rigorous re-search over a year ago, so things may have changed.

[DavePortugal]

Mini DV all the way in my opinion. Principally for when the going gets rough, you don't get the shake that affects the image on disc camcorders and they crash well.

[mmaarten]

Hi mr Ron,

It is a difficult question and I think only time will tell...
I traveled with a Sony-mavica and it did fairly well, (Actually it did very well) but the optics were very sensitive to damp air. Any form of condensation of even moisture in the air caused recording problems. I replaced it after 12,000 photo's. Not because it was broken, but 'just in case'. In all that time I lost one disk (210 Mb) due to a terminal write-error. Later (at home) I was able to recover most of the photo's with a simple disk-scanning-program.

I choose the HD version since I have the feeling that the moving parts in a HD are very well protected. Dust-proof, damp-proof (the HD is probably even water-proof), condensation-proof. It even has a "drop sensor" which reacts to sudden G-forces to protect against a head-crash.
But... as you point out accurately, it is new and un-proven.

The alternatives are DV-tape which is extremely sensitive to condensation, dust and vibration.

Then there is DVD or mini-disk which has a very sensitive (and up-protected) optical read/write device. Condensation, dust and vibration.

The truth of the matter is (in my opinion) the only suitable media is a flash-memory card.

Now lets hope Sony reads this and makes one.

Maarten

[Walkabout]

hi mmaarten,
Can you let me know what the disc scanning software is? I have lost some pics and video from a SD card in a camera and would like to get them back in at all possible and assuming that they are not completely corrupted,

Thanks,

Dave

[mmaarten]

Hi Dave,

I used a program called CD Roller. CDRoller - Toolset for CD and DVD Data Recovery
But it works only with CDs and DVDs.

You might want to check out Digital Memory Card Recovery Software and Tips @ UltimateSLR.com : Reviews Tips FAQ News Products are more!

Good luck

Maarten

[Walkabout]

Thanks for that Maarten, I 'll do some digging around on your second link which on a quick first look seems to contain what I need!

Cheers,

Dave

[Walkabout]

I have tried 3 of the "offerings" of trials of software to recover pics/video and none of them found pics that I did not have already; it is time to give this one up! Fortunately, I did not have to buy them in order to try them.

The lesson for me is to rely on using the camera properly in the first place (flat batteries may have contributed to the problem while saving data) and ensure that there are multiple cameras/users for anything important.

Dave

[Walkabout]

........read the instruction manual!! Success now by using the Canon software that came with the camera while following the instructions.

Until now I have simply copied pics and vids across using the windows program itself; it turns out that this is not enough. I don't know why (nor care basically) but I now have all of my hols snaps on the computer from the SD card just by re-visiting the instruction manual.


Cheers,

Dave