Camcorder Question(s)

gurusan

gurusan

gurusan

Soldato
Joined
2 Sep 2006
Posts
13,483
Location
Forest Grove, OR, 'Merica
1st Question

What's the best digital camcorder under 200 quid?

Things I want out of it:

-decent battery life
-decent quality
-cheap recordable media (not sure what the standard is...but if I can store 2-3 hours of good quality video on an internal hard drive or tape that's great. I just want something to hold the data til I can load it onto my desktop at home)
-decent internal mic quality
-Good quality...as in rugged....(might go in a car bolted onto a headrest around a racetrack on occasion)

Second Question

What is the best video editing software that is still fairly easy to use?

Unrelated Question
:)
Does OCuK sell secureDigital readers? looking for one and I can't find it. Also if there's one that bolts into a floppy drive bay that would be great as it would look liek the puter came with one.
 
Cheapness of media probably means MiniDV. These days you can pick a decent brand up for three 60 minute tapes for a tenner quite easily. DVD camcorders are a nice idea, but the media's expensive.

I'm a real Studio fan BUT for once I've not made the leap to the next version - every version has had its critics but I've never heard as much criticism as I have for V10. I've been there, seen it, bought the t-shirt - I've been using Pinnacle for 6 years now, and every upgrade has been painful, but some of the stories are just taking the mick. Pinnacle doesn't seem to ever realise that this is CONSUMER software, and unfortunately some of the Studio bigots on their forums have the same slim grasp on reality. Market something at consumer level and you have to realise people will expect it to run on a consumer-level PC, whatever the onboard sound or video option is.

Anyway...after the rant... ;) ...apparently Adobe's Premiere Elements package is awesome. I don't need to upgrade yet, but when I do it'll probably be to Elements. Steep learning curve apparently, but they tell me it's definitely worth it. Depends if you want to edit video mid- to long-term or just want a short-term fix. Probably not great for a quick fix, but for anything else then the reviews tend to suggest it's pretty unbeatable for the price.
 
If it's a sony I would have thought that it was a setting.

Some camcorders usually have three presets for indoor/ ourdoor/ auto because normal indoor lights give of a yellow and this is different to outdoors. These usually work quite well. I'm not sure how to do it exactly on a sony, but for mine I have to:

Switch the camera from auto to manual, then change it to a preset, or manual white balance. You can tell usually by the symbol, for mine:

Auto white balance is AWB in a box
Indoor is a Lightbulb
Outdoor is a Sun
Manual is a box ontop of two triangles (should be the same for your sony).

If you set it to manual you need something you know is white (some people use 'warm cards'). So you select manual, then place the white infront of it, press and button and the camera will use that as a reference.
 
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