Looking to buy a new camcorder

[depasan]

Hi everyone, I am looking to buy a new camcorder HD with hard-drive. I have searched Best Buy's website and I am undecided between Panasonic Digital Camcorder ( 549 USD) with 60 gig hard-drive - Black Silver SDR-H60 and Sony Handycam Camcorder (699.99 USD) with 60 gig hardrive - Black Silver DCR-SR85.
I am looking something that will work good with Sony Vegas as well as affordable (trying to keep down 700 USD)


Thank you very much everyone in advance

 

[John Cline]

www.camcorderinfo.com said that, "Poor video quality disproportionate to the inflated prices seems to be the name of the game in under-$1000 HDD camcorders." Also, keep in mind that neither of these camcorders record High Definition. Maybe the Sony DCR-SR300 might be a better choice for right around $700. Personally, I wouldn't buy anything from Best Buy or the other "box stores", check with www.bhphoto.com, they have a stellar reputation.

 

[depasan]

www.camcorderinfo.com said that, "Poor video quality disproportionate to the inflated prices seems to be the name of the game in under-$1000 HDD camcorders." Also, keep in mind that neither of these camcorders record High Definition. Maybe the Sony DCR-SR300 might be a better choice for right around $700. Personally, I wouldn't buy anything from Best Buy or the other "box stores", check with www.bhphoto.com, they have a stellar reputation.

Thank you for your answer. Yes, I am looking for something which is going to record in HDD, this is basically the reason why I am changing camcorders. I checked out the websites you mention on your post but everything is so expensive. So it is absolutely sure that I can't find a camcorder under 700 that will record in HD and have internal hard-drive? I am tired of DV tapes. I loose quality when I render them in Vegas and then loose quality again as tapes get older.

 

[clang]

I'd also considered going to a HDD camcorder - no more tapes seemed a good thing - but I've heard too many stories about how the HDD compression causes poor picture quality (compared to tape, that is). So I'm surprised you want to go to HDD in the hope of improving your picture quality.

I eventually got a Canon HV20, am loving it so far.

 

[Chenopup]

I am tired of DV tapes. I loose quality when I render them in Vegas and then loose quality again as tapes get older.

DV when captured via firewire is actually better quality than the HVC codecs used in most of the consumer-ish hard drive camcorders now. Less compression and much less taxing on the NLE's to edit. Not sure why you're thinking that you're losing quality because you're originating from DV tapes. Yes there is always a hit in rendering output unless you're using an uncompressed format to render to, but that's the same with any render to a non-uncompressed format from any originating format. Your end result will in reality be no different when using DV as opposed to AVC. The DV IMO will look better at the end.

You can get an HV20 (Canon) for about $700 now. I would recommend that over any of the hard drive camcorders and still believe that HDV is a better format than the early pro-consumer versions of AVCHD. Tape is on it's way out eventually, but not any time soon.

cheno