Welcome to Photo.net: A Community of Photographers
by Philip Greenspun; created 2001
What you want is a mini-DV camcorder. This is a near-broadcast-quality format introduced by Sony in 1996. The blank tapes are tiny. The same machine and tape can do
Why digital? Because you can copy without loss. Why do you want to copy your home videos 50 times? Because they need editing. Editing implies copying. Also, ultimately if you're producing for Internet distribution, all you really care about is digital display. So you might as well keep the information in digital form right from the start.
All you really need in a DV cam is a digital output. For reasons that escape me, not all DV cams have digital outputs. This is variously referred to as a "DV out", "Firewire", or "IEEE-1394". It is all the same standard and connector and everything plugs together; only the names are different.
There are three kinds of mini-DV camcorders worth buying:
[Note that not all "digital" camcorders are mini-DV. If you go to Best Buy or a similar shop you'll encounter an inferior quality format known as "Digital8". This was designed for compatibility with the old analog Hi8 camcorders. Avoid this format.]
Palm-sized camcorders are good when making a video coincidental to other activities. For example, you may be on a business trip and are carrying a camcorder in case something interesting catches you eye. Given how time-consuming it is to edit video (see below), this is not a very good way to achieve one's artistic goals. Palm-sized recorders generally suffer from poor video quality due to having only one charged coupled device (CCD) imaging sensor. That wouldn't be a problem if you were taking black and white. But 1-CCD cameras try to capture red, green, and blue for each pixel with their single CCD array. This is done by laying a matrix of colored filters over the CCD pixels and then interpolating to try to approximate the color and intensity for each pixel. Palm-sized camcorders also suffer from poor audio quality when the built-in microphone is used. The microphone itself is of acceptable quality but it is hard-mounted to a rigid metal case that contains the motors and gears driving the tape.
A good example of the palmcorder breed is the Sony DCR-PC110 which does all the usual video jobs and also functions as a one-megapixel digital still camera, storing digital photos onto a memory stick. The other unusual feature of the DCR-PC110 is "NightShot". This is an infrared light underneath the lens that enables videography in complete darkness. If you want a cheaper smaller unit, look at the Sony DCR-PC5.
The Canon camcorders are also worth looking at. Canon is the leader in image stabilization, which is critically important for making handheld video. Canon machines also tend to have good still picture capturing capability. If you're on a budget, the Canon ZR20 is one of the lowest-priced miniDV camcorders available ($600).
Expect to spend $500 to $1500 for a palm-sized mini-DV camcorder.
A 3-CCD camcorder splits the image optically and feeds color-filtered versions of the same scene to three CCD sensors simultaneously. The tape thus records a true red-green-blue (RGB) value for each pixel. All TV production is done with 3-CCD cameras and if you have the money and care about quality, you should do the same.
The cheapest 3-CCD camcorders cost $2000-2500. Two examples are the Sony DCR-VX2000 and the Canon GL-1. These don't fit as well into a professional production environment as the semi-pro camcorders (below) but they offer just about everything that a consumer would want, including reasonable capabilities for using external microphones.
The semi-pro camcorders offer features such as interchangeable lenses and XLR audio inputs. The video quality is similar to that of the mid-priced units. Prices are $3000-4000.
As of August 2001, the only real options in semi-professional are the Sony VX2000 and the Canon XL-1. Both are excellent machines but an amateur might be happier with their mid-priced cousins.
Don't leave home without a tripod and the right microphone for the job. It will very seldom be the case that the camcorder's built-in mic is the right tool. If you're doing a family history video, pin a lavalier mic on your subject's shirt. If you're capturing sound as a distance, get a boom mike.
The most important resource to budget for editing is time. Count on one hour of post-production for every minute of final video. As your original data are digital, the most sensible way to begin the editing process is by copying the captured video to a computer's hard disk.
The digital video output of a camcorder is an IEEE-1394 "Firewire" connector. You simply run a cable from this connector to your personal computer and plug it into... oops. Unless you own a Macintosh you probably don't have an IEEE-1394 input. It is possible to add a Firewire input to an older PC. I tried this once by purchasing a $500 "DPS Spark" card. I could never get it to work properly and the manufacturer's support was terrible. Probably the easiest thing to do is to purchase either a Macintosh or a machine that has been designed for video editing. These need not cost a lot. Hewlett Packard, for example, has a Pavilion 7960 model for $1150 with a Firewire input and bundled video editing software. Almost any Apple Macintosh system will function out of the box as a digital video production tool. If you have the patience to learn and use the Avid Technology digital editing system, IBM bundles some of its PCs with this software.
When you buy a machine that has bundled Firewire input and video editing software you can be fairly sure that the machine has adequate input/output bandwidth to copy incoming video data onto the hard disk. Data comes out of the camcorder at 3.56 MB/second and there is no way for the computer to tell the camcorder to "hold on for a minute." Your editing computer needs to have a reasonably fast internal bus and fast hard disks.
Speaking of hard drives... in the bad old days, disks were supposed to pause every now and then to do "thermal recalibration". So people bought "AV-compatible" drives that promised not to stop and inspect their navels. With the superfast disks that are standard nowadays, this is theoretically not a problem. IBM, for example, says that all of their hard disks are AV-compatible. Nor is it any longer necessary to purchase expensive SCSI hard drives. The standard cheap IDE/ATA drives are fast enough.
If you want to distribute video to your friends and family, the best media are probably VHS video tape or DVD. A computer sold for video editing will very likely have an analog video output suitable for connection to a VHS video recorder. Many of the newer Apple Macintoshes and some of the latest HP machines can write DVDs. Each blank disk costs about $20.
Even Web users with cable modems and DSL lines won't want to wait for a DV-quality movie to download. At 3.56 MB/second, a 5-minute video will consume roughly 1 GB of storage. At 1 Mbit/second, this will take roughly 3 hours to download.
There are three ways to attack download time: downsizing, compression and streaming. Downsizing in the video world implies reducing screen dimensions to 360x240 or 180x120 pixels (1/2 or 1/4 the full DV standard). Downsizing in the audio world entails cutting down to mono from stereo and/or to 22 KHz sampling from 44 KHz. Compression entails throwing away information that is redundant, e.g., frames 2-30 in a one-second still where the content doesn't change from frame to frame. Streaming involves distribution via a protocol whereby the user can view content as it comes in.
As soon as you decide to go streaming, there is no download time for users. There is only setup time. Your user's client has to make a connection to your server. After that, it is a real-time show. The decision to stream means that the user's Internet connection speed affects the quality of his experience. You have to use downsizing and compression to fit your content into his or her available bandwidth.
Note that you may not need any special software in order to serve streaming video. If you want the user to be able to jump forward or back up, you'll need to run a streaming media server of some sort. But most client software has the capability to start playing video as it comes in. The user is limited to passive from-the-start viewing until the entire video is stored on his or her local hard disk. However, everyone benefits from the fact that the video can be served by the same Web server program that is serving HTML pages and photographs.
Video camcorders and editing equipment are available from retailers that pay photo.net a referral fee for each purchase, which is the main source of financial support for this site:
If you're not satisfied with the software that came bundled with your computer, look at Adobe Premiere and related products ( http://www.adobe.com/motion/main.html).
Almost everyone has good equipment for making movies these days. But when was the last time you saw a good home video? Video requires a lot of planning and thought and, usually, carefully placed lights, microphones, and assistants. Here are some book recommendations to get you started on the road to becoming an auteur:
Next stop: UCLA Film School
Text and photos copyright 2001 Philip Greenspun.
Geoff Williams , September 05, 2001; 07:25 A.M.
Raffi Sanasarian , September 05, 2001; 03:45 P.M.
Kevin C. O'Neil , September 05, 2001; 07:13 P.M.
Robert Landrigan , September 06, 2001; 01:24 P.M.
Andy Dean , September 10, 2001; 06:24 A.M.
Victor Panlilio 
, September 10, 2001; 11:20 P.M.
Peeter Marvet , September 30, 2001; 04:29 P.M.
David Chananie , November 29, 2001; 06:33 P.M.
Marco Artioli , December 02, 2001; 06:36 P.M.
Prosenjit Singha Deo , December 22, 2001; 10:40 A.M.
Charles Wood , March 17, 2002; 07:08 P.M.
Hone Thomson , October 07, 2002; 08:13 A.M.
David White , January 06, 2003; 01:43 P.M.
Robert R , March 20, 2003; 11:45 P.M.
Kim Campbell , November 06, 2006; 03:56 P.M.
