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Video cameras

I am looking to buy some video cameras for my fieldwork.  I'm thinking to get a couple of the new tiny video cameras, plus something more mid-range, like a solid-state video recorder.  It would be nice to get away from miniDV if possible, and I was wondering what this list thought of the various kinds of new video cameras on the market?

  1. I just got a Zoom Q3 (CNet review) to try out in PNG. Has anyone else used these yet?
  2. I just returned from 3 weeks of recording with the Q3 in a remote village here in PNG. I’m quite happy with how it turned out. Sure, the video quality is poor (640x480), but the audio seem good (but I’m not actually qualified to measure it). The people love being able to see each other’s  and their own recordings so easily. The device is almost toy-like, but this can be used to one’s advantage, helping people relax and enjoy the process.
    Downsides:
    • It can be hard to keep the gathered crowd of kids (in my case, seeing moving images for the first time in their lives) from making a lot of noise. So next time, I’ll fashion some kind of hinged cover for the screen, to make it less interesting.
    • The display does not tell you which recording number you’re on, so it’s difficult to put in your notebook which recording goes with those notes.
    • There were times when I would have really liked an external microphone jack.
    • Transfer to a computer through the handy built-in USB plug is very slow. The SD card can be removed and plugged into the computer for faster transfer.
    • You get 24-bit, 96 khz when recording audio only, but only 48 khz when simultaneously recording video.
  3. I haven’t been overly impressed with the quality of the hard drive cameras I’ve looked at. I have a Canon HV30 Black Progressive HDV (CNet review, CamcorderInfo review) which rates better than the Sony equivalent. The HDDV quality is infinitely better than the normal DV cameras and better than any of the hard drive cameras I’ve used. The digitised files require more hard drive space, but it is worth it for the image.
  4. A good setup is to take with you a small recorder, probably a Zoom H4n (CNet review), a good mic, a Rode NT4 are still the best around, in my opinion, a long cable, and a hard drive video camera like a Canon Legria HF20, 21, (CNet review) etc.
    The files are massive when you first transfer them, but if you have a big enough hard drive, this shouldn't be a big problem. Oddly, iMovie is the best program for transferring, except it removes certain metadata - use it for transfer only and then operate on the output .mov files; the reason being that the .mts files (AVCHD format) are utterly impossible to work with natively.
    When recording video, either use only the video camera and plug the microphone into it (trusting whichever compressed audio format they use in AVCHD format), or, better, but requiring more tech savviness, record the audio separately wth your specific audio device and place the video camera some way away. When doing so, do something at the start of the recording so you can accuratlely time-align the good audio with the video. Something as simple as a couple of claps close to the mic and visible to the camera should do it.
    The video files that these Canon cameras produce are simply fantastic. Just avoid Sony at all costs; they have an overwhelming culture of proprietary formats, both in terms of hardware and software.
  5. As an Aboriginal Language centre, we don’t want just audio recordings. I can't emphasise enough how important video is for us when receiving language spoken evidence back to community. Ourselves only use quality (Sony/Canon) HDDV recorders recording to tape. We will not go to hard drive or any other format yet because of proprietary formats and compressions/codecs used. Raw is best and that is what tapes give us.
    • While it is certainly true that raw is best, DV tapes are also highly irritating to work with. I can't tell you the number of times Final Cut Pro has encountered a 'dropped frames' issue when re-digitising from a DV tape. Also, some may be tempted to leave them as is for some time before they digitise/transfer them to a machine, thinking the data is safely stored on a DV tape. The cassettes themselves are as fragile as any physical medium, and the magnetic tape can become affected, allowing the signal to deteriorate. Granted though, it is much better then the deterioration of VHS.
      If you transfer from a HDD camera as soon as you can, then the file will be in .mov format, which is about the best format around when it comes to forward-compatibility and cross-platform-ness, and it will be an exact clone of what's on the camera.
      Both methods yield very good results when used properly (I should emphasise that last point), and it depends on the individual user or group whether they go for tapes or for HD/solid state.
    • You're spot on with the response as characteristics and challenges with using tape and transferring to hdd asap, we cured our dropped frame scenario with Premiere by making sure our hardware was up to scratch.
      We always carry at least 6 tapes in our camera bag so that when that tape is full there is minimal disruption to continuing the recording. I would presume that would be possible with the DVD/SD recorders as well but not with the hard drive recorders as you have to empty the hard drive before recording once again.
      It has also been sometime since we have revisited what the manufacturers are doing in regards to recording formats.
    • Indeed pros and cons. Final Cut does require a decent computer which makes a difference to the number of times the issue of 'dropped frames' comes up. It happens to me rarely since I have had a MacBook Pro. Another advantage of having tapes is having a hard media form of back-up. If your computer dies along with your hard drives (certainly what happened on our project), you still have the original tapes.
  6. I've been recording stories using the Canon 5d Mkii (CNet review). It is absolutely amazing. It's an SLR camera that shoots full HD video, and records directly onto a CF card. The advantages for this are huge: first of all you don't have to deal with MiniDV tapes (huge frustration for me in the past) which saves you time and money. Secondly, you can change lenses and get gorgeous shots, not possible with consumer HD cameras. I read something talking about how the 5d MKII is a 500,000 dollar movie camera for 2500 dollars. No joke. Plus, you get a fabulous, professional still camera as well, which is obviously very useful in the field. It is also much more compact than comparable quality video cameras. If audio is a major concern for you (which I imagine it is) Rode makes a video mic specifically for the MKII and I really like the quality there. If that's not enough, you can always record with a condenser mic and solid-state audio recorder and sync to the video in post-production. There is one achilles heel, however. It caps out at 10 minutes of recording in one go. What this means is that you have to break and start a new file every ten minutes, so if you're collecting folklore or oral history and your subject is just on a roll, its very inconvenient. I've found that I rarely go over 10 minutes, but it is there in the back of my mind. In any case I throw my support 100% behind the 5d Mkii. Check out this blog for examples of videos made with it.
  7. I just want to point out a tricky problem with miniDV versus flash/HD based recorders, which is (if you want to skip the long-winded bit below): DV is a compressed format that doesn't automatically trump compression used in modern recorders. It isn't the best. In fact it's a pain in the neck. (Before I begin, I am always talking about lossy compression here, not lossless compression.)
    The video that is transferred from MiniDV cassettes is often called raw. But actually dv is a compressed format, using a discrete cosine transform algorithm, with a ratio of 5:1 (or higher). There are other aspects of the format (as it is stored on a tape, not on the computer) that relate to the fact that it is stored on fallible magnetic media, but I won't go into that. When using DV as a format you are using a degraded form. "Digitising" (or transferring to your computer) may or may not also re-compress the original compressed DV stream. But in transferring a recording to your computer, you receive an already compressed file, not an uncompressed file.
    I admit I'm being a little pedantic, but I simply want to point out that when you copy a compressed AVI file (or any of the many other formats out there) off of the flash card or HD drive, you are similarly making a "raw" copy of that file. Really, with digital video, the debate is about the subjective quality of one compression algorithm over another. Unless you are using truly high end gear, no one is using uncompressed video. Lets face it, if you did, it would be completely unmanageable with current tech. Imagine working with a real raw video file. With a frame size of 640x480 (not HD), an hour of footage would be 82.8GB! That's a fair bit more than a DV file.

    Because storage is cheap with magnetic media (but more fallible), and we are now approaching a point where solid state storage is becoming cheaper, there has been a transitional trade off. DV uses a lower compression ratio than most modern consumer and "prosumer" level recorders, but modern formats in modern devices use compression algorithms that produce subjectively better results at much higher compression ratios. Basically, it was cheaper to use worse compression at a lower ratio with cheaper storage (that was more fallible). But DV is a pain in the neck. So we had these transitional forms of storage with DVD based recorders, and Hard Disk recorders, which allowed cheaper storage of larger amounts of data (but both of which are power hungry, produce noise, and are still fallible - but less so than tape). Meanwhile, we're sitting around waiting for Flash based Storage to get cheaper... and now it is. As a side point, the computing power in these devices has also increased, allowing us to apply computationally more complex algorithms.

    hat I really like about these newer removable flash-based devices is that they have low power consumption, are less fallible (if you buy good flash cards), and I copy the file off of the card and start using it in ELAN within minutes. Another great thing that all new formats have over DV is that many/most of them can record for more than an hour! I carry two wafer thin flash cards and transfer my data to alternate storage in the field. Perfect but...

    The main problems then are the proliferation of a variety of file formats, the fact that many of them are proprietary and the difficult question of subjective quality of the video compression - which is an equally valid question to pose about DV formatted video.
  8. That Zoom Q3 looks like an interesting concept. Shame it doesn't have external mic inputs. I wonder if the built-in mic is OK. Being powered by AA batteries is particularly useful in situations without mains power. My experience with the other Zoom audio recorders was that they were reasonably good, and it appears to be an audio oriented device, which is interesting given that audio quality is often secondary in many video cameras.
    I've been interested in these small cameras as a backup, or second angle camera. For instance I have been experimenting with a Samsung U10 (CNet review). The U10 records a format that is accepted in ELAN straight off the flash card, which makes it particularly useful for fieldwork. So, the idea is to use a good camera for primary recordings (and "primary" angles), but to be able to stick the second camera to the ceiling when running certain types of tasks, especially non-verbal tasks. And I still use a separate audio recorder, because I can't do much without a good audio recording!
  9. I basically agree that we should keep copies of the original, untransformed media files, whatever they may be. By all means, make derivatives, but hang on to the original!
    But I just want to put a warning about using "mov" format. MOV and AVI are just wrappers around media streams. They contain general metadata, and explain the encoding of the streams of media (video, audio, subtitles etc) contained within them. So basically you could transcode a media file into any number of encodings and still save it as a mov file. Or you could receive mov files from different sources and require different codecs to play them back.
    So, potentially you could have a collection of videos that use completely different codecs, all saved as mov files. A casual inspection of files would not reveal that however, and this is the dangerous bit. In transferring a media file from one computer to another, the average user wont know until they try to open all the files that they actually have all of the necessary codecs to play them. Exactly the same problem applies to AVI. Of course, there are ways around this, but still, it's worth knowing.
    As for forward compatibility, well that depends on Apple.

 

Thanks to contributors Laura Robinson, Steven Bird, Felicity Meakins, Aiden Wilson, Daryn McKenny, Josh Berer, Tom Honeyman, John Hatton