Can anyone offer a little advice please?

[MJB]

I've not ventured onto this part of the forum before but I'm starting to get the urge to go into video recording.

I am looking to spend around £300 for a camcorder and the obvious aim is to use my PC for editing and then burn to DVD.

So the questions are these:

1. What camcorder would you recommend? (I've heard very good things about the JVC GR-D23)
2. Is Windows Movie Maker an adequate piece of software to use for editing?
3. Is there anything else I might need i.e. should I get a second battery for the camcorder; is the media format important on the camcorder; is the best connection to a PC via a firewall?

If anyone has any advice I'd be dead pleased to hear from you

Thanks.

[Florence]

This information is from a friend who already edits videos onto DVD's. He says you need to use a DV camera, which will use firewire / IEEE1394 connection to the PC. The S/W will be able to record direct from the camera source onto the HD for editing or straight onto DVD.
Camcorder should have a mains lead for work indoors.
The Pinncacle Studio software isn't too bad
look here its about £62 from Dabs

You can also look at
Serif Movieplus

Edited to add a good place to look would be DVspot news and reviews

If I come across any more info I will post it.

[Halcyon]

Windows Movie Maker is OK but its not the best thing.
I'd reccomend trying to get hold of Adobe Premier which is great and quite easy to pick up the basics of how it works.

As for your connection from the camcorder to PC. Its not by Firewall, but by Firewire thats your best option.
So see if you have a firewire port on your PC and the Camcorder itself.
Firewire PCI cards dont cost much if you need to pick one up to fit in your PC.

As for the media format. I think for £300 you should be able to get yourself one which takes Mini DV tapes. They are good quality and should be fine for you.

Also, make sure you have a big enough hard drive and preferably a good amount of Ram. 512 Minimum if you want to run nice and smoothly.

[etccarmageddon]

we have a JVC GR D31 EK here which we bought for last years holiday used it the once and never used it since - plus a spare battery.

plus we also have pinicale studio version 7 and a firewire card which we bought as a complete pack from pcworld so we could transfer from the DV tapes onto the PC. I also think we still have the firewire cable which is used to connect the camera to the firewire card.

If you're interesting in buying let me know and I'll ask her indoors how much she wants for it. nowt wrong with it - we just got bored of it!

as it's only been used for a one week holiday, it's in excellent condition.

otherwise, when we can be arsed, we'll be flogging it on Ebay!

[Florence]

Interesting etccarmageddon might try to pull money together for when you bother to sell it...

[Kliro]

Not sure about the camera, but I was watching that gadget show on channel 5 a while ago and they said windows movie maker is pretty poor, and they recommended the one included with apple's as easy to use and good.

At least thats how I think it went.

Also I'd recommend firewire, but USB 2.0 is also pretty fast, but theres something about firewire that makes it better for video? I think?

I'd check the battery life before you decide on getting anouther battery, but I have one with my digi cam, and its good because you can carry the spare around with you and not have to worry about the battery being low or whatever.

Id recommend getting a case with it, with a neck strap? Though most seem to come with them?

Hope you have good luck with getting a decent camcorder.

[etccarmageddon]

Originally Posted by Kits

Interesting etccarmageddon might try to pull money together for when you bother to sell it...

that would be cool as you're local to me!

[Visibleman]

best thing to do is buy a camera mag and have a look through the reviews, and if they have a website post on their forum etc

However, for 300 quid, ur not going to get anything that is amazing in picture quality. But like you say your just getting into this, so obviously spending loads and loads on a camera would be waste if you get bored after a week or so
Although from my 2years of use with sony handycams i can say that the picture quality is bloody shocking for something that costs 600 odd quid

As for software Adobe Premiere is about the only decent software, without spending over the 1k price band. Plus it offers lots and lots of effects and tools to edit a decent film

[Richard M]

Adobe Premier is an ideal tool for video editing.

[MJB]

Originally Posted by Richard M

Adobe Premier is an ideal tool for video editing.

Thanks for all this, however it appears the Adobe software would cost more than the camcorder

[paulyoung666]

check your pc to see if it has a 7200 rpm hard drive , you may well have problems if you have a 5400 rpm one

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by MJB

Thanks for all this, however it appears the Adobe software would cost more than the camcorder

If it's a one-off video you want to make, use the demo you can download.

[MJB]

These are my PC specs:

CPU Athlon XP 1700
Memory 1054 MB PC133 RAM
7200 RPM HD

Should that be OK?

Re. WMM: how can you burn a movie to DVD seeing that it does not support that option? Is there a way around it?

[Richard M]

Well you could save it as DV (digital video) then burn it using Nero.

[SMHarman]

You need a good amount of spare HDD, 10 mins of mini DV is about 5Gb. Then you need temp space and space to save the output DV file for transfer to nero and space for the file Nero creates before it goes onto the DV. A spare 30GB is a good start point, though I would recommend 60Gb +.

Sony, Canon, JVC all make good cameras, some Sony are Digi8 also a fine format, but MiniDV tapes are easier to get hold of if you run out while abroad.

Spare battery, depends on the life of the one with the camera. Most need a separate case, but come with straps lens cap etc.

Movie maker is a good start, see how you get on then think of other software, Make sure you download WMM2 though, a vast improvement on WMM. Almost as good as iMovie.

You need a Firewire/IEEE1394 card and cable. This has the ability to control the camera as well as transfer the data.