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First HDD MPEG4 Video Camcorder
An anonymous reader submits "This is a few weeks old but we have to talk about
this. Samsung introduced the world first hard disk drive based camcorder so you don't have to buy those MiniDV, Hi8s, and DVD-Rs. You take pictures, play MP3s, PAL+NTSC video! The picture quality is 350K so not a replacement for digital camera. The downside is the HDD size is 1.5 Gig so you can record video just over an hour! Why can't these bozos let us put a 40gig 2.5 IDE drive and let us record continuously for 25+ hours! Is there a corporate conspiracy to limit recording time of camcorder to about an hour (like DVD-R camcorders)?"
I'm sure someone will figure a way to replace the internal drive with a larger one, as they did the first TiVo's.
It's called "batteries" they power the camera. And often on consumer camcorders, they run out of power in an hour.
AC
My Sony Digital 8 Handycam can store 60 minutes of video on a standard 8mm or Hi-8mm tape. Now, forgive me if my math is wrong, but I know that approximately 4 gigs of hard drive space is used when I download approximately 20 minutes of video (it's actually 18, but for my calculuations, 20 is easier). I'm assuming this means that around 12 gigs of data can be stored on an 8mm tape. If I could get a camcorder that would store MPEG-4 video on an 8mm tape, I could store around 8 hours of video on a single 8mm tape.
The advantage that I see to using tape, is that I can easily archive and store the video. If I have to backup my video from a hard drive on the camcorder to a hard drive on my system, I will be quickly running out of room. Yes, I could back it up to CD or DVD (if I had a DVD burner), but that's extra work I don't want to have to deal with.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
But yeah, never attribute to "the cold hard facts" what you can more easily attribute to a vast conspiracy theory. Absolutely.
Is the IBM MicroDrive still around?
That would seem to be a great way to fit a lot of data in a small place on one of these things....
Never understood why the microdrive didn't completely take over PDAs and recording devices of different varieties...
I *THINK* hard drives tend to be about the same size physically.
Just wait for a mod-chip for one of these things that allows you to replace the hard drive with a bigger one. You can also do this with the xbox. :-)
It might be nice to have 25+ hours of recording capability, but try finding a battery that will let you do that. You're gonna have to swap batteries or plug in for extended use (or carry around one huge battery for that).
I'd also be concerned about file size limitations... if grandma and grandpa get one of these and try to transfer the file to a machine running win me or something, you don't want them to deal with the 2 GB file size limitations, etc...
Otherwise, yes, 25 hours of recording time may be useful... but is worth recording with a camcorder for 25 hours?
If the recording time went over 1.5 hours, you could tape most movies off the screen. Of course, a lot of other things take more then an hour, and I think most people would like to have more recording time then that. Which is why it probably won't sell well in this configuration.
As for your question, the reason they don't allow more than an hour on each media is that you shouldn't be recording more than that. Live your life when it happens, not while boring your friends with your vacation videos and Baby's First Diaper.
I've been looking for a PC based MPEG4 motion picture recording device for some time. Does anyone know where one might exist?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I will bet that the 1.5 gig drive has been tested
for durability and strength. I'm sure the hard
drive interface is a special camera interface or
somthing special that only works with that model.
I side with the poster though. I would like to have the option to buy a larger HDD (even if it's only a proprietary one), at least 4.3 gig.
Otherwise you would be able to take them into a theatre and record an entire movie then post it on Kaza. :)
I think the reason they want small drives is so that they can eventually sell the drives as "disposables"--and thus sell more of them. I know this one's is not removeable, but that's besides the point.
Either that, or this is just a first attempt to make a hd camcorder. If this one sells well they can always add bigger hd's to them.
>Is there a corporate conspiracy to limit recording time of camcorder to about an hour (like DVD-R camcorders)?
:/
Maybe the problem is that this camcorder has only 1 hour reconding autonomy
While I see this function as useful, I'd still prefer a more old school but higher quality approach to my video. I did a short "film" for a class on a Sony Digital 8 camcorder and the functionality and the quality are simply incredible. However I usually end up editing it and scale it down to divx, however then the quality becomes for in my control.
The article also fails to mention what the bitrate and such of the audio and video are going to be for the recording...
However assumin the price is realistic I'll probably get one just for the please of being able to play MPEG-4 on my TV without a messy interface between my laptop and a whole bunch of cords... I'd truly appreciate it if someone would come out with a semi-affordable set top divx unit lest I am forced to create on for myself.
Of course, having Amanda Payes as my "operator" would be pretty sweet, too. ;)
Is there a corporate conspiracy to limit recording time of camcorder to about an hour (like DVD-R camcorders)?
:
Well
pros:
if the battery can't follow you don't need that much more...
cons:
If the harddisc is proprietary, I guess it is some attempt at preventing users from using it in movie theaters even though this is quite stupid as you may come with a friend and record half of the movie each...
BTW, if it has firewire, there could be a way to plug an external harddisc (depending on the firmware and its functionalities)...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Why shouldn't my DVD player be capable of playing an mp3 cd? It just makes sense for that to be allowed. We wouldn't want something that serve multiple functions eh? I guess you only use your computer for cracking German codes in order the win the war, right? Good luck with that. Stay strong and don't lose the line. In a few years, this whole stinking war will be over, the Jews will be liberated (sort of), the Japanese will be building an electronics empire, and Germany will be two countries.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
1. Physical Size
2. Weight
3. Power Requirments
Rocket science is easy. Neurosurgery, now *that's* difficult.
Most of those little digital video cameras overheat. Read the manual to pretty much any of them, they tell you that continuous operation for more than usually two hours will cause problems, possibly damage.
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
Damn, if the HDD was bigger, this would have been perfect for pirating movies; some people are annoyed at the fact that the casettes won't hold the entre movie, and they are forced to either swap tapes in the middle of the movie, thus risking being discovered, and making a gap in the movie, or go watch the movie twice. Could this be modded to put a bigger HDD in it or something?
I'm not sure here, but I'd guess part of the reason you aren't able to swap just any pc hard drive is to do with how well such drives would handle the movement of a camcorder. I know alot of people who's camcorders are subjected to a lot of sudden movements, if you subject a standard pc HD to that while fully spinning for an extended period of time, you'll kill the drive pretty fast. Most people are used to there media surviving more than a year. Standard HD's could well be killed of by wear and tear on the 7200rpm platters after only a year of spinning while being moved around by amateur shaky cam recording.
"Is there a corporate conspiracy to limit recording time of camcorder to about an hour"
...
When I was in college I spent about a month in Philadelphia -- and my friends and I were amazed at the boot-legs of various movies. My friend bought one and I (being from a not-so-populated-area) sat down to watch Amistad -- while it was still in theaters! To my dismay, this bootleg was nothing more than some schmoe sitting in the theatre with a video camera. After seeing a few heads walk in across the screen we decided to stop watching. Now, a video cam capable of doing more than 1 hour of recording and at some sort of digital quality that can be plugged right into a computer and copied over -- this has got to be keeping an executive somewhere up at night
Is there a corporate conspiracy to limit recording time of camcorder to about an hour (like DVD-R camcorders)?
Probably, I hear that the RIAA is guilty of price-fixing too *GRIN*
they probably didn't add a larger hard drive because they don't want sales to fall for the dvd-r camcorders.
I like the idea of larger drives. I'll get one as soon as the price comes down.
Karma: Bad (mostly affected by being such an asshole)
I'd much rather have the uncompressed video. Maybe I'm just a purist.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Archos Multimedia 20 with Camera attachement. About 400 bucks , does still and MP4 movies, you can get an adapter to read flash from your cameras, does firewire and both flavors of USB. What more do you want except Garmin to add in GPS!
No, I'm not kidding.
Digital cameras unleashed an age where anyone can take any picture he pleases, and own that picture and distribute it or even sell it immediately without having to have it developed or converted and without any other technological hindrance. DVRs (digital video recorders) make much "worse" "moral violations" possible, the recording of live video with similar ease of distribution. No hurdles.
If anyone can make a three-hour porno movie in perfect digital quality, ready to be distributed or sold online without the need for bulky VHS tapes, The Powers That Be feel that both the production and consumption of porn would increase. And of course the current Powers That Be are no fans of porn, need I remind anyone that Mr. Ashcroft wasted taxpayer money to cover the nude breasts of a _statue_?
The hurdles are there for a reason, but it ain't the corporations putting 'em there. They'd gladly sell the thing with a drive 10x larger for 5x the price... If they weren't being pressured not to.
... the camera were a small wireless capture device and the recording device could be left on your belt or in a bag with it's own monster batteries? Hell it could be your laptop.
That way the device in your hand has no moving parts, cost less and it would be easy to upgrade the storage separately.
Sounds like a nice hacking project...
'Course you better be willing to burn some cash if you mess up.
As for the sturdiness argument: You can use a journaling filesystem that will correct errors as they are introduced - as well as use RAID with multiple partitions - parity checking to elimenate surface errors. I wouldn't think that I would handle a camera any less gently than a laptop (probably more gently) - so the sturdiness argument is questionable in my mind.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Jukebox Multimedia 20 Handheld Entertainment Center USB 1.1 20GB Hard Disk+MP3+MPEG 4
1.3 Megapixel Camera, MP4 Video Camcorder
Specs
-= If you fight Dragons long enough, you will become a Dragon =-
I can think of one situation where 25 hours of recording time is not a negative. PORN!! The camera will most likely be on a tripod, or carried by a camera person; therefore it can be tethered to a power cord. ./ers dreams.
Now as for wanting to screw infront of a camera for 25 hours... that's a different story, and probably most
25 hours of boring holiday footage.
The picture quality is 350K
Wow! 350 Kelvin! My cheap-o digicam can do 5500K (daylight) with no problem.. that must be some crappy camera!
Seek time on editing.
...Then reel off to tape ;)
With tape you have to wind through to the section you want to edit blah, blah, so what you do is copy up to disk, edit then reel back to tape.
With HDD on the camera you can edit quicker.
- Where's the firewire?
- How about a larger drive?
- How about PAL *AND* NTSC?
- etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
stupid. could have been a great product, but it's crippled."It's OK, my sheet's got a hole in it!"
I would like to see Apple team up with a camcorder manufacturer (e.g. Sony) and build a camcorder into the iPod. Seems like the next natural step to me.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
The MPAA doesn't want you taking these new fangled things into cinemas, and taping the latest films to be uploaded...
Cut the time to an hour, and the best they can manage is the trailer for the "Lord of the Rings III, Sauron vs. Frodo".
Warning. Dramatisation may not have happened.
Well, you should be interested in DVBackup, this project does what you need: backup data on your camcorder. You can stick gigs on a mini-DV !
This is the first? hmm... it reminds me a lot of the Hitachi MP-EG1 that I used a bit in the late 90's. It recorded full MPEG-1 video to its hard drive. (Although you only got about 20 mins as the hard drive was 260mb!)
It's either sink or swim. Your more than welcome to watch the world run past you. However its not going to stop and wait you to catch up.
If nature has a conspiracy against battery life that will sustain your 7200RPM 40gig HD for 24 hours, then, yes, there is a conspiracy.
Until a couple of years ago Samsung was in the HDD business and had a San Jose based R&D group. I don't know how much their business devisions talked, but it would be interesting to see of they are back in the HDD game.
I don't think the normal IDE PC HD would work as well as you imagine in something like a digital camcorder. If you've ever watched a video that any female has made ever you'll notice the camera bounces around more than a kangaroo in a crappy B-movie. All that wear and tear would kill a normal HD, so they have to make tougher ones, which are more expensive, yadda yadda yadda
~ now you know
Is there a corporate conspiracy to limit recording time of camcorder to about an hour (like DVD-R camcorders)?
No conspiracy there. It's the battery life. I have yet to see a camcorder battery small enough to carry and that can last more than 3 hours.
Cool, it's DivX. However, 320x240 isn't going to cut it for me, but it's nearly there. Oh, and 18fps is going to look a bit jerky. Gotta have 25fps!
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Well dunno, but 'side from that... battery life?
Personally, I'd love one. I currently own a Sony PC9e miniDV thingy, and it's excellent. This look better though. An annoyance I have is the capture time - basically, it dumps camcorder footage out to the firewire port at x1 speed. This device would overcome the 1x playback limitation. As the article says, it would also stop me getting through tapes at an ungodly speed. Plus there's the benefit that each clip has already been stored seperately, so no more sitting at the editing software checking the results of basic imports.
Isn't anyone pleased to see this except me? Lighten up! This thing is cool.
Cheers,
Ian
This whole "the batteries wouldn't last long enough if the HD could store more" doesn't fly. ACCE$$ORIE$. They want you to buy as much crap as possible, so they therefore want you to buy batteries. Back in the day we had a VHS camcorder (one of those big honkers) and we kept 3 batteries around for it. What if you are taping and you need more time? Swap the tape and battery when needed, and keep going. It's that simple. If you had more HD space in this and the battery went dead, you could just throw another battery on it. No biggie. My guess is that they don't want to compete too much with their old inventory. Kind of like the recent "HP: we're-not-going-to-benchmark-the-alpha-if-it's-fas ter-than-the-Itanium's-we're-selling" deal. I didn't read the article, but it seems reasonable. They have other camcorders that have about this time limit to them and they don't want to be stuck with them. If they release a 20 hour model, who is going to buy the other 2 million 1.5 hour models sitting in the warehouse?
Corporations are in competition, but sometimes I think they don't want to set the bar too high, else they will have problems reaching it on the next new product run. I think these corps don't want to do the best thing they can, they just want to do better than the other guy.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
It's seldom a conspiracy when it's more likely to be incompetence.
Anyway, yesterday the joke was that a good way to foil predators was to taste bad. This surely disproves Darwin, because surely every creature would have evolved to taste bad by now *grin*
Actually quite a few years older than that. Since your the one posting anonymously, I would assume you are the younger one. Time to lay off the coffee...
Sorry you can't handle your job, or the reality that you work in an industry filled with "certified morons". Maybe you should consider a career change? You obviously have a obfuscated view on realty. However I do agree I have been reading about the immigrants taking US jobs. So what are you doing about it accept ranting and raving to me in a thread about video camera that support MPEG-4? Sounds kinda pathetic to me.
You don't even know what I do for a living. Maybe I am the doctor at the mental insitute. You are running on asumptions... I have been in my carrer for 8+ years. So if I was 18... Guess I started at 10 eh?
I highly suggest some yoga lessons for you. And maybe switch to decaf.
betamax?!!!
Three things are certain: Death, taxes, and lost data. Guess which has occurred.
I know this is probably a bit off topic, but why is it necessary to take anything that has storage, and turn it into an mp3 player?
There are portable mp3 players. PDAs that play mp3s. Phones that play mp3s. Digital cameras that play mp3s. And now camcorders too. And I'm probably leaving out entire groups of items.
Hey, sometimes I'm cooking and want to listen to music. Where's my mp3 playing stove, fridge or toaster?
Don't you see: this should be called the pr0n-camera. The mpeg4 compression means it's ready to be posted to the website without recompression, and the recording time is ... just about standard for a "feature". Anyway, now that I'm getting older, it's more time than I would need.
Just get one of these http://www.archos.com/lang=en/products/prw_500375. html?country=us
with one of these
http://www.archos.com/lang=en/products/prw_500287. html
20GB hard drive, Divx viewing and recording...
Been out for a while now
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
They're certainly doing a great job of preventing it right now aren't they :)
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Is there a corporate conspiracy to limit recording time of camcorder to about an hour (like DVD-R camcorders)?
Of course there's a conspiracy to limit recording time. If you could record for an hour and a half or more then someone might carry one into a movie theater and record it. Therefore the public is not allowed to own a device with that capability. Any manufacture who sells one is guilty of contributory infringement.
Welcome to hell. It may be a bit warm here, but there's plenty of music and movies for sale.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I think it has to record in standard DV format for it to be of any use to me.
MPEG files (unless they're I-frame only) are not easily editable, plus the fact that none of the best software in the editing world (Avid, Final Cut, etc) will work with raw MPEG files without decoding/recoding them to something more useful.
As others have said, if they made a version of this that had a interchangeable 2.5" HD port so you could plug in whatever capacity you wanted to use, and recorded standard DV video that you could transfer out with a firewire cable, (or, in addition have direct access to the filesystem on the HD in the camera), I'd snap one up in a second.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Not that I download movies or anything like that...
As a general rule atleast, you won't find mpeg compression on tape; although it could be done. As a general paradigm with tape every frame has all the information to generate the entire image. But mpeg compresses across frames (I know I'm simplifying the process). So if you take one of these tapes and stick it in a player and push play you'ld find it rewinding all over the place trying to grab enough information to play from where you left off. Yes I am aware that DV also uses compression but not across frames. Every image is compressed discreetly. And I'm also aware that dvds compress across frames. But again that is a different scenario.
Also remember 8mm tapes aren't designed to store digital video the same way DV is. You really should not be using them for archive purpose and expect them to be in a reasonable state when you check in on them in a few years time. Ofcourse they work but there is a reason you get a price break buying them instead of a dv cam.
would be for portable viewing of MP4 files. That would be killer.
The 2.5" drives in the laptops we get are all 4200 RPMs. I don't think that's fast enough to do video.
This is one of the reasons laptops all seem so damn slow.
Wouldn't it be quit horrible searching through 40hrs of video with such a small screen?
An anonymous reader submits "This is a few weeks old but we have to talk about this.
Is the anonymous reader Joan Rivers?
Seriously, is this product's OS open source? Is the specification?
No, I'm not being a zealot for the sake of zealotry. I've got an Archos MP3 player. Nice hardware, but the software is merely adequate.
An open source replacement, Rockbox, is far superior (faster, more intuitive user interface, more customizable, adding fonts, controls, configurable displays). In fact, the replacement is so good that Archos plans to use it for one of their newer models. Honestly, having run the replacement software I can't help but think of how much more attractive it makes the Archos jukebox.
But Archos hasn't released their specs or their code, so the Rockbox developers have to laboriously reverse engineer such trivia as appropriate battery levels for different models.
My selfish upshot: I can't (yet) run Rockbox on my Archos, as the Rockbox guys haven't yet reversed engineered my model. I could run it, if Archos would just release some specs. (E.g., low battery level is x volts, high is y volts.)
From now on, I'm not interested in buying closed specification hardware. It just closes off too many good alternatives.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
If 40gb is required and obviously 1.5gb is pitifully small then Archos sell a camera module for their Jukebox Multimedia products.
The AV140 comes with a 40gb drive.
Rónán
The Hitachi MpegCam was the first hard-drive camcorder, as far as I know. (Though this Samsung probably is the first MPEG4 HDD camcorder). I used it back in high school in 1997 and 1998. It looked like a large electric shaver with a camera instead of a shaving head, and with an LCD in the back. The one I used had a 340mb PCMCIA hard drive in it and stored about 20 or 40 minutes of video, I think. The video wasn't quite VHS quality -- you could definitely see the difference, though it wasn't like matchbook-sized video. It also had a digital camera feature that took higher quality pictures (at least for that time).
It was really neat for what it was at the time, though it probably didn't fill any niche real well. It didn't have a lot of storage, nor did it take particularly high quality pictures. But it was really small, and was a lot of fun to play around on. I even did part of a movie for Spanish class on it.
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
Those tapes are awfully cheap, and though it may be slow, I'd try it.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
Two things:
1) I don't want the guy in the next apt. over seeing that I still can't set the time on it.
2) I don't want the guy in the next apt. over seeing the view from inside my bedroom closet.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
MPEG-1 isn't the greatest video. And this camcorder is not the first in the world with a hard-drive. Ikegami has been making professional hard-drive camcorders for years. (They work directly with Avid.)
Doesn't the title of the post say the first MPEG-4 camcorder? Even that is being disputed.
Then again, it says Video Camcorder. I suppose that distinquishes it from all those audio only ones.
If you have an old 3.5" disk drive laying around that you don't care about, plug in the power and let it spin up, then move it around like you might a video camera.
The first thing you will notice is the gyro action. For the modern small video cameras, this would be very noticeable.
Now, bump it against something. You might be lucky and hear a "whack", "clang" or a sound like a circular saw ringing. You just killed that disk drive.
The result of that spinning movements and the heads being pressed against them is not good. Your average IDE and SCSI hard drives are not meant to be moved while running. This is why you should not move your computer while it is powered on -- there is the possibility of skimming the heads against the disk drive platters.
Laptop disk drives are not only smaller for size and weight purposes, but the decreased weight of the platter system reduces problems related the spinning motion and movement of the system. The heads, swingarm, and swingarm actuator are also designed to handle external movement during operation.
The conclusion is that there is not a chance that you will find a standard disk drive in any video camera recorder any time soon. A laptop IDE drive might happen, but I doubt that even they would be able to put up with the punishment that the consumers would put them though.
I was going to point out that the 20GB HDD in my iPod doesn't seem to have any problems, despite being dropped a few times, and slammed into doorways as I walked through with the iPod on my hip...
but then I remembered that the drive is usually not spinning. It only spins up when loading a new song (or songs) into its 32MB (?) of memory. The HDD on a camcorder would have to spin constantly when recording or playing back, but could spin down when either just viewing or even when taking pictures. With some cache memory, you could probably avoid the spin-up delay when starting to record. (i.e. data goes into cache until the HDD has spun up). Similarly, pictures could go in the cache until its full.
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
Did you ever consider the possibility that they put a small HDD in so they could lower the price point? And that once there's a proven demand for the product, they can use economies of scale to provide better features at a better price (cf, just about every technological innovation ever).
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
Samsung is not a hacker-friendly corporation like TiVo. If anything you'd get slapped with DMCA suit if you "upgrade" the drive.
Also, I don't think this is a consumer-grade HDD. There is no mention of the type in the official press release, and arising out of the fact that none of the current HDD mfg's make anything near 1.5gb capacity drives, I'm willing to guess: this is a proprietary model.
8+ years... Hardly impressive... Give it a few more years, we'll see. As for decaf, look at your spewage vs mine. PKB.
...but I'll plug it from first hand experience. I have an Archos Jukebox Mutlimedia 20. For $335 I go the JBMM 20, a Compact Flash card reader, a Smart Media card reader, the digital camera/digital video camera attachment, video output cables, etc. Then I picked up a 60GB 9.5mm 2.5" Hitachi HDD (same as the one Archos uses in the JBMM 20 just three times the size) for $198 on Buy.com and swapped hard drives. I have it partitioned as I also make very heavy used of my JBMM as a mobile hard drive that I take from customer site to customer site and don't want to mingle work files with my MP3s, DVD rips, etc. I keep an updated copy of Windows and Mac versions of all popular OSS (Open Office, The GIMP, blah blah blah) and install them for customers to introduce them to OSS and the great alternatives that exist out there. Anyway, I use my JBMM as my primary camcorder and it's small enough that I always have it with me. I'm just waiting for that magic moment to catch the next Rodney King or America's Funniest so I can either start a riot or retire! Anyway, I love my Archos and would never be without one again.
Good point.
Hey I know, why not just take two peopl in with one camera each and tag team the movie recording?
Heck, the movies are SHOWN with multiple reels, why shouldn't the pirates STEAL them in multiple reels?
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Everyone is talking about the size of the disk.. but common .. 350K, even with MPEG4 the image quality would suck ... even at 500K .. what image resolution are we talking about? My Digital camera captures a 7xx*5xx (the xxs are i forgot, whatever .., i think this is pal .. but not sure), and i already complain about it's image quality
Another thing .. using tape .. that would be rather dificult for one to seek that tape .. keyframes in mpeg4 are more far apart than in mpeg2 so, the cam had to rewind to fetch the keyframe and then had to play till it's original position again to reconstruct the frame flawlessly, this process is very slow, on disk this is done almost imediately, but disk can be damaged... Why not use FLASH
I fuse with Mercer every single day...
I've been doing video editing (DV) on my powerbook's internal 60GB drive this weekend, and it's been just fine for me.
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
Indeed there is a conspiracy to keep recording times to about an hour. The threat to Hollywood of people taking a cam into a cinema can be greatly reduced by making sure it cannot record anywhere near the whole length of a movie. You'd have to take two of them in - maybe even three.
Anonymouse.
I think most CE (Consumer Electronic) companies are very concerned about the "price point." And basically will do anything that will save them $$ and because everything has a mark-up of 1x or 2x or 4x (or more) when it gets to retail, they really try to keep teh price low..
Of course they should learn to make the things modular.. But that is not yet something within their "ken."
http://www.hawknest.com/
I don't know about the rest of you, but 1hr is usually my limit. My top time is 3hrs, but that was with jerking off several times before hopping in the sack with my gal.
IIRC, DVD-R's only store a maximum of 90 minutes (early ones were 60).
Commercial DVD's get around this by making multi-layer discs. Consumer DVD-R burners currently burn single layer discs only.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
I love the idea of a hard drive based camcorder, but note they're trying to slide USB 2.0 in place of Firewire. I wouldn't buy this one on that basis alone.
I bought mine off of Best Buys web site for $400 including the camera module, media modules. They shipped free to my house. Lovely device and easy to use. Picture quality isn't so good in dim lighting but 1.3M pixel still pics outside are great. MPEG4 Video playback on my TV is really good, recorded video from camer module is OK (frame rate is not as fast as I'd like), MP3's sound awesome, etc. Now I'm just waiting for the video feed MPEG hardware recorder module to come out.
It's almost there. What I'd buy,if they'd build it, is a full featured DV camcorder, but with the tape mechanism replaced by a HDD. Standard DV tapes hold 11GB. A readily available 60GB drive would hold 5+ hours of high quality video with CD quality audio. The current HDD's would take up less space than a DV tape and assorted mechanisms.
With firewire you could then extract the video, either temporarily archiving on a larger disk in your PC, or dump to DVD-R's as either MPEG2, or as raw files for editing later.
For the people who complained that there's no need for longer recoding capacity than you batteries last: you're wrong. With non-removable storage you'd want to have the capacity to last until you get to a place where you could dump the contents. A weekend trip might involve several battery changes / recharges before returning to a place where you could empty the camera.
There might be a small "consipiracy" against this sort of camcorder as it would not consume tapes, but then many of the camcorder manufacturers aren't selling blank tapes. Sony likes making things that use odd or new media to get the media sales later, but not all manufacturers are in that position.
One last comment, Hitachi brought out it's MPEG-Cam years ago. It recorded MPEG-1 onto a PCMCIA hard drive that was smaller than many of the CF cards we use today. It was a little more bulky than a point and shoot still camera, but smaller than a compact camcorder. Of course it didn't have the stuff that modern camcorders have today like large zoom, image stabilization or firewire output.
NOT the first HDD camcorder. The Editcam had REMOVEABLE HDDs:
5 .h tm
http://www.tvcameramen.com/equipment/equipment1
Excellent Machine !
-Simon
The title of the post says first MPEG-4, but the text of it (and the press release) says its the first hard disk drive based camcorder.
But haven't you noticed that there is also a conflicting conspiracy to lower the average length of a movie to less than an hour and a half?
Looking at a list of recent releases I see very few that are in the triple digits of minutes (One weekend I was shocked that no movie was more than 99 minutes long).
Yet what's the price for that movie? Oh yeah, it's still the same $8/$9/$10 you pay for a three hour moviethon like Lord of the Rings.
Check it out yourself if you don't believe me. I think studios are realizing any footage beyond an hour and a half would be best used as filler to boost sales of their DVDs. I don't doubt that within a couple years it will be the very rare exception for a movie to be longer than an hour and a half, and some will be barely over an hour.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Apples iPods have up to 20GB HDs in them, and should take at least as much a beating as in a camcorder.
Many people have responded to this article discussing the practicality of including or installing a HD larger than 1.5 Gb in a device like this. Most have expressed doubt concerning the reliability as well as the gyroscopic effect.
So, my question is, if I can go jogging with a 20 Gb iPod, why can't I shoot video with a 20 Gb "iCam?"
Errr - in what way does a DV tape differ from a D8 tape that makes it so special for digital data?
Both tapes use a helical scan method, just as VHS and DAT. So its not the scan method that must make them different.
Both tapes need to be high grade because digital data needs a good signal to noise ratio. With DV you don't get a choice its mandated, with D8 if you use nasty tape stock you get what is comming to you - use actual marked D8 tapes or high grade Hi8 tapes and you're fine. So its not the tape formulation that makes them different.
D8 tape is (not surprisingly) 8mm wide, whereas DV is 12.2mm for MiniDV (and full DV is 14.6 but we are comparing camcorder tapes) so there is a difference here. And you see it through a reduced bandwidth available - this translates into a slightly lower effective resolution, although Sony claims 520 lines for both DV and D8.
So which of these differences makes the physical tape less suitable for storing digital data?? I mean we've used 8mm tape for backup for years!!
The tape mechanisms themselves are also not just any old stock Hi8 ones - they are specifically designed for D8.
I bought a D8 unit for a number of reasons:
- I have a significant amount of Hi8 stock. With a D8 unit I can digitise this into the computer.
- I can enable Analogue->DV conversion across the cam allowing me to digitise in any analogue source. Discrete solutions such as the Dazzle DV bridge cost more than my camcorder!
- I really don't get on with the handling of most MiniDV cameras, they're too small, and the good handling ones are expensive.
- There is some kudos attached to MiniDV cameras, so you get charge more.
There is nothing special about a DV camera because of the tape format, its just MiniDV allows the camera to be physically smaller, and it has higher bandwidth so a slight higher resolution. The only thing D8 tapes can't do is have that little index chip that you can pay extra for in a MiniDV.
My D8 unit looks no different to everything connected to its IEEE1394 port than a DV unit, and I fully expect my D8 masters to be just as readable as your MiniDV ones in a few years time.
And in the fullness of time (and budget) I expect a Canon XM derivative to join the stable. I don't care what the tape is really, its the camera thats important.
Perhaps a cruical point that you mention you don't expand on - temporal compression. Hard Disk and DVD recording camcorders will need to use some form of interframe compression, which means editing is restricted to the keyframe points. DV is only compressed in the frame so remains fully editable. The loss of full editability is more important to me than anything I gain.
A previous slashdot article
2 11 &mode=thread
d _l ede2_hed
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/11/065
spoke of a company named Cinea which would make film projections not as good for camcorders to capture.If this is true then the time limitation would not be as important for theater concerns.
The link the slash page points to is:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961484.html?tag=f
What I see significant about it is the part of:
"
Meanwhile, Cinea this week scored a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Advanced Technology Program to develop a system that it claims will stop audience members from videotaping digital movies off theater screens.
"
A $2 million grant from NIST (I hope they are getting a grant from the Gov for some other excuse other than
"stop audience members from videotaping digital movies off theater screens"
)
(I'm assuming NIST is Gov funded).
No sig
You can easily encrypt the signal so it's safe from at least civilian eavesdropping. It's all cheap standard technology. It could use Airport ("802.11b"?) and record directly to your laptop!
It's limited by one hour, because the quality is already crappy and they were only able to put a small drive in it. Can we all agree that if they put a 15 Gig drive, the camcoder would be a lot more expensive?
You do know that 1 hour of DV is about 11-15 gigs, right?
Additionally, you can record 90 minutes on some digital camcoders, and there are movies that are 90 minutes long.
This "conspiracy theory" is just ridiculous.
- sigs are for wimps.
Gosh, wouldn't it completely suck ass to be stuck with some idiot format that can't decide which one it wants to be, so it applies the same name to all of them, even though that they represent entirely different standards?
Wouldn't it suck even harder if you had to pay licensing fees to put that video that you shot using the camera you bought onto the webspace that you've paid for, and then be lost as to which standard they meant when they said 'MPEG-4?'
This is, of course, just the beginning. Wait until you have to pay them a licensing fee to convert one MPEG-4 format to another MPEG-4 format. Wait and see. Don't forget the most fun part... Licensing terms for MPEG-4 haven't even been set yet. It should be fun when Samsung sends you another bill.
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.Org Foundation
IBM makes a 1GB microdrive for about $250, and toshiba makes a 5 GB type 2 PCMCIA hard drive for about $150. I would guess a variant of one of these is on the inside of this camcorder. What I don't understand is why they wouldn't make it removable? It couldn't add more than $20 to what is already likely to be a very expensive toy. I also don't understand how a hard drive is better than a digital tape.
Wouldn't a slight gyroscopic effect actually help someone with a cam corder keep it steadier? I think I'd be more worried about vibration than anything...
As others have pointed out, modern drive are pretty robust. The iPod only spins up when it's reading a song into memory, but even so it has to be able to handle someone jogging while that happens. I think personal music devices are going to have a lot worse motion issues than camcorders (where the desire is to hold it steady even if that is not what always happens...)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've been doing some video recently, and I found it much nice to record straight from teh camcorder into my laptop. I was thinking that for places that was not practical (like anywhere you had to move at all), it would be great to record clips right onto an iPod drive using the firewire coonnection with some simple iPod software to handle the streaming to disc.
Then, when you synced the iPod with your Mac/PC, it could copy over all the clips automatically and fire up the video editor.
I'm sure the iPod battery life would be a lot shorter with the drive going all the time, but I still think it would be really convienient.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I thought it actually recorded video to MPEG4. If that were the case, 1.5 Gigs would be enough to store more than 4 hours of video. In fact it is only capable of MPEG4 playback.
"Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
You mean these Sharp, Samsung, Hitcahi and Canon ones were a halucination? I guess they're all rebadged Sonys...
Hi8 was a Sony proprietary format. You'd have been better getting a cheap Sony D8 and using that to encode direct to DV. That and a D8 unit can be used as an analogue to DV bridge so you can digitise any video format.
DV Backup is here to answer the original question rather than your offtopic and inaccurate reply.
...in fact, in few months they will start selling upgrades to 2Gb, 6Gb, 10Gb, 20Gb.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
So it only records an hour then you have to transfer it to your pc? So if I take the kids to the dells, I had better be editing after every shot, or bring the laptop with...
How about MPEG IMX or Betacam SX - both based on mpeg compression both on tape. Betacam SX has a huge acceptance in TV news as it dubs out to a harddrive in the VTR (like vcr) faster than real-time.
*Real-Time Recording* or Editing?
I think he's refering to storing a video feed in real time.
Tho I have no idea if his statment is accurate or not.
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Because then you'd be able to catch the neighbour's daughter showering in the morning *and* undressing at night.
DVD movies and games you buy at the store are usually dual layered, allowing twice as much storage space as the DVD-R(W) capacity of 4.7GB.
-Lucas
This thing is cool
Indeed it is, and I don't think we are disagreeing on that.
As the article says, it would also stop me getting through tapes at an ungodly speed
So what are you going to store your rushes and final edit on? Tape is still the most cost effective if you want to leave it in DV and therefore fully editable.
Agree with you about the 1x capture though!
If the capacity was higher say 3 hours, it would be too easy to bootleg movies by taping at the theater.
.02 worth
Just my
Two words: Random access. Anyone whose ever had to seek from one end of a tape to the other just to go back again will know what I'm talking about. Seek times to anywhere in your movie are now 1second, rather than what could turn into 5-10 minutes.
It may not be the greatest idea in the history of /. (I since though of some better ones), but it makes me laugh that some idiot wasted a mod point on that.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
I still recall my grandpa's first video camera, it was like you describe (except it wasn't wireless): the capture device (the camera itself) was tethered to a VCR. When camcorders first came out, where you could put the tape inside the camera, we were all amazed by this new breakthrough, no more lugging your VCR around to take videos. Of course it was much bulkier than my grandpa's video camera, but the convience of having everything in one box outweighed the extra size of the camcorder. I'm sure having seperate camera and recorder now would be less of a hassle, they would be much smaller, but I'm still not sure it would be desirable to have two seperate parts to keep track of.
I also don't understand how a hard drive is better than a digital tape.
It's generally more flexible; aside from random access -- and associated ideas, like being able to mark key points so you can quickly display them shortly after you've filmed ("I missed that goal! Did you get it on 'tape'?") and then return to filming -- you could use the HD also to store still frames, MP3s, or whatever else you might put on a portable hard drive.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
This method is virtually impossible to get around. If the two media had matched frame rates, a person filming off the screen would have to exactly sync the two recordings -- or every frame filmed on the camcorder would actually show the split frame on the movie screen. A friend of mine from college runs a small film company that exclusively uses Panasonic's new 24 fps miniDV camcorders. A scene from the movie he's working on has a couple in a screening room watching a movie. He wanted the movie they were watching to appear normal in his film. He had to rent a $30,000 projector rig and central control system in order to sync the two -- and even then it took him three takes and over six hours to get it right. It was almost enough for him to give up his artistic purism in favor of 29.98 fps cameras, which don't have as much of that problem (the extra few frames interpolate so that some of them are off, some are on, but your eye/brain makes up for the difference). Syncing speeds would just create a permanent disjunction.
My friend in film has also informed of something even more practical. MiniDV tapes -- like the old mini-SVHS and mini-VHS tapes -- are designed to be interoperable with larger standards, yet small enough to fit inside a regular camcorder. MiniDV interoperates with full-sized DV (which has recording times up to 180 minutes, on a larger casette); same goes for the VHS standards. The time of each cassette is so low because the casette is so small, and designed to work with larger standards. It follows (rather logically) that if a full-size DV cassette holds 180 minutes along X meters, a miniDV cassette should only hold 60 minutes over X/3 meters.
-Shylock0
Questions and comments welcome (just reply). Flames ignored.
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
Don't forget about the VERY proprietary extended play/record modes on the Canon's. Yes, you can store 6 hrs. worth of video on it but Premiere doesn't seem to enjoy it much. Haven't yet tried it with Vegas...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
> Is there a corporate conspiracy to limit recording time of camcorder to about an hour (like DVD-R camcorders)?"
Yes of course there is.
realkiwi
Mpeg like most other video compression schemes uses key frames. Every so many frames it does 1 complete frame that doesn't rely on the previous frames to generate an image. Start the tape and it will give you nothing for a couple of seconds until it hits a key frame then the video starts. Digital cable and DSS television work this way. Ever wonder why it takes more time to change channels than with analog? Thats why.
Batteries aren't always needed.
You can actually take a portable hard drive with you out in the field, plug it into your DV camera via the firewire port and record directly to the drive. No need to import from the camera later. This is good because it saves time, and because you cut the wear and tear on your camera in half.
Unless, of course, you use multiple cameras, which would increase Samsung's sales!
I don't think that the 1hr limit is a huge problem. I did some tests and found that I could do quite well with a 15Min tape, provided it was removable. 1 hr fixed is really quite constraining in comparison. My comparison points here are that I rarely found battery life of 15 mins a problem on the early camcorders, except of course when I ran out of the batteries...
What would be interesting would be the emergence of better quality USB2.0 camera peripherals. It should be possible to make one of those with a full VGA resolution. My ideal system would allow me to carry a recording device the size of an archos on my waist and plug the camera part in.
I know that the really early VHS systems were like this. That format was abandoned when it became possible to put everything in one huge package, but this was done for cost, not for convenience.
Apart from being easier to manage, the separate head format would allow for multiple cameras recording at once to a single source. This would allow me to record presentations using separate cameras pointing to the presenter, whiteboard and the audience and end up with a single synchronized master.
Hopefully systems of this type will start to become available when the planne 80Gb removable drives start appearing. Even if nobody makes one that is packaged it will be pretty easy to make one, just take a shuttle PC and stick a carrying handle onto the top... The higher resolution USB 2.0 cameras will definitely start comming available. All that will be required therefore is the capture software.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
And, thanks to ClearChannel, they all look and sound exactly the same.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
nt
I didn't think of that problem.
The best solution may be to ship a USB dongle with every camcorder, which holds the decryption key for the individual encryption key in the camera. You just plug it into any laptop or specialized wireless recording unit you want to record to.
It's safe, and also "tangible" enough that anyone can understand it.
Not really. Archos came to the same point from the opposite direction (adding a camera to their Hard drive)w _500282. html :)
http://www.archos.com/lang=en/products/pr
and this has been round for a while now.
and has a bigger HD and longer record time.
I think studios are realizing any footage beyond an hour and a half would be best used as filler to boost sales of their DVDs
I think studios are responding to movie theaters who all want shorter movies to increase the number of times a movie can be shown in a night.
archos has had a very similar product on the market for a while now, their archos multimedia jukebox. of course, its much bigger.. 20 gigs.
They include a 1.5Gb drive in order to protect the industry's lucrative tape business.
Think about it, why would you ever buy a tape again when you can record countless hours of a 100Gb drive and then transfer your data to an even larger drive on your PC and keep reusing the drive on the camera??? (this is what's happening today with digital photography)
This is the end of tape as we know it, and the industry is trying to hold on to it for as long as it can, even though it is doomed to disappear in favor of networks and huge drives or solid state media.
My sony digital camera digital8 has a battery that lasts 4 hours. It wasn't very expensive, and it is not that big. (as long as you aren't using the color LCD, and insted use the black and white viewfinder)
I recorded more than half the Trey Anastasio performance at Bonnaroo 2002 and ran out of tape (i had 2 of them allocated for that show) way way way before i ran out of battery life on a single charge.
I guess my main point is that battery life on camcorders is no longer the main constraint on consumer camcorder technology. (untill maybe when they come out with camcorders with 20+gb hard drives in them).
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One good argument for this camcorder that I could see is that it strikes me that it would be significantly more reliable than a tape-based camcorder.
It seems that with every camcorder I have ever seen, the part that always breaks is the door and mechanics for loading/ejecting the tapes. And generally speaking, fewer mechanics = more reliable. This design would eliminate this (IMHO) major source of problems.
And even if the hard drives break down, it strikes me that would be easy to replace and likely user-servicable.
If my prediction turns out to be right, this alone is a good reason to buy these kinds of camcorders.
You sir are a Fsck-tard. MPEG-4 is not magicly going to give to HD Quality (I assume this what you mean by HD resolution). I can convert VHS to 'HD Resolution'. Fact is a hour of video on 1.5 Gigs = a lot of loss. As a point of comparison, a MiniDV tape which is an hour of video is 12 Gigs of data. If you want MPEG-4, get an encoder. Recording in MPEG-4 is about as bright as music studios recording CD masters in MP3.
"Is there a corporate conspiracy to limit recording time of camcorder to about an hour?"
No, this was developed by the same bozos who developed the (allegedly superior) SONY BETAMAX format which lost out to vhs because it only allowed 1 HOUR of recording time...
"Why can't these bozos let us put a 40gig 2.5 IDE drive and let us record continuously for 25+ hours! Is there a corporate conspiracy to limit recording time of camcorder to about an hour (like DVD-R camcorders)?"
Actually, it's probably a battery capacity conspiracy. Damn those Laws of Electrochemistry!
What resolution does it record at? Several people have made incomprehensible posts thus far about it.
The reason Samsung bought it out with a 1.5g harddrive is so they can bring it out with a bigger harddrive next year
Sorry you can't see past 1st base. HD resolutions require a lot of storage space. DIVX compression allows one to store HD resoltions in a small space with excellent quality.
I can see your a purist by your "Recording in MPEG-4 is about as bright as music studios recording CD masters in MP3"
However your a moron. Your HD comes to you VERY compressed... MPEG-2. Can't get it any other way... DOH. And for home use, which is what I was talking about. A little compression would mean shit, if you could play with HD at home.
LOL, ya, with analog signals, when you startwith shit, VHS, you end with SHIT. I don't care what you convert it too.
Ever see why they have problems making IMAX recordings. It's because of the huge camera required for filming. Once again if this was done digitally, which at the moment I don't believe is possible in a portable until. DIVX and or better compression technologys will allow things like this to be possible. Or mabye some new storage medium. And then compression will mean shit. However companys seem to like you owning these magnetic devices that break down.
Basically U Fsck-tard. It's not a fault of the CCD for the video camera (there is plenty of cheap CCDs with enough resolution to do HD). It's the lack of stoage space is why consumers do not have HD video cameras. Tape in your camera isn't going to keep up with the data rates. DIVX and other compression technologys will allow HD for the consumer at home.
:rolleyes: And I hear you complaining... Once again another datarate problem with high resolution video.
But I'm sure you have your HDTV with a direct feed it's not mpeg-2
...Samsung isn't as suit happy as you claim. 'Hacker friendly' has nothing to do with a given companie's attitude...it has everything to do with engineering, however. Look on the net for Samsung DVD player hacks...you'll find several.
As for the capacity...maybe some of the space is for storing movies and some is for camera operation...you really have no idea what 'size' drive it is. You're just guessing, all around.
Give Samsung a bit of time to get another rev. of this camera to market (and for the price to soften)...or give me a couple of days to talk to the boys over in the DV camera division, and I'll let you know all about it...
talk every day...and sometimes every night. I've lost track of the midnight calls on my cell phone from SJ. Believe me, there is no lack of communication.
A large % of the raw HDD's sold in Korea are now Samsung...up a bit over last year (2002 vs 2001). Quality is much better over a few years ago as well.
This is a very simplified version of what goes on in even MPEG2 compression.
..., 20(P), 25(D), 22(P), 23(P), 24(P), 26(F), 30(D), 27(P), 28(P), 29(P), ...
Full frames are stored as a compressed gray scale image in 8x8 blocks, losing certain pixel change frequencies to compress the image.
Then there are delta frames which just store the changes in the image. This could be new background scenery or movement of the original frames pixels, ie for an object moving. By being able to say that a chunk of the picture has simply moved (even by fractions of a pixel) the amount of information for the picture can be drastically reduced.
The third type of frame is a predicted frame. A prediction of what intermediate frames between full frames and a delta frames would look like is used. Any corrections to this predicted frame are stored (ie, slight block movement changes or small corrections to the background).
Of course to produce a media stream with this data, the frames need to be sent slightly out of order. So say for instance we wish to send 1 full frame every second and 25 frames a second and we're going to use 3 predicted frames. Frames 1, 26, 51, etc. would be full frames. 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25, 30, 34, etc. would be delta frames and the rest would be predicted. The stream would then need to be encoded with the full frame first, followed by the delta followed by the predicted frames and then another delta. So the frame sequence would then go 1(F), 5(D), 2(P), 3(P), 4(P), 9(D), 6(P), 7(P), 8(P), 13(D), 10(P),
(F) = full frame
(D) = delta (changes) frame
(P) = predicted frame
This is the scheme used by MPEG2, MPEG4 introduces objects into the coding which can be defined once and placed into any frame. AFAIK MPEG7 goes one step further and allows 3D models of objects to be encoded and placed into a frame this allows the viewer to set any camera angle.
Most of this is from memory so the details may be a little fuzzy.
The downside is the HDD size is 1.5 Gig so you can record video just over an hour! ... Is there a corporate conspiracy to limit recording time of camcorder to about an hour (like DVD-R camcorders)?
it's so that you can't take a recording of a full movie with it at the cinema!
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
Unless this is I-frame only MPEG, I don't know why anyone would prefer it over MJPEG. And there is already at least one other camera that will record to a harddrive. The Cannon XL1s has built in minidv, but it will also record directly to a firewire harddrive. You then just disconnect the firewire HD and connect it to your Mac or PC. Presumably, you would also be able to use firewire networking to keep all 3 connected at once.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
I tend to keep a dozen or so previously recorded tapes in my camcorder bag for reference in the field. Having all my previous recordings on-line and in the camera would save me from lugging about all that tape, and make finding a particular clip easier. (Though some sort of searchable index might be a good idea in such a camera.)
It would also make better use of the available storage. I know that when I get close to the end of one tape and begin to record something new, I'm likely to rip open a new tape just in case the remaining space on the current one won't be enough. That space goes unused, wasted.
Along the same lines, there may be one clip on a tape that I do not want to lose, and so I lock the whole tape against re-recording. But I may care nothing about whatever else is on the tape, and would be more than happy to record over it. With a (large) hard drive solution, I could lock just the one clip, and delete/re-use all the remaining space.
Some people have said something along the lines of: "I don't want to have to copy over 25 hours of footage to my computer!" To those people I say, you aren't looking at this right. Don't think of it as an old tape-based camcorder. Think of it as a camcorder merged with a portable firewire drive. When you want to work with the video, you just hook the camera to your computer and edit. You don't HAVE to copy the files over to you desktop (or laptop)... Edit them in situ.
Anyone arguing that tapes are better would probably have been arguing against hard drives to begin with, back in the days of floppy-only storage. Have a 5.25 floppy, on me...
Nonsanity
And how about you, mschoolbus? Is there a mod-chip for you?
Oh yes, that worked so well for Sony's Betamax!