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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)?"
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.
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?
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
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.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
If anything you'd get slapped with DMCA suit if you "upgrade" the drive.
You would not be circumventing a copyright protection mechanism and hence DMCA wouldn't be involved, unless they have some sort of protection mechanism built-in to prevent HDD upgrades.