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A Tapeless Digital Camcorder For Your Pocket

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the record-everything dept.

spullara writes "I've been waiting a long time for a small, tapeless, easy to use digital camcorder. Tapes wear out, they require playback in realtime, and make producing ad hoc movies time consuming. Without these types of recorders you can forget about iVideoPodcasting. I found the Fisher FVD-C1 at an Apple Store last week and it was amazing, but it turns out there is a better one being imported from Japan, the Xacti DMX-C4 thats nearly identical, but better. You can read my review of it here (I have no association with any of these businesses). Wouldn't it be great if one of these devices had WiMAX to upload directly to the internet?"

12 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. 1Gb of storage on SD? by big+ben+bullet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nah.. why can't they just put in a decent 20Gb harddrive (like the iPod)

    That's what i'll keep waiting for.

    1. Re:1Gb of storage on SD? by chocho99 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How about this?

      JVC Everio with 4GB Microdrive. To be released any day now...
      http://www.i4u.com/article2116.html

    2. Re:1Gb of storage on SD? by droleary · · Score: 3, Interesting

      why can't they just put in a decent 20Gb harddrive (like the iPod)

      What I'm waiting for is someone (maybe Apple, maybe not) to put out a widget for connecting an iSight to an iPod. For basic home movies of the kids, something that that should sell quite well if you could package it all together at $599 or so. At the higher end, why not a camcorder that simply used an iPod mini as a "cartridge". It's only 4GB currently, but their form factor makes them a really attractive option. If the regular iPod was good enough to handle LoTR, aren't a few iPod mini (is mini the plural of mini? :-) good enough to handle my budget productions?

  2. Mini-DVD Digicorders are tapeless too by Kerhop · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd rather spend $1000 on a Sony DCR-DVD301 (Google'd info) that records directly to Mini-DVD's.

  3. Samples by DaneelGiskard · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Please put some sample movies / pictures online. Specially showing the optical/digital zoom capacity. And maybe some low light movies to see its performance there?

    I also have a question:
    It got 5.8 times optical zoom and 10 times digital zoom. In video mode the camera only uses 0.3 MP of the available 4 MP (probably a bit more for the image stabilizer?). Anyways, when using digital zoom in video mode, will it simply use the remainder of the MP to do the digital zoom and thus provide a "loss free" digital zoom? Or is it similar to image shooting using digital zoom, where the resulting picture is blurred?

    1. Re:Samples by DaneelGiskard · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Thanks, I've known this sample for some time. A friendly guy over at dpreview.com provided some more samples in the forum (I won't link them directly or he'll probably be mad).

      But what I'm looking for are examples showing the strengths and weaknesses of this camera. Show me the full range of optical and digital zoom and how the picture gets worse with the digital zoom. Show me a movie in low light or artificial light conditions.

      This is the first "review" of this camera which I have encountered and I have been looking for some time. Unfortunately this review isn't very technical or thorough.

      I'd love to get additional user experiences/reviews/... which concentrate on the technical side a bit more...

  4. Fisher Price by Concerned+Onlooker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When I saw Fisher my mind went immediately to Fisher-Price. Yes, completely different, but does anyone else remember that Fisher-Price actually made a video camera at one time? It was called the Pixlevision and recorded to audio cassettes! The quality was poor, but just poor enough to look really cool. As I recall, they didn't stay on the market long.

    --
    http://www.rootstrikers.org/
    1. Re:Fisher Price by tonsofpcs · · Score: 2, Interesting
      The PXL-2000 has a sort of cult following.
      They actually used footage from some of these in some movies:

      Slacker (1991)

      Naja (1997)

      Links:
      The Pixelvision Home Page
      Pixelvision (includes tecnical details)

      --
      Video Production Support
    2. Re:Fisher Price by eclectro · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Unbelievably, Fisher Price also made 110 and 35 mm film cameras. Normally you think of toys that a one year old would pound on and make noises, not a line of cameras.

      That's what was so amazing about the Pixlvision - that it would even make it all the way to market and actually work.

      What I loved about it is how it used a standard audio tape at high speed to produce 5 minutes of video.

      Quite strange (but cool) when you think about it.

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  5. Re:No Thanks... by timpaton · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Somebody needs to...
    invent (or hack) an iPod-like-device to act as a portable hard disk for all these flash-RAM-hungry devices.

    I've thought of it many times for my still camera. Unless I buy lots of (expensive) flash cards, or lug a laptop with me, I can only shoot as many photos as I have room for...as we all know and have dealt with for many years already.

    What I need is a pocket-sized, battery-powered intermediate storage device. When my camera (or voice recorder or tapeless video cam) gets full, I could plug it in to the USB port of my HD tranfer unit (or stick my SD card in the slot, or whatever), hit the "transfer" button; and in as much time as it would take to reload a film camera, have an empty card ready to start shooting again.

    Back in civilisation, the HD tranfer unit could plug in like a regular USB drive...just like a flash card reader...so I can do what I normally would do with my photos/video/etc.

    As an added bonus - now that it's established technology and lots of people carry them anyway - the HD transfer unit could hold a few GB of music (in .ogg format, of course, to keep the /. zealots happy) and have a decoder chip and headphone socket and whatever else these iPod-like devices have.

    For me, being able to download data from my camera would be a digital music player's "killer app".

  6. Resolution by Psychic+Burrito · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My big question ist this: With a 4 Megapixel chip, why do all of these camcorders still output standard PAL/NTSC/VGA quality and do not use the available resolution to its fullest?

    Yes there are two HDTV-MiniDV cameras out now (JVC and Sony), but the JVC has a bad contrast range while the Sony has no real 24p recording (or even 25p would fill the bill).

    When will somebody finally release a HDTV 1920x1080 camera with 24p below $3000? Or is there a way to fool these tapeless camcorder thingies in recording in a higher resolution?

  7. What About Archiving?? by CrazyLegs · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm probably a bit of a Luddite here, but I still like using DV tape, if only for archival purposes. I do a LOT of taping with my Sony DV camera and I do a LOT of editting to create really boring home movies on DVD. What I like about the tape format is that I still a have "raw footage" archive of everything without a lot of management effort. Going to a tapeless camera means that I either have to buy/keep an inventory of SD cards (or whatever) for big $$$ compared to DV tape (I think) OR get into the pain that it is managing disk/optical-based archiving of my raw footage. I just find that, with tapes, I can store them away without worrying too much (yet) about managing them. When the day somes that my DV camera gets replaced by something else, I'll convert the tapes to something else (as I've already done by transferring my old 8mm tapes to DV tape). Flame away....

    --

    CrazyLegs

    "Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.