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JVC First With A HD-Based Consumer Camcorder
kamesh writes "David Pogue writes in nytimes.com 'The days of storing computer data, music collections and Hollywood movies on spools of tape will soon be completely gone....JVC is the first company to see that particular light. Next month, it will release its new Everio GZ-MC100 and GZ-MC200.' Are tape based camcorders destined to die soon?"
I'm hoping that tape-based backup units will disappear and be replaced with something faster, cheaper, and more reliable.
Now on top of everything else I have to deal with I now get to defragment my camcorder.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
It seems silly beyond belief that these JVC camcorders don't support Macs. Something like this would have wide appeal to the Final Cut Pro crowd...
:)
hmm... someone need to make a mac friendly one of these with
an iPod dock to use iPod mini's as the removable hard drive
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Awesome, tapes are a hassle. It's a lot easier t use digital memory. Hope it's not too expensive (although I know it will be).
What happens when you fill that up and you need to create more video? With tapes you can have a couple in your bag for those long recording sessions but with the hard drive once its full are you out of luck? >> sorry I didnt read the article though NYTimes Reg. Req.
http://seanism.com/
The cube style form factor is pretty cool... I never liked the vertical style.
The hard drive is too small for me.
If I go on a trip, I want to minimize the amount of stuff I have to lug around... and when I'm on vacation, I don't want to carry a laptop around just so I can dump my footage.
Gimme at least 120gb and then I'll start being interested.
As is so common in mainstream tech writing, the article completely misses the point. They claim that because the camera can use microdrives (compact flash based hard drives) that it is somehow comparable to the ipod. I don't usually consider 4gb equivalent to 40 gb , 60 gb, or whatever the ipod (and other high cap music players) max capacity is now.
To me, the real advance would be a camcorder that used a 60gb (or larger) hard drive like the ipod and directly recorded mpeg2 or mpeg 4. I don't need the thing to be microscopic, it has to be big enough to hold and have a decent battery life. Obviously it would need firewire of USB2.
Does anyone have a camera like that coming?
I absolutely hate tape and optical finally a company gets a clue and goes with something better, and possibly cheaper.
Now let's hope they were thoughtfull enough to leave consumer access to the HD so we can dump the standard drive and super size it with something better.
- is this a record ?
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
This is impressive, its also a 2MP camera as well. It can record video to CF (high speed), SD and microdrive. Damn, I want 10GB microdrives... 2+hrs in 8.5mbit/s MPEG2. Its a shame its not a HD-based HiDef camera... I'm sure it wont be too far away.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
http://www.google.com/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Ftech2. nytimes.com%2F2004%2F11%2F25%2Ftechnology%2Fcircui ts%2F25stat.html&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 &client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:offici a/
http://seanism.com/
The problem with a harddrive based solution is that most people want replaceable media in a film (as well as photo) cameras.
Unloading the drive to free up space just isn't good enough. Not everyone carries a notebook around and I know I'd hate to loose my previous work just because something interesting happend just now and the disk is full.
But with easily replacable standard disks - sure thing!
Oh No!
HD = Hard Drive
HD = High Definition
Confusion in future Slashdot articles = imminent
I gotta keep complaining about how much JVC just doesn't get it. I've been waiting forever for a HD camcorder, but this thing is a dog. Why would anyone want to edit video on a camcorder? The camcorder should concentrate on being a camcorder and leave the editing up to laptops. Keep it simple and elegant and eliminate all of the little thumb buttons and crazy menus within menus within menus that makes most digital camcorders and cameras such a drag to use.
And no viewfinder! What are you going to do on a sunny day when the LCD is all washed out... shoot in a random direction?
For over a grand, I'd expect more thought put into how a camcorder is actually USED.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
"Are Tape-based camcorders going to die out soon"
I dont think so.
Hard drive based have a disadvantage as there is no way to increase the offered storage space( Though 300 mins of video in this particular product seems pretty good , but still if going for a vacation I may rather carry some extra tapes( which are quite cheap) than keep transferring the video to a computer.
Also hard disc based camcorders are known to be more fragile than tape based( as well as cd-rom and flash memory based)
How is JVC first when i spotted my eye on this 4MP Sanyo several months ago! (it was RELEASED on september 10th!)
I'm always suspicious of companies that claim 'first' status. Are there any other companies which beat JVC out the door on this?
The article is slashdotted, so I can't read it. I will however say that I hope to see camcorders moving in the way of things like those handy USB thumb drives. 512mb, providing it records to an AVI file (gotta love the gorgeous compression), can record quite a bit of video/audio. I think we'll have to wait a bit though before prices are low enough. I REALLY hope this article wasn't an attempt to get the whole minidisc thing going again. That would make me cry.
Anyways, I repeat, I COULD NOT read the article, so this is all just random thoughts. (Oh how the moderation will burn)
Before you mod me funny, think, perhaps I was insightfully funny?
As is so common in mainstream tech writing, the article completely misses the point. They claim that because the camera can use microdrives (compact flash based hard drives) that it is somehow comparable to the ipod. I don't usually consider 4gb equivalent to 40 gb , 60 gb, or whatever the ipod (and other high cap music players) max capacity is now.
it's comparable to the ipod mini
To me, the real advance would be a camcorder that used a 60gb (or larger) hard drive like the ipod and directly recorded mpeg2 or mpeg 4. I don't need the thing to be microscopic, it has to be big enough to hold and have a decent battery life. Obviously it would need firewire of USB2.
gee... the author says the same thing... right at the top of the article he talks about how much video a 60 GB iPod could hold.
It's amazing that you can conclude the article misses the point, when you clearly haven't read it.
JVC.COM is slashdotted!
You know, IPod became very successful with harddrives, how is this different? Except that the tape was cheap storage media (relatively cheap) so this may not become as ubiquitous as HDs in MP3 players, I mean people still use VHS tapes (I haven't used them in about 2 years though.)
I think tape is still good for backup storage and it is cheap, and it is easy to use and reuse, so it is not going away yet.
You can't handle the truth.
Uh. I hope not.
Tapes are the most reliable and versatile medium for massive data storage and even the tapes can't keep up with the demand.
On my home computer, I've got 500+ MB worth of results from simulations that I would like to back up but there's just no affordable way to do that.
And no, having the data on RAID-arrays or copying it onto spare hard drives is not "backing the data up".
The owls are not what they seem
You can get a massive HDD for 40-60 quid, a "Sony" (or other vendor) tape will probably cost you 10-20 which you will probably have 3 of, but many will have more. I think many manufacturers will look at this and notice that they will make more money out of selling tapes.
Between DRM and Wireless "Censor Chips"(*), the old tape may be of more utility for some time to come!
* - A feature where wireless signals from the Police, Army, etc. will tell advanced Camcorders to stop recording! It will be touted as a way to increase privacy, but can also ensure governments protect their dirty work from being recorded!
If anything I would think that tape based recorders will die... very slowly. There are certain advantages to each storage medium, I would hate to drop a camcorder with a hard drive in it (you don't want to drop one period) but with a harddrive you run the risk of loosing everything, the data AND the equipment, just something that comes to mind.
The hard drive needs to be removable like a cartridge with a FireWire 800 port on it so the content can be downloaded into a computer. With HD sizes getting smaller and smaller (I recently purchased a 40GB Apple iPod), it wouldn't be too far of a stretch to simply be able to swipe-in and out hard drives as they are needed. Having a removabnle cartridge hard drive also frees the camera to still record instead of downloading into iMovie as I have done with my friend's digital camcorder. Now, ALL of the camcorder manufacturers should get together and standardize on the physical size of the cartridge hard drives so they are not vendor specific; these would be analogous to 35mm film canisters.
I would actually wait to buy one until there are HDTV camcorders around for a reasonable price.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
DO NOT let George Lucas NEAR the things.
I don't know if all tape based camcorders are doomed to die. Tape still has a lot of life left in it, just look at your local news production facility. Chances are very good that they are using a Betamax camcorder for on the spot feeds, etc.
With that being said, however, I am going to be buying an http://www.aiptek.com/ aiptek digital camera for my wife for Christmas. The DV3100 model is just under $100 US, uses Compact Flash (CF) which our other Kodak camera uses, and can record up to 180 minutes of video and audio on a 512 MB CF.
Ok, so it's no MPEG2 CCD wonder wiz. It's recording directly to MPEG4, in a size that is half of TV, I think. 320 x something if memory serves, and it isn't even a full 30 (ok 29.97) frames per second. But we were blessed last year with a new daughter and she keeps saying "Oh, I wish we had a camcorder ..." etc, etc. So it will get the job done.
The fact that you can buy a camera that is also a camcorder, regardless of quality, that can capture a full two hours worth of video and sound, direct to CF which on my Mac and a USB dongle shows up as a hard drive, so I can manipulate the CF files directly, no fuss, no muss. Can a tape format that doesn't allow fast and easy movement between formats, devices, TV's, cameras, computers, etc, ad nauseam really be viable for much longer?
My parents own a really nice JVC VHS-C camcorder. Does all sorts of things. I think you can buy the same model right now for just under $300 US. But I don't even own a VCR, everything in my house is digital. DVD, House wired for Ethernet, computers in every room, all CD's bought instantly get put into iTunes, most new music being bought is from iTMS (iTunes Music Store) and I'm right now working out a way to put all my families movies into a MythTV style server repository along with a Microsoft-esque Digital TV Set top box in each room so we can "On Demand" every movie we own.
"Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
I have video tapes that are 10-15 years old and many have a white mildew on them, most are otherwise bad now, they will ruin the heads of any VCR you put them in. Gone forever.
However, I have old full height hard drives from the 5160 days that I can fire up right now and pull data from 20 years later.
CD and DVD has shown's it's miserable failings, I've lost LOTS of CD's that were only a few years old.
It takes a damn long time for the platters in a hermetically sealed HDD to go bad when it's sitting unused in storage.
If they can get them smaller, cheaper and more reliable, I'm on board with this. I just hate to let go of the old ways. I guess some of us suffer the Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to what we've always used and have all our eggs in..
Wow, tricky one! I can see dee problem. Can anyone see dee solution. Is the total less than 700 MB?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
A) These camcorders use 4GB microdrives to shoot MPEG-2 video. The only reason they're doing this is for the size. MPEG-2 is inferior to DV for almost every scenario.
B) Having tapes makes for a nice method of archiving video. Blank DV tapes can run less than $5 a pop in reasonable bulk (six packs or so), which is a pretty small price to pay for a fairly inexpensive archiving system. Granted, it's not super durable compared to data archival tapes, but it's certainly fine for inexpensive storage. I shoot my video on DV, edit, then dump back out to another two DV Tapes with the finished product (always have two copies...).
C) JVC, while not lousy, frequently loses in comparisons with Canon or Sony DV Cams. I won't be surprised if that's the same with this camera.
It's not the HDDs are bad ideas, but JVC is using this unit to market based on the size advantage, and nothing else. I don't doubt that there's a definite market for those people who just want a tiny camcorder, but I don't think that this camcorder in any way marks the beginning of the end for tape-based camcorders.
Ha ha ha! Do you wait for brand new Slashdot articles to be posted and then immediately start reloading its links over and over as fast as you can too?
Ok. I deserved that.
The owls are not what they seem
Does anybody know how the power requirements of running a hard drive compare to those of running a tape spooler?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
READ - THE - ARTICLE
...and as always the moderators are too busy smoking crack to read the article either.
or the other 100 posts saying the same thing as yours, with their ensuing "READ - THE - ARTICLE" replies.
To all the pro-sumer video camera manufacturers out there, here is how to make a good hard disk based camera:
Leave the hard disk out.
That's right no hard disk in the camera unit. Instead either tether it with a heavy-duty, reinforced, industrial-grade firewire link. Or better yet, use something like wi-fi, or the new faster bluetooth or even your own proprietary scheme, to record wirelessly.
That opens up all kinds of flexibility and convenience. If the shooting is all going to be in a confined space of say, 30' then the disk can just sit on a table in the same room. Same thing if you are shooting from a car, just sit in on the floor by itself. If you need to move around a lot and cover a lot of ground, you can clip it to your belt or stick in in a backpack, or even designate your an assistant to carry it for the camera-man.
Also, by decoupling it from the camera we can use those new, big honking 400GB disks (or next years big honking 600GB disks) without having to worry that the camera now ways 5 lbs for disk and the battery to power it.
Next up - wireless viewfinders. Come out with a pair of glasses where one lens is actually a display that shows what the camera is recording - you will no longer need to hold the camera up to your face to know what you are shooting. You could even film around corners without much trouble. The great thing about this is that the same exact datastream going to the hard disk could be used by the wireless viewfinder too, so no extra work engineering work on the camera side to add this functionality.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
When you're talking about video "HD" is generally taken to mean "high definition" not "hard disk."
You should have spelled it out in your headline or at least used the term "hard disk" in your story.
Insert witty sig here.
From TFA:
A four-gigabyte MicroDrive comes in the box and holds one hour of best-quality video. Another four-gigabyte card will set you back about $200. Of course, you can also buy smaller, less expensive MicroDrives.
As far as cost per byte, micro drives are one of the most expensive hard drives availible. One hour of video is fine for a soccer game or birthday party, but what about that that week-long vacation? Even after deleting unwanted scenes, it's easy to amass more than an hour's worth of footage. I don't use tapes for long-term storage anyway; we have several tapes that, after recording, are backed up onto hard drive and burned to DVD. $200 per hour of video when you are without easy access to a computer for several days can get prohibitive quickly. Now, stick a 60 or 80MB 2.5" drive in there, and we'll talk...
If anyone reads the article they'll know that this is NOT a hard drive based camcorder. It is a flash-based camcorder. Almost every digital camcorder you can buy now has been based on tape (digital-8 or mini-dv) -AND- flash media. Sony Camcorders do Memory Stick(of course), Canon's do SD cards, other manufacturers also use SD and CF. This camera simply uses ONLY flash memory. The fact that it comes with a CF-TypeII Microdrive doesn't make it hard drive based, any my than my Canon Powershot S50 digital camera is a "groundbreaking hard drive based digital camera". This is as hard-drive based as any other device that will accept Type-II compact flash. Not that impressive, all they did was simply REMOVE the tape assembly and include a 4GB MicroDrive (which is a good idea, but nothing earth-shattering)
This sig intentionally left blank.
If you want reliable archiving for more than 3-5 years, digital ain't going to do it. CDs don't last. DVDs don't last. Until a storage medium is developed that will last 100 years or more like old photographs and documents, forget it.
we will end no whine before its time
in 2003.G adget/Camcorder_DigitalGadget_ITCAM_7.htmG adget/Camcorder_DigitalGadget_ITCAM_9.htm
http://www.samsung.com/Products/Camcorder/Digital
http://www.samsung.com/Products/Camcorder/Digital
i don't think i've ever seen them on sale, so they might not be for the "consumer", per se, but they've been out there.
While this is certainly something different, I think its limitations show the usefulness of tape. I don't think it's the future of camcorders.
This uses a 4 GB hard drive. A MiniDV tape holds about 25 GB. As such, this hard drive based camcorder needs to use lossy compression in order to give it a good recording time. While the picture quality won't be that bad, it's not going to be as good as raw video that MiniDV stores.
In addition, once this drive is filled up you're kind of out of luck unless you have a PC to upload the data to or you purchase additional microdrive cards, which are expensive. With the MiniDV camcorder you simply put a new tape in, and MiniDV tapes are cheap so most people usually carry around packs of spare tapes. For $10 I can get a couple of tapes. You're not going to get a 4 GB microdrive for $10, and certainly not a 25 GB microdrive.
So while this camcorder is viewed as something neat because it is different, it's not exactly revolutionary since it's of limited use. I think if hard drive based camcorders were the norm and someone came out with a new design that used cheap tapes which held 6x the data, such a design would be viewed as revolutionary.
At about 5 megabytes a second, dumping 4GB of data off it will take about 13 minutes... so dumping to laptop won't exactly be ideal if you need to keep going... you're going to have to buy a spare Microdrive if you don't want to be stuck idle while offloading data.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
I read this review a few days ago and was impressed by David Pogue's video review http://www.nytimes.com/videopages/2004/11/25/techn ology/20041125_STAT_VIDEO.htmlof the camcorder, shot and edited on his way to Ohio to visit his parents. The lines between old line print media and electronic journalism continue to blur - though in a good way here.
This certainly looks to be a begining of a trend...wait till Apple comes up with a hip looking camcorder and HD based camcorders will become the trend...remember iPOD.
or does the commercial on the link show a guy with gargantuan hand?
Disclaimer: I work in television. Based on my experience wtih hard drive recorders, they're horribly buggy. They crash all the time, sometimes freeze in the middle of playback, especially when the hard drive starts getting full. For something mission critical, I'd rather record to tape.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
Why would anyone want to edit video on a camcorder? The camcorder should concentrate on being a camcorder and leave the editing up to laptops.
Like it or not, in-camera editing is an important, standard capability, without which videographers would oftentimes find themselves at a loss. It may not be the ideal way to edit film and video, but the results can be superb.
Get an old video recorder, the older the better. You're looking for a seperate motor for each drive, top loader if possible, with a metal deck. Remove the top cover.
Glue two cotton makeup removing pads (the kind *without* moisturiser, just dry cotton pads) or something similar to two pieces of wood. Arrange them so they squeeze the tape gently.
Wind the tape backwards and forwards a few times, and the gunk will get wiped off the tape. If they are really bad, change the pads between each pass. Periodically hoover the mouldy gunk out of the machine.
If there is something really stubborn on the tape, soak two pads in alcohol, arrange a big long drying loop (you may need to remove the head block) with a fan to blow dry it, then two "dry" pads for a final wipe.
This works, and works well.
I haven't RTFA yet (JVC is politely yet firmly denying any connection attempts) but this really seems like a big woofing dog IMHO.
I do a lot of videostuff (documentaries, inane little comedies, etc etc) on a semi-professional basis and this really has no appeal to me.
First off, tapes are very robust. They can take a lot of damage and still be usable. Harddrives are not very robust (at least not in the same way as tape). Also, a camera without replacable storage is in my opinion worthless, especially when it's a fragile harddrive. Tapes are also very cheap (I buy my DV-tapes for about US$2 a piece)
Tape-based DV-cameras are very flexible, and this nonsense about JVC putting editing functions on this camera seems completely pointless to me. Editing should be done on an editing-platform (Mac/Final Cut, or whatever floats your boat). Editing capabilites on a camera is a "feature" that no one will use, since it's likely to be crap.
I don't want a camera that I have to be worried about breaking the storage in. I most assuredly need a camera with replacable storage, since when I'm off shooting a documentary I have no idea as to how much space/tape it will use. Having to limit myself to whatever JVC feels is the norm is completely pointless.
This whole thing seems to me to be a case of "can we make a harddrive-based camcorder? YEAH! is it of any use? NO, but lets do it anyway because there's always morons who want some new toy!"
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
An Ipod has the space to store more than enough mp3's. It usually takes people months (or even years, or never) to fill up its hard drive with mp3's.
The same amount of space for video on the other hand isn't enough. You can fill it up in a couple of hours, or even less if you set the resolution to the highest setting (to compete with MiniDV quality).
Imagine going on a vacation and having to keep buying new microdrives to shoot more video. On my vacation to Europe I filled up 4 miniDV tapes. It was easy to swap tapes on a ski lift. It wouldn't have been as easy, inexpensive, or had as good video quality if I was using this hard drive based camcorder.
PS- The Mpeg compression this uses is just like the MicroMV camcorders from Sony. People that have used them say they don't approach the video quality of MiniDV camcorders, they're closer to 8mm video quality.
And how is this offtopic?
Stupid moderation system.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
You make an excellent point. This camcorder will store video with "DVD quality" which means MPEG-2, MPEG-4 or a similar format. That is essentially un-editable, making the camcorder "useless" for anything but the point-and-shooters. For the camcorder to be useful it needs removable 25G storage. You can store about 1 hour of video in 25G. The most useful format for such storage is still tape. I can take 10 of the on my sailboat or into the jungle and not worry (much).
Just one minor correction to your post, the digital video stored on DV tapes (Mini-DV) is not in raw format. It is compressed 5:1, but nowhere near as much as MPEG-2/4. This makes it possible to do decent editing of the video.
I read the article and it's a fairly good review of new technology that suggests that one could edit out the bad takes to free up hard disk space. Nonetheless, one still has to dump the contents of the drie to a pee cee to edit with the material.
/. HD to me means high definition.
Pogue writes that it will not work with Apple's Final Cut Pro or iMovie and that the software that it is sold with (for pee cees only) is really awful. One has to transfer really poorly-named files from the mini-drive. They're poorly-named because they are not distinguishable from other files on the drive that contain no video and because they are in folders that are similarly, poorly named.
One might assume that JVC will improve their software eventually but only if the cameras they're selling take off.
But I have a problem with the title of the article on
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Even the editors can't be bothered to RTFA nowadays.
These cameras aren't HD.
In fact their quality is lower than that of standard MiniDV camcorders.
DV video is captured at 720x480 (interlaced or progressive depending on the camera, only the high-end ones are progressive) using a variant of Motion JPEG. The compression is pretty light, so the quality is high. DV video from a good camera (good optics and CCD) is slightly better than DVD quality.
This camera records DVD-quality/bitrate MPEG-2 (more compressed than DV) and its tiny optics dictate even lower quality no matter what the compression technique is. DVD is NOT HD.
JVC DOES have actual HD-capable cameras, but the cameras linked to are not them, and they are best described as "prosumer", a term used often in photography circles to describe equipment that is WAY too expensive for your average consumer, but not nearly as expensive as the true professional stuff. (The JVC HD cameras cost a few thousand dollars each, and use tapes as their media.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
FAT is understood by all common platforms. EXT3 and RieserFS are more limited.
At least with tape the courts pretty well universally accept the premise that what you see on the tape was what the camcorder actually recorded. But digital media is too easily tampered with, and could raise reasonable doubt as to the veracity of what it is reporting in a courtroom.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Yes, DV is also a compressed format, although it uses FAR less compression than MPEG does.
Most importantly is that it does not do difference frame encoding, each frame is compressed completely independently of all others. DV is basically a Motion JPEG variant. Not the most efficient compression algorithm, but good if you need to edit your video since you can split the video at any frame. (As opposed to MPEG, which requires you to recompress the video if you want to split anywhere other than a keyframe.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Something called an NSIS DV5 is available, I have seen them advertised in the U.K.. CompactFlash is used to store MPEG-4s.
Hmm...I am wondering why we have computers based on HD instead of old tape based Spectrum storage system. Also, why did tape based music die?
Part of the reason for tape is that you can have as much storage as you like. For MiniDV, I can literally carry a day's worth of tape in my pockets. Also you can get the footage back faster. As soon as the camera man is done shooting a tape, you give it to someone else that takes it to the editing guys who dump it to computers.
I'm sure that as small HD's get more storage space it'll become popular for home video users that just want to shoot a little footage, but it's not going anywhere any time soon.
Score:-1, Offtopic
damn! somebody hit CTRL+C!!!!
So i get to record my video from my micro camera onto a small 4gb microdrive, in mpeg 2.
I was hoping more for a AG-DVX 100 3ccd, 24p camera that would accept some form of firewire hard drive to dump video onto, in DV Stream format.
Wait, you can already do that.
This is just a DVD-R camera with microdrives instead of mini dvd-rs. Its small and nifty, and I would carry it with me to shoot quick shots, but I'm going to stick with my DVX 100 for my professional shoots.
I was just given a VHS-C camcorder, and frankly I don't know what to do with it. Since everybody hates being videotaped, I can't bring it to any kind of social event. Vacation videos are inane, so as far as I can tell, it have only three uses:
Now, if you don't want to do any of those things, why then hell would you want a camcorder?
It took me a few seconds to figure out the article was talking about the recording mechanism and not the video quality.
HD = High Definition, as in 1080i or 720p HDTV.
HDD = Hard Disk Drive.
When talking about a video camera there should be a clear distinction.
I can't understand why companies that make digital product like this don't post samples so we can see the quality. Even 10-second video clips would be enough to see what the camera electronics and optics can do. A few photo samples would be a good idea too. They have a download section on their web page, but all it has is a brochure in PDF. WTF? Is it so hard to transfer the images and video that their own marketing people can't figure it out?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
why is this preferable to optical media (DVD, etc.), using technology which is less vulnerable to the shocks of field-usage?
Recording is a basically sequential activity, and the random-access capability of optical technology is more than adequate for limited use of editing and playback which are done inside a handheld device.
I can see HD camcorders catching on only if the memory is removable. That way, you could switch between multiple hard drives (think hot-swappable drive bays on 1" drives or something).
Tape may be a big hassle in many ways, but at least it provides theoretically unlimited storage? A tape fills up? Just pop in a new one! However, if you have a fixed HD, even if it can store many hours of video, eventually you will max out the capacity. There always needs to be room to upgrade the storage.
Think about it: you don't see decent-quality digital still cameras with embedded memory only do you? Even if you embedded 512MB or 1gig into a digital still cam, *somebody* would still eventually hit that limit. Therefore, having a CompactFlash (or whatever) slot allows for future expansion. I can't see a video camera lacking similar capabilities attaining any level of success.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
USB drives are cheaper per gig than low end tape media. (the media alone!). High end tape backup is more economical with the media but the drives are very expensive. For example, you need to use 15 SDLT tapes in a single SDLT drive to break even with USB drives. That's *manual* tape loading. I scanned Pricewatch. The best I could come up with for a stuffed SDLT autoloader was $3/gigabyte. The drive itself was near $10k.
I used to be an advocate of tape backup, but I just can't justify it anymore.
I can only put an hour of recording on it? no thanks.
Plus I can gte(just did, in fact) a decent camcorder for 199.99. When you can get these for 199, then analog might be in trouble.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No Firewire, no Mac support...
Bad JVC no banana for you!!
Wake me when Canon has one that takes CF and can shoot 720p.. (Sony proprietary Memory schtick need not apply...)
PS: This is the answer to the question "How do we get non-DV-standard high-def into camcorders?" Instead of hacking the tape storage format, you just store large random access files on fast memory. This is actually super cool, but I'll hold off for a non-asshat implementation first..
If I can't use it with Linux then what is the point of buying it? I have a (somewhat modest) production facility where we could use upwards of 50 units like this. But with no Linux support, I will have to find another camera (perhaps from another company) that *does* support my operating system of choice. My dollars will go to that other company.
The first market entrant to equip these with 2.5" or 1.8" laptop drives (at 20-100G) in USB caddies is going to crunch JVC right out of the market.
Truly, one has to wonder at the product managerment drones who plop (should I say poop?) these things out. MicroDrives are evidently closest in size and appearance to Memory Cards, so use MicroDrives... even though these camcorders are HUGE, and a small media format (and capacity) doesn't make that much sense.
Apple, where are you? Take the average consumer at Best Buy, and a piddly 4GB JVC 'corder for $499 sitting next to a 60GB iPod (or Sony, or TEAC or whomever) camcorder for $399. Any choice there?
I don't think so. Of course, if I ran JVC, I'd force all product managers to read Slashdot.
Microdrives are notoriously unreliable and somewhat expensive, i'd rather just use tape. In fact, for the price of a single 4gb microdrive you can get too many tapes. It also uses compressed video, whereas tape is a higher quality video.
Humorous as the retro image is, that's actually a reasonable thought -- give us a camcorder that does *both* HD and tape, can optionally record directly to either one, AND can dump from one to the other as needed.
That would let you make cheap backups on the road or offload your video whenever you ran out of HD space (just pick up a few $4 minitapes anywhere), or copy video from an existing tape, etc.
Any of the knowledgeable folk in the DV/MPEG discussion above have technical objections or feasibility comments?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Dude, it uses compact flash. If the Mac can't read compact flash or USB storage devices, you've got bigger problems.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Microdrives cannot store 60GB of data. You might be thinking of other kinds of drives, but not Microdrives.
The 60GB drive in the Ipod Photo that you are referring to is a 1.8" drive which is almost twice as large as the Microdrive, which is 1". The largest capacity of Microdrive is currently 4 GB.
Send them as attachments to your gmail account. :-D
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
JVC forgot to notice that MPEG-2 is horribly inefficient at storing video. MPEG-4 support would be better and really easy to add, at that.
...and in prolly the best/fastest way. Take out the CF card and put in a Firewire CF card reader. it mounts on the OS X desktop like any normal CF card would, and you simply drag the files off of it. no drivers, no software, and it IS compatible with FCP and iMovie - it's a simple MPEG file. I bet the media could be copied from the CF card once mounted to the HD very quickly - I do that now with a 4GB CF card (Digital Rebel) and it screams. why mess with ANY cabling, if on a Mac, it's literally that easy(TM).
something to think about.
For pro and semi-pro work for a while now. This might be useful for consumers, but it's still a long way from the prosumer features and quality I want. When they come out with a XL-2 level camera with removable drives I'll bite.
I live in Hong Kong, and Sony've had DVD-based camcorders for sale here for about six months now...
For over a grand, I'd expect more thought put into how a camcorder is actually USED.
How about image stabilization? They could put in a metal disk and it would spin. I wonder if they could think of any secondary use for it as well.
Of course the camera would tend to want to roll a bit when you want it to tilt.
It's long been known that investment in video capture interfaces has no future. Camcorders eventually are going to be accessed from our workstations like a regular filesystem. The whole idea of logging clips, deck control, serial digital interfaces, and the millions of dollars invested in these systems is going to be replaced by ethernet and network filesystems.