Rugged Mini-DV Camcorder for the Road?

step asks: "As part of my job, I (and my colleagues) spend weeks at a time on the road, doing science shows for high school students. To review our work, we carry DV camcorders to tape and watch our performances. Unfortunately, all the previous models we've tried haven't lasted more than 12 months on the road (and not from lack of care). When returned for repair we were told that they weren't faulty, just not up to the task. We don't need a full feature camera, just solid reliable recording and playback. In fact, simple is probably better to accommodate the most users. What experience has Slashdot had with camcorders? What's a good model that can handle lots of travel?"

Comments

this is a rugged one....

[bobsalt]

http://www.ev1.pair.com/colorTV/myTK41_1.html

Solid state video recording

[OriginalSpaceMan]

I have been looking for a good DV cam to use for a long time, but I didn't want to use miniDV, I want to use flash ram. Recently Panasonic has come out with a whole line of them that use SD cards, but they're a little pricey, and you can't get much video at DVD quality on one SD card. I don't know about the durability of the hardware, but at least this option would take out all of the mechanics.

Rugged Manly cameras

[PhaxMohdem]

Unfortunately I do not know of very many rugged mini dv cameras. The high quality camera designed for being beaten up are generally Betacam or DVCAM professional cameras for News stations and such. Its unfortunate that no company has come out with a "Toughbook" camera, but nice compromises can be found. Naturally the rule with consumer and prosumer camcorders is the bigger they are the harder they fall and more stuff they break. I personally own a JVC HD1U camcorder that is great, its has a steel handle on top so you can lug it around much easier and safer. I've had problems with cheap consumer Sony Cameras going bad after a jolt or two. My advice, go to Best Buy or whatever flavor of electronics megamart you prefer, and bang on some of the display models for a while. You'll get some funny looks, but that will be the best way to see what cameras are up to the task.

Panasonic

[ianmalcm]

I highly recommend the Panasonic PV-GS150. We used it to stream LiningUpTV for 6 weeks on the steet of Hollywood Blvd, 24 hours a day. That camera is a workhorse - it survived torrential rainstorms, bleeding hot sun, drunk transients throwing it on the ground, and other insane hazards. The GS150 ran for 1000 hours straight, and is still working great.

It can be had on Ebay for $600 package deals.

Try asking people that really abuse their kit..

[Anonymous Coward]

Most skydivers and other extreme sports types have cameras these days. I have a (now old) Sony PC9 which I have helmet mounted (oo-err) and has survived quite a lot of jumping, skidoo riding, heli-boarding (-30c) and general snow boarding.

It has finally started giving me grief however, not at the tape transport, but the auto-focus mechanism (which sometimes sticks).

My advice would be to post a polite note on a skydiving forum and find out what people there recommend.

Good luck.

Inexpensive redundancy.

[OgGreeb]

Given the reasonable price of Mini-DV camcorders, you'd be better off purchasing two or three identical units and rotate their use. If something fails you can pull out the backup. You might also find it useful to record your work from different positions and edit them together.

Since you asked, I've had good experience with a hand-sized Sony DCR-PC9 -- it's been beat up but remains completely functional and reliable.

Re:Sony PD-150

[tomhudson]

Just look for what's the most stolen. If it can't handle "falling off the back of a truck" its certainly not going to last.

Don't do this on Slashdot

[NeedleSurfer]

No offense meant to anyone, it's just that Slashdot is the worst place I've been for audio visual advices. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the only professionnal here but we are few and our words often get lost in the sea of audio and video wannabees that speaks well and hence look like the real deal.

I've heard some of the worst misconception about audio and video on these forum spoken as if they were the mother of all truth and moderated +5 something because of it.

Anyways, In my experience the Panasonic AG-DVX100AP is a very good camera for the price and it's very sturdy, we are using it for coorporate events and music shows where we need to do a lot of travelling shots or if we need to move a lot between shots since it's light, hold pretty well and has a very good picture, the quality is surprising, then again it's a 3CCD camera if I remember well so it does help. As for extra sturdiness use a road case with internal padding, you know those case that are reinforced with metal, are usually black and are kept close with those cool twist-latches, they are expensive but they are also worth it.

Re:Don't do this on Slashdot

[Karma Farmer]

No offense meant to anyone, it's just that Slashdot is the worst place I've been for audio visual advices.

That's just because you know a little bit about audio-visual. I assure you -- if you knew a bit about other tech subjects, you'd quickly realize that Slashdot is the worst place for any kind of advice.

Cheap, Cheap, Cheap

[pagercam2]

Don't spend large amounts of money, get the cheapest one you can find with reasonable features and quality and just allow for the fact that it needs to get replaced every so often. I'd much rather have to buy 10 $200 recorders instead of one $2000 which might get stolen misplaced or break in a fall. Get an expensive pair of sunglasses and you'll lose them in a week, get a cheap pair and you can't throw them away!!!

Try this.. I am using it for my own documentary...

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

The Panasonic line.

I am embarking on my two year bike journey/documentary. You can see it at worldcyclist.com

What I am using is a 3 CCD chip (A MUST!) Panasonic PV-GS120 (the 150 has replaced it). It has a few drawbacks, no deal breakers though. It has a cinema-like mode, not true 16:9 shooting. It does have a stereo mike input which, with 2 Radio Shack lavaliere mono mikes and a stereo y connector, works pretty good for interview subjects.

Before buying any Mini-DV get the manual from Amazon, you can download them usually.

Before you know it people will beat down a path to your door if you have a good idea. I have a proven Emmy winning director assembling mine, the book already optioned and a sponsorship from Sugoi apparel

I also smoked for 20 years, am slightly overweight and am 39 years old. No one is more surprised than me.

Real hard disk drive based camcorders coming soon.

[EasyT]

Those 4GB Everios mentioned in the parent post use Microdrives, which are little miniature hard drive platters small enough to fit in a CompactFlash form factor.

For those that like the sound of this line of cameras but would like to see more storage capacity, JVC has apparently announced they're going to start making Everios using 20GB and 30GB hard drives. This new line will supposedly support Mac editing in iMovie for those who want that sort of thing (older models did not offer this). I've attached a the link to the JVC press release for those who want to read up about it.

Reference URL:
http://www.jvc.com/press/index.jsp?item=461&pageID =1

Disclaimer: Please note that I do not own an Everio, nor any other camcorder, so I am not in a position to make any authorative recommendations or comparisons, let alone attest to their durability. My opinions are void where prohibited.

Re:Hard-drive based camcorder?

[TheRaven64]

No, DV footage is compressed, basically MJPEG. What DV does not do is interframe compression. This is not to reduce CPU usage, which is a minor problem (after all, MPEG-1/2/4 hardware encoder chips are relatively cheap). This is done because it is a bitch to edit interframe compressed footage. If you want to cut somewhere other than a keyframe, you need to at the very least add a pair of keyframes, which causes a bandwidth spike in the result. Then, when you encode to something else for deployment you have to insert keyframes in different places, and you end up with a huge drop in quality.

Oh, and MPEG-1/2 also has some additional design constraints that were removed for MPEG-4, such as the requirement to be able to easily skip one frame backwards (MPEG-4 was designed for streaming, MPEG-1/2 were designed for local playback), so MPEG-4 doesn't encode reverse-interframe information. If you want to jump one frame backwards in MPEG-4, you jump back to the previous keyframe (often 100 or so frames back), and then calculate the deltas for every single intermediate frame. Try editing that...

As to the link you posted, I am very suspicious of a chart which groups Sorenson, MPEG-4 and Cinepak in the same column...