There is a new PANASONIC PVDV952 on the market which goes around $1400. I havent seen or used it, but its features looks decent. You could also buy a second-hand, as it mostly turns out to be good trade on DV technology. A used VX1000 will teach you to make a movie, and if you happen to make something worth broadcasting with it, the quality of the camera is more than what regular TV channels (digital or analog) ask for. Whichever camera you buy, be careful about PAL and NTSC formats depending on where in the world you are. The Sony VX1000 is the first amateur "professional" camera on the market, and it is being widely used on documantaries today, as well as some great cinema movies. (lately the Dogma movies by Lars von Trier) The image is very beautiful, the colour saturations wonderful, it's very low-weight (which makes accessories like Glidcam for it much cheaper than say, Canon cameras), and has all the manual features you could ask for. Plus the optical Steadyshot technology is wonderful, when compared to other cameras (most of them not optical, but digital, which results in loss of pixels when being used) One disadvantage is that it lacks a LCD monitor. You either have to buy an external one, or get used to the viewfinder. It's price vary a lot, I bought one for $1200, in Turkey. But I'm sure you can find better prices on the net. When compared with the VX2000, which I believe, is the dominant camera on the market right now, it's not much less that you get. Check out the VX1000 forum at

http://www.videouniversity.com/wwwboard/vx1000/

where you can always find someone eager to sell a camera, plus some valuable information about the camera.

Sonic Foundry Vegas Video goes for around $700. But I've heard it's being sold to Apple. Which is a pity, because it's by far the best, the fastest and also one of the cheapest NLE softwares on the market.

I am going to buy a camera soon. I have it narrowed down to two cameras: The JVC GRDV3000U and the Sony DCR-PC120BT. Which camera should I buy and why? Thanks. mrx347?bellatlantic.net -Dean

quote:

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Originally posted by Diren

The MiniMV or MicroMV is also a digital camera, but it uses MPEG2 compression, which is after all, not a professional codec.

(snip)

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MPEG-2 is indeed a professional codec - it is used by all DVDs and in the DVB digital television standard (found in Europe). The problem so much isn't the fact that MicroMV records MPEG-2, rather that the bitrates it records at are a little low. To get decent MPEG-2 video, you need to use high bitrates, and that results in big files. Not really suited to compact video cameras.

At any rate, I think that wanna-be filmmakers should concentrate on MiniDV for now. Editing in MPEG-2 (again at decent bitrates) requires a much beefier system than editing DV.

filmmaking.net

The MPEG codec is intended for mass market products and designed for consumers. I dont think you could find any films that uses MPEG2 in the process of production. It's like saying that the cassett is a professional audio device, since many people listens to music by cassett (or did so). But no recording company did ever do the recording on the small cassetts that we use for listening. Or you could say JPEG is a professional image codec, since there are billions of JPEG images on the net and you can practically do everything on a JPEG file that you can do on any other file. Plus with the correct compression tool you get wonderful results on very little disk space. But still it's not professional. TIFF and BMP are professionals.

Already made professional films are transfered to MPEG2, or even MPEG1 in case of VCD's, but like I said MPEG codecs as well as many other intelligent codecs, are basically designed for viewing, not producing. All this, in a professional sense, of course.

I am going to buy a camera soon. I have it narrowed down to two cameras: The JVC GRDV3000U and the Sony DCR-PC120BT. Which camera should I buy and why? Thanks. mrx347?bellatlantic.net -Dean

I am going to buy a camera soon. I have it narrowed down to two cameras: The JVC GRDV3000U and the Sony DCR-PC120BT. Which camera should I buy and why? Thanks. mrx347?bellatlantic.net -Dean

I am going to buy a camera soon. I have it narrowed down to two cameras: The JVC GR-DV3000U and the Sony DCR-PC120BT. Which camera should I buy and why? Thanks. mrx347?bellatlantic.net -Dean The JVC camcorder can be seen here (copy and paste the address to ur navigation bar): http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?productId=PRD1203000 And the Sony can be seen here: http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start;sid=WnN_l9RBVDB_l-ogY4d1nJtOlQb70s0JX5I=?ProductID=mqsKC0%2eN130AAADzUWkE_KQN&Dept=dcc&CatalogCategoryID=%2e9EKC0%2eNg9cAAADzx3kE_KQI

What's so great about a 3CCD chip camera? What does it do?

In a nutshell, it's about quality. In a 3 CCD camera, each CCD is responsible for capturing one range of colours, based on the primary colours of Red, Green, and Blue. On a single CCD camera, all colours are captured by the same CCD. What this means is that you can capture a lot more information from the image, which results in a much higher picture quality.

filmmaking.net

Does 3CCD's really make that much of a difference? Whatever camera i get, i'm getting it brand new and i havent seen any 3CCD's for under ($2700- i really dont wanna spend that). I've been looking at the JVC GR-DV3000U (shown here: http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?productId=PRD1203000 ) it seems like a pretty good camera. I'm just starting out, but i really want to get into film and directing. So how is this camera? i mean, will not having 3CCD's make that big of a difference? - dean

Hello, I'm saving up this summer for a Mini DV (digital) camera. I was wondering if anyone could help me out. I'm not sure which camera to get or what type of features i need. I want to edit it on my computer. Should it have manual focus or auto or both? I don't want a begginer camera, i want one that is "good" and in my price range which is anything under $1200 dollars. Please someone help me out. mrx347?bellatlantic.net -dean

Someone please help! -dean

Anyone? haha. Pleease???

hey airwalk331,i think u should ask that in a new post.

micheal...