Re: A few questions about DIGITAL camcorders.
- From: "PTravel" <ptravel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 05:13:22 GMT
<Leesa_Tay@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1156738558.302844.164130@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I see more and more DIGITAL camcorders on the market. I have a few
questions about their use. How does the image quality compare to that
of VHS or VHS-C format, if I'm saying it correctly? Better... worse...
or about the same.
It depends on the digital camcorder.
VHS and VHS-C are capable of about 250-275 lines of resolution.
DV-25 (the format used for miniDV and Digital8) is capable of resolving
about 525 lines. This is better than broadcase quality. However,
resolution only tells part of the story. Video quality is also a function
of lens quality, sensor size and density and internal electronics.
The cheapest miniDV and Digital 8 cameras will produce video roughly
comparable to a good VHS or VHS-C camcorder. However, a good miniDV machine
will produce video of the highest quality -- miniDV camcorders have been
used to shoot feature films.
There are also digital video camcorders that record to DVDs, memory sticks
or internal hard drives. These all use either mpeg2 or mpeg4, a lossy
compression format designed as a delivery medium and used for DVDs. Mpeg2
can be a very efficient compression format and, if you've ever watched a DVD
on a good monitor, you know can produce a very good image (because of the
nature of mpeg2 compression, it doesn't make sense to talk about lines of
resolution). However, consumer camcorders that record to DVDs, memory
sticks or hard drives are designed for consumers who are looking for
convenience, rather than quality -- the resulting video is difficult to edit
and really intended to just be dumped to a DVD recorder or VCR (or, in the
case of a DVD recorder, just played directly on a DVD player). The quality
of video produced by these machines is uniformly low.
Another thing that confuses me a little is the ZOOM capability. Most
digital cameras that I've seen have an OPTICAL ZOOM level of maybe 3X
or 4X. Some of the digital camcorders claim to have an OPTICAL ZOOM of
20X ... 25X or even higher? Why can they bring in the action so much
more than a digital camera, or is that a fallacy.
Digital zoom is a marketing trick and virtually worthless. It works by
using only a portion of the video sensor and results in low-quality, blocky,
ugly video.
Note, too, that no one can hand hold more than 10x or 12x -- without a
tripod, it would be so shaky as to be unusuable. However, camcorder
manufacturers are more concerned with marketing hype than video quality, and
think that consumers will believe that a camcorder with 50x digital zoom is
better than a camcorder with 10x optical zoom.
Thanks in advance
Leesa (I)
.
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