Your Camcorder Questions Answered 1/26/07
- From: "Ablang" <ron916@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 12 Mar 2007 17:40:00 -0700
Your Camcorder Questions Answered
You have questions, we have answers: Our expert tackles your queries
on camcorders and digital video.
Richard Baguley
Friday, January 26, 2007 01:00 AM PST
It's been a few months since I answered some reader questions, so I've
opened up the mailbag once again. Here are the answers to a few
questions I often get asked about camcorders and digital video.
What's the difference between digital and optical zoom, and which is
better?
Optical zoom is the more important of the two: The optical-zoom number
refers to the ratio of the zoom lens built into the camcorder. Digital
zoom refers to a technique where the camcorder enlarges the center of
the image, effectively boosting the zoom ratio of the camcorder hugely
(some manufacturers quote figures of up to 700x, while most optical
zooms don't go beyond 32x). The problem with digital zoom is that the
image quality suffers significantly: You get grainy, jerky video. So,
optical zoom is the more valuable feature. Read my previous column on
zoom technique for more details and for some examples of how bad
digital zoom can look.
Most new digital cameras can shoot video. Why should I bother getting
a separate camcorder?
It's true that most modern cameras shoot video as well as stills, and
some do a pretty reasonable job of it. But there are at least two
reasons why you should consider a camcorder as well: image quality and
sound. Camcorders do a better job of capturing moving images,
specifically because they compress the images less and their lenses
are designed to capture moving images. And every digital still camera
I've tried (and that's a lot) records poor audio; the sound is usually
in mono, and the microphone only picks up sounds a couple of feet away
from the camera. Some even pick up the noise the camera makes (such as
the buzzing of the zoom) and the noise you make when handling the
unit. Sure, you can use the digital still camera if you just want very
short clips of video and don't want to carry around another device,
but a dedicated camcorder will give you more flexibility, better video
image quality, and far better sound.
I'm thinking of buying an AVCHD camcorder, but I've heard that you
can't edit the video it shoots. Is this true?
It is--for now, anyway. Though AVCHD camcorders have been available
for a few months (Sony just announced its second-generation AVCHD
camcorders at CES), there still is no software for directly editing
the footage they produce (apart from the very basic software that Sony
ships with its AVCHD camcorders).
So far, none of the major video editing software companies have
announced any firm plans to support AVCHD editing in their products.
Eventually they will (Adobe, Cyberlink, and Ulead are members of the
group that defined the new standard), but it isn't clear when. In the
meantime, Jake Ludington has described a technique for converting
AVCHD footage into a more usable format, and Canopus in Japan has
produced a program that can convert AVCHD footage into a format that
its Edius editing programs can work with (English translation). But no
simple way currently exists to edit the footage that these interesting
new camcorders shoot.
If I buy a high-definition camcorder, can I still output my home
movies to standard-definition DVDs?
Yes, if you use the capability of many high-def camcorders to convert
the video down to standard def. Using a feature called downconversion,
HDV-format camcorders can internally convert the video from high def
to standard def; you can then import the standard-def video into any
video editing application.
The HDV camcorder looks like a standard-def camcorder to the video
editing app, so you can import the video, edit it, and output it to
standard DVDs while still preserving your high-definition original on
videotape. AVCHD camcorders can't perform this trick, but some of the
software that comes with them (such as Sony's Picture Motion Browser)
can convert the video to a standard-def version.
You can also downconvert in many video editing applications; in this
scenario, you edit the video in high definition, and then convert it
to standard definition for writing to DVD. But it's much quicker to do
the conversion in the camera; converting video files on the PC can
take a lot of time. If your video editing program can't handle this,
MPEG Streamclip is a fast, free video-conversion program that quickly
converts high-def video files to standard def.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128609/article.html?tk=nl_plxcol
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