New videocamera
In preparation for both the Charlie press junket and my impending fatherhood, I bought a new videocamera. I already had a Sony DV camera, but small as it is, I never end up bringing it along with me. It’s overkill for what I want, which is mostly posting little clips on the web for friends and family.
I ended up buying the Samsung SCX105L MPEG4 Sports Camcorder, which, as the name implies, records to digital mpeg4 files rather than standard DV tape. The camera itself holds 40 minutes or so, but can be expanded with Sony Memory Sticks.
It feels really good in the hand. It’s a little fatter than an iPod, with a rubberized coating. The screen is bright and sharp, and the menus are intuitive, even if the controller is a little wonky. (It’s two-way, up and down, which doesn’t really work with the slide-show interface for navigating between clips.)
The video quality is fine. I wouldn’t shoot a feature on it, but you could certainly use it for an experimental short. I can’t find anything in the documentation to say how many frames/fields per second it records, but it definitely has that somewhat-stroby, Saving Private Ryan feel to it.
Here’s a full-sized clip (QuickTime, 7.6MB) that shows the look. This smaller clip (QuickTime, 520K) is probably more typical of what you’d want for the web.
The sound is not great. The microphone is tiny, and the speaker is usually right under where I keep my thumb.
It doesn’t work natively with iMovie. Instead, you have to put the camera into USB 2.0 mode, dig through some folders, and yank out the applicable clips. (I’ll probably build an Automator workflow to do that.) But you can then drag the clips into iMovie without any trouble.
Final Cut Express is more of a hassle. It wants to re-render the clips almost constantly. I’m sure there’s a way to pre-convert them to a more friendly format, but I haven’t really experimented with that yet.
So would I recommend the Samsung camera (or one of its tapeless compatriots)? Somewhat. The video is certainly better than you can get from a camera phone, which is the nearest real competitor. I strongly suspect Apple will come out with an equivalent product in the next year or so, with a better interface and better integration. But for now, it’s a promising idea that works surprisingly well.
To repeat: this is not the camera to buy to shoot your 18th century whaling epic. If you’re interested in using video for filmmaking, definitely check out Mike Curtis’s HD for Indies blog, which covers all the mid-range cameras and issues in abundant detail.
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June 29th, 2005 at 9:29 am
As for me, I’m weary of anyone who uses that many exclamation points, especially when referencing their own work.
June 29th, 2005 at 10:01 am
A comedy at 120 pages? Eeeks.
Oh wait - you want John to FILM IT with his new camera? Oh, I see now. I guess John’ll need a couple more memory sticks.
June 29th, 2005 at 10:03 am
For the reasons outlined in this Trackback (of sorts), I think you’ll be cursing the tapeless-ness of the camcorder down the road.
June 29th, 2005 at 10:12 am
Asr for me, again, weary = leery. Don’t post tired.
June 29th, 2005 at 10:12 am
Asr = ….eh, you get the point.
June 29th, 2005 at 10:34 am
John,
Congrats on impending fatherhood!
uh, and the new DV camera
… yeah
June 29th, 2005 at 11:03 am
J. Ott:
I very much see your point re: the size of the video files. Much like how I use a digital camera, I anticipate saving only the clips I need, and deleting the rest. It forces a kind of vigor in archiving. One reason I never look through my old DV tapes is that it’s so hard to figure out what’s on them.
June 29th, 2005 at 11:40 am
John,
Mucho kudos on becoming a father! You’ll love it! Take it from me…I have THREE!
Also, mas kudos on your psychadelic appearance on the cover of Written By. Can’t wait to read the article.
June 29th, 2005 at 11:45 am
sorry…that should’ve read psychedelic. Maybe I should’ve just said blindingly colorful…
June 29th, 2005 at 1:23 pm
In response to Janice, doesn’t promoting your script in a writer’s blog make it a juvenile effort? Also, get that page count down. Nobody wants a comedy epic.
June 29th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
Janice… come on…
June 29th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
one word: ‘Waterproof’
make that seven; congrats!
June 29th, 2005 at 3:54 pm
Congrats on fatherhood. I’m also going to check out video recorder. So how does an old friend get a hold of you?
June 29th, 2005 at 4:06 pm
Hi John! Thanks for the link to HD For Indies, I’ve had a display glitch that shoves all the content way down the page for the last week, very annoying but I’m working full time at a client’s site this week and haven’t had time to fix it yet.
As for the constant rendering, I’d suggest finding some means of batch converting your MPEG-4 files to DV (or whatever you want to edit in). If you had Final Cut Pro HD, I could suggest using Apple’s Compressor. If you don’t, try digging around on versiontracker.com for something inexpensive to convert files with.
Cheers and have fun with your little camera and impending fatherhood!
-mike
June 30th, 2005 at 12:19 am
Ohhhh… It would be great for Apple to come out with a small tapeless QT formatted video camera. Tapeless is without a doubt the future of video.
July 1st, 2005 at 4:18 pm
I’m a father-to-be, too. Been looking for a decent camcorder that wouldn’t break the bank. Yours is a little too expensive for me. Was looking at the Canon ZR series.
July 1st, 2005 at 4:42 pm
Ben:
The DV camcorders are a lot more economical, and have terrific quality. It was the size/digitalness of this one that made it more expensive. You should also look at used DV cameras, because a lot of times they work great.
July 1st, 2005 at 6:25 pm
Ben, I have a ZR50 I bought a couple years ago when my own son was born. It doesn’t do well in less than brilliant light.
July 8th, 2005 at 9:22 pm
I was just going to comment regarding your camcorder and the fact that FC Pro and Express both only edit natively in the DV format without external hardware, so some conversion is needed - but Mike C. beat me to it.
And yet I still felt compelled to post, so there you go: redundancy at it’s finest. Cheers.
July 17th, 2005 at 10:14 pm
Just a note about the video clips. They are encoded in H.264 which is the new Quicktime 7 codec. I haven’t upgrade yet (too cheap at the moment to re-buy the pro license) and they don’t run on version 6 of quicktime.
Thought I’d include that here in case others had the same problem.
July 30th, 2005 at 12:04 pm
As an update, I just cut together my first 10-minute project using this camera. Here’s what I’ve learned.
It’s a helluva lot easier to import it into iMovie than Final Cut Express, which balks at the format (.avi, which is really mpeg-4). Just create an mpeg-4 project and go to town.
Not surprisingly for a tiny camera with a tiny microphone, sound is poor if there’s any significant noise in the room.
For web-oriented material, the quality is actually just right.
August 20th, 2005 at 12:25 pm
I am a parent of a child with down syndome and belong to Dads Apreciating Down Syndrome and have been urged to write to WB about Charle and the Chocolate.. Beacuse the use of the word “Retard.” You sir are the writer who wrote it into the movie. A movie directed to the youth market. I am passing your name on to the rest of the group to assure your propper credit for your work.. I don’t feel it is a big deal but others want to boycott the movie and WB. I see it as a need less alteration and you’ll be know as the guy who wrote the line. good day, Craig Freeman
August 20th, 2005 at 5:39 pm
Okay, Craig. So you don’t feel it is a big deal, but it is a big enough deal to post a comment about it and forward it to your group. Got it.
I’m not going to make a big deal about it either, because every movie ever written will have something that offends someone. I guarantee it.
I’ve gotten another email about this issue, and I wrote back, not so much apologizing as acknowledging: yes, you have a right to feel that way. I understand your concern. I hear you.
It’s frustrating that these types of comments get posted on entirely unrelated articles, such as this one. I think I’ll have to have a standing post entitled, “Dear Writer, You Have Offended Me…”, upon which interested parties can express their displeasure. Sort of a sacrificial lamb.
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:01 am
If it helps, i have a sister with Down’s and i took no offence at the use of the word retard. Pollitically correct naming can get pedantic. Whatever word used to describe people with mental difficulties will have negative connotations because it is used to describe people who are less intelligent than regular people. So retard can be replaced with any other word and it will be used as an insult to call people stupid. As long as i don’t feel the story has anything negative to say about people with disabilities, then its all good.