For the past few years my family has just used the reasonable Video mode offered on todays good point and shoot digital cameras, they're okay. But now me and dad are starting to do off roading in the Land Rover, more holidays etc, i feel it would be wise to actually buy a good HD Camcorder. I never really looked into them, because i was being ignorant and didn't realise how much better the quality looks than they used to !
After about 3 hours research i have pretty much decided i want several things, pristine quality in 1080p (ofcourse) good optical zoom - 10x or more, optical image stabilization, and hard drive based camcorder. So after a while i stumbled on the Canon HG20 - it has pretty much the best video quality for consumer level HD camcorders, 12x optical zoom, stabilization, and a 60gb hard drive disk. There doesn't seem to be any better 'corders around that suit my needs - but if there is, let me know !
Now onto my main problem, of course i am totally unfamiliar with how they work. What kind of software do i need to view and edit the recorded footage on my PC ? it seems to record in some weird AVCHD format which i have no idea how to use
It doesn't take einstein to realise edditing long 1hour clips that are in 1080p format are going to be very big files, so a quad core is necessary especially when converting the video etc. But how much will i benefit if i say, increase my ram up to 6 or 8gb ? (it's currently at 3gb, one of my 1gb sticks is dodgey)
Also, if anyone could find uncompressed video downloads from the Canon HG20 or HG10 or similar canon models, please link them to me. So far i've been reading reviews and using YouTube to look at video quality, hardly the best thing to do considering the compression involved.
Thanks.
After about 3 hours research i have pretty much decided i want several things, pristine quality in 1080p (ofcourse) good optical zoom - 10x or more, optical image stabilization, and hard drive based camcorder. So after a while i stumbled on the Canon HG20 - it has pretty much the best video quality for consumer level HD camcorders, 12x optical zoom, stabilization, and a 60gb hard drive disk. There doesn't seem to be any better 'corders around that suit my needs - but if there is, let me know !
Now onto my main problem, of course i am totally unfamiliar with how they work. What kind of software do i need to view and edit the recorded footage on my PC ? it seems to record in some weird AVCHD format which i have no idea how to use
It doesn't take einstein to realise edditing long 1hour clips that are in 1080p format are going to be very big files, so a quad core is necessary especially when converting the video etc. But how much will i benefit if i say, increase my ram up to 6 or 8gb ? (it's currently at 3gb, one of my 1gb sticks is dodgey
)Also, if anyone could find uncompressed video downloads from the Canon HG20 or HG10 or similar canon models, please link them to me. So far i've been reading reviews and using YouTube to look at video quality, hardly the best thing to do considering the compression involved.
Thanks.
