Canon ZR800 MiniDV Camcorder with 35X Optical Zoom

DV tape is still the best quality (consumer) video medium. 13 GB per 1 hour tape.

jimgolf wrote:"While there is no doubt that MiniDV is being eclipsed by newer formats like DVD, hard disk drive (HDD), and flash memory cards, it does offer a number of advantages. MiniDV is cheap and widely accessible. It’s relatively durable, though many users have experienced the frustration of a faulty tape mechanism that spills out the lengths of tape. Cassettes make for easy archiving and the capture process for editing DV is more widely available than any other media.

Most crucial, perhaps, is that DV compression generally offers better quality video than the other formats. Standard definition DVD, HDD, and flash memory camcorders all employ MPEG-2 compression, which has a much lower data rate than DV - almost 1/3 the speed (8.5Mbps versus 25Mbps). Data speed is only one component of video quality, but it is important.

MiniDV’s flaw, however, is its linear nature. In the same way that DVDs surpassed VHS, people want the ability to skip around a random access set of files rather than fast forwarding and rewinding to get to a specific section on a tape. The camcorder manufacturers banked on the public’s willingness to sacrifice quality for that convenience, and it paid off. "

Well stated by both and right on the mark.

Another great benefit of DV tape is that once you capture it to edit, you store the tape as a back-up. You can also print the edited project to tape from your editing program.

At Costco, they have 10 packs of DV tapes for @$25 - Sony or TDK

By the way, always try to stay with the same brand of DV tape with your camera or DV deck. Different companies use different lubricants and some do not react well with others. I stick with TDK, Sony & Panasonic (the University that i am at requires that Panasonic tapes be used in all their loan out equipment)… Those three seem to get along well with each other. Always have a head cleaning tape available. If you are going to mix tapes… Avoid Fuji!

Fun facts on DV:

http://www.tapestockonline.com/minidvtapefaqs.html

I’ve had to help people edit video from those ungodly things and they are a total pain in the proprietary rear! The compression is high and the one he used needed proprietary software to do anything with it.

That might be fine on your home computer, but if you want to use a school lab that limits loading programs to those that do not need a re-start (as most do or soon will) it makes it impossible to use the high end hardware that most editing workstations have. If you are forced to use your home computer to edit, make sure it’s a Mac! Just to be fair, we have 6 PC editing stations and 6 Mac editing stations in our lab and the PC stations are faster - the Macs are still G5 Powermacs, but video editing in general is much smoother on Macs. Also, if you have a newer Intel Mac, and iLife08, I would get the free download of iMovie HD! It’s not as “easy” as 08, but it has a lot more creative tools to use. I use Final Cut Express (which has most of the features that FCPro has) and iMovie HD.

Premier is great for PCs, but if I never need to use (or help anyone with) Windows Movie Maker again, it will be too soon.

By the way - excuse the typos - I am in bed without my glasses on at 7am and I do not want to get up to put them on.

A firewire card is $8 - splurge.

Any PC that is good for gaming will do a decent job editing.

Lots of RAM, Lots of HD space, a decent video card and a fast processor. Firewire external drives are also better - most of mine are both USB & Firewire. I’ve not taken the leap to FW 800 yet…

“And best of all, that LCD Display is reversible in case you need to shoot yourself. Who knows, right?”

wow! i loved that description. it certainly was creepy… but creepy accurate. maybe t he person who wrote it will soon be appearing as a guest on glenn beck’s show on cnn headline news!

or maybe on one of those fake news shows on the comedy channel…

Why the hell do all the video cameras use this needless, overpriced, quasi-proprietary bus format instead of the ubiquitous USB 2.0?

I’d have already bought one of these, but it would mean having to buy a damned firewire card, since I’m part of the 90+% of people who don’t own/want an overpriced, overly proprietary Mac.

Hard to believe no one in Nebraska bought one, even though they have all those scenic views. WEIRD

Hard to believe no one in Louisiana bought one, even though they have all those… nevermind.

I bought one of these on Woot before, except it was a ZR 830, also refurb. That was in February of this year. The price was the same as offered for this model. I have no idea what difference there was between the two models.

I am happy with mine, but not crazy about it. The camera motor noise is evident in the video clips. Mine will take an SD card, but it will not record video there, only snapshots. And it is a TERRIBLE camera for snapshots.

The camera works well, it has easy to use menus, and I have had no problem using the Firewire drive to transfer to my laptop and then edit. The price is good. If you need a camcorder, this isn’t a bad choice at all.

Just bought one.

Our church uses three high-end Sony models (I understand they were about $3000), and even if this won’t work for normal use for some reason, it can serve to take the load off the expensive ones for transferring video to the computer, to reduce wear on the tape mechanisms and such.

the button battery is to keep the internal clock running.

Bought this new for my dad last Christmas for $175 from newegg. This was a nice replacement for his old VHS-C Camcorder. You can’t find any other camcorders with this feature set for this price, although I’m disappointed to see woot’s price beaten (see preferredphoto.com).

Stay away from that site 1.18 out of 10 from 654 reviews. I will pay the extra money for a trusted site.

If $8 is out of your price range - Go Fish!

Firewire is better than USB 2.0 because the devices actually communicate with each other to find the optimum performance for each task. Read up on it and learn.

Yeah, never depend of a camcorder for snapshots. You get better results from a still frame from the DV - HD cameras are even better of course.

Aslo, all the “Effects” on camcorders are complete crap compared to even iMovie - or dare I say “Windows Movie Maker” = Stick with the straight footage and add affects in the editing.

Must say, having grown up next to North Dakota, the sunsets there were better than even Seattle. The mountains are great, but at sunset, I would rather shoot across the flatlands.

Also, notice that there are no takers in Montana… Colorado… Montana is almost as scenic as Washington!

The ZR850 that I bought NEW on Woot has USB 2.0 abd Firewire 400 - I would take Firewire any day of the week for PC or Mac. USB 2.0 is a Master/Slave dumb technology that is faster for raw transfers, but Firewire astualy lets devices talk to each other for optimum performance,

You can aslo daisy chain firewire devices together so you do not need a USB port for each device. I have 20 external drives - trust me, that matters.