adventures in high-def

[.calla.]

so i'm in the market for a new camcorder and i've been looking at some of the hd cameras that are out but i have one question...

can i keep the quality or dumb it down a little bit so that the dvd i make can play on a regular tv?

[SeijiSensei]

What resolutions do the cameras you're considering offer? For regular TVs, anything much above the 720x480 ("480p") resolution of standard DVDs will make normal DVD players choke.

The other option is to use software to create another, scaled-down copy of the material you shoot in HD; you'll find a number of suggestions about software to use for this purpose in this forum.

[lamer_de]

There are ways to create "mini" Blu-Rays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Mini_Blu-ray_Disc, under BD-5 & AVCRec), i.e. HD-content on DVDs. You need an authoring program like Adobe Encore/Premiere, Ulead Videostudio, Cyberlink PowerProducer Magix software etc pp. However, because Blu-Ray is still a rather new technology, not all standalone players work with all combinations of programs/DVDs, so you'll have to experiment a bit. The PS3 is said to be the most robust player atm. If you don't have BD/PS3, do what SeijiSensei wrote.

[wnmnkh]

Seriously, go for the ones using flash drives. Do not bother to use ones using miniDVDs/HDDs/mniBlu-rays. I used them and I found out they are tend to be big and have shorter battery life. And they really do not provide that much convenience (you may want to edit the videos anyway.) So authoring function is kinda useless as well.

[SeijiSensei]

I'd probably shoot the material in an ATSC format like 720p or 1080p, then use a software application (mencoder on Linux for me) to scale the images down and save an archival copy using H.264 and the Matroska or MP4 containers. Then you have a couple of choices:

(1) if you have a player that supports DivX, you can write a data DVD. You'll have to encode the material with the DivX or XviD codec and store it in the AVI container. You'll notice that many "SD" anime files that were shot in the 16:9 aspect are scaled to 704x400 by fansubbers, encoded in XviD, and stored as an AVI file. (16/9=704/396; read the fansubber forums to understand why 704/400 is used instead.)

Of course these discs won't play on a normal DVD player without support for DivX. In that case,

(2) You'll need to burn the files as a standard DVD. To do so, read this excellent presentation by GHDpro. You might want to browse this list of FAQs as well.

Some DVD players support storage formats like SD cards as well. The same rules would apply as in (1).

Originally Posted by wnmnkh

Seriously, go for the ones using flash drives.

I looked a bit at cameras last year and was leaning toward ones with hard drives for storage reasons. What kind of shooting times can you get at 720/1080p using a 8 GB flash drive?

Answered my own question: http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/co...elTechSpecsAct

8 GB = 1 hour at 1920x1080 at 17 Mbps

[.calla.]

Originally Posted by wnmnkh

Seriously, go for the ones using flash drives.

what camera would you recommend? i know sony is the leading camcorder but they only have two.. so what would be the next best thing?

and does anyone know if i can water down HD that i shoot using ulead?

[wnmnkh]

I am not sure about camcorder manufacturers thesedays (I quit this a while ago.) Well, Sony means its infamous, overpriced memory stick, but they really make good ones. JVC is also worth to look for.