Digital video cameras

[phrick]

Hi!

I am planning to buy a digital video camera in the price range $1500 - $2200.

I'm not going to use it professionally in any way, but I still want the semi-high quality stuff.

I want to be able to transfer the video to a PC for editing (maybe via Firewire or USB?). It'd be great if the editing could be done losslessly by using some bundled codec or something.

As you already may have noticed, I know nothing about this stuff, so instead of making an even bigger fool of myself I thought I'd ask around in this forum, since I know many of you work professionally with video.

What should I think about/and look for. Do you guys have any recommendations?

(Oh, since I live in Europe I want a PAL camera.)



Thanks in advance...

Martin

[John Fornasar]

start here...

http://videoguys.com/

plenty of pro-am information, cameras, editors, boards, etc. Look down the left side, tutorials, how-to's, etc. You'll get the lingo down, and be able to see what is out there.

also

dv.com

digital video magazines site

advise would be the same for a still camera, to me the lens takes priority.

determine what you need, don't get blindsided by the latest gizmos, and just like computers, you can usually get the previous (week, month, year) model at nice discounts.

[phrick]

Aaah... That seems to be a great resource. Thanks!

There is however one question that I still haven't been able to find an answer to...

- Do I need to buy a video capture card to get the video into the PC?

(I already have Firewire integrated on my mother board as well as a video-in connector on my graphics card)

[John Fornasar]

- Do I need to buy a video capture card to get the video into the PC?

Not if you buy a digital camera. It'll just plug into the Firewire or IEEE1394 port.

You'll need a card if you want to digitize old analogue tapes. Price on these (and the quality of the cards) is getting better all the time.

You will want a separate hard drive though-DV takes space and you don't want to bring it in to the HD with your operating system.

[prospector]

went to that website and was shocked

I know they come here and help with some tech stuff and they DO sell Newtek stuff, so I don't wanna be too hard on them

BUT

I went to the pages

Realtime NLE
Professional NLE
NLE Software
and their main page (opening from that link)

and not 1 thing about Newteks VT2 or VT3 NLE

didn't do a search because if I was a starting customer with no knowledge of the products of any named brand, I wouldn't know what to search for, only the ones I saw displayed on the pages that I clicked to.

Strange