Advice on new camcorder (1 Viewer)

I have an old JVC minidv palmcorder GR-DVX8 which was fine when it worked??
Now it is beset with messages coming up just when you do not expect. They are Error - reconnect battery, or use cleaning casstte. There is no telling when these will come up but they stop the machine operating. Anybody got any ideas on these problems and how to get round them.

Alternatively I am so fed up that I am considering buying a new one. Would welcome advice on new machines upto £500. Use the camcorde for general holdays but also for videoing birds and would like to try and videoscope.

Please help me out.

Robert

Robert L Jarvis said:

I have an old JVC minidv palmcorder GR-DVX8 which was fine when it worked??
Now it is beset with messages coming up just when you do not expect. They are Error - reconnect battery, or use cleaning casstte. There is no telling when these will come up but they stop the machine operating. Anybody got any ideas on these problems and how to get round them.

Alternatively I am so fed up that I am considering buying a new one. Would welcome advice on new machines upto £500. Use the camcorde for general holdays but also for videoing birds and would like to try and videoscope.

Please help me out.

Robert

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Hi Robert,

I just asked about this when I ran into problems with a $500 (£250) digicam. If you look at this link you can read about the issues I had with the small handheld digicam:

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=81635

Avan gave me some good advice on what to look for.

Sounds like your looking for a full size cam? One thing I didn't think about with the handheld cam was no microphone jack and mount which I guess would be a little odd on such a tiny cam. With birding I would think you would want something that could mount a directional microphone for bird song and calls with the video your taking. The sound on the cam I purchased wasn't great for distance sound.

At some point I want to find a good video cam review web site similar to Steve's Digicams but aimed more for current video cams. I found one really good site but all the cam reviews were older than the current models out.

Let me know how things work out,

See ya

Robert L Jarvis said:

I have an old JVC minidv palmcorder GR-DVX8 which was fine when it worked??
Now it is beset with messages coming up just when you do not expect. They are Error - reconnect battery, or use cleaning casstte. There is no telling when these will come up but they stop the machine operating. Anybody got any ideas on these problems and how to get round them.

Alternatively I am so fed up that I am considering buying a new one. Would welcome advice on new machines upto £500. Use the camcorde for general holdays but also for videoing birds and would like to try and videoscope.

Please help me out.

Robert

Click to expand...

Rob,

You may find the following newsgroup (linked from google) helpfull:

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.rec.video.digital/topics?lnk=sg&hl=en

See ya,

Robert L Jarvis said:

I have an old JVC minidv palmcorder GR-DVX8 which was fine when it worked??
Now it is beset with messages coming up just when you do not expect. They are Error - reconnect battery, or use cleaning casstte. There is no telling when these will come up but they stop the machine operating. Anybody got any ideas on these problems and how to get round them.

Alternatively I am so fed up that I am considering buying a new one. Would welcome advice on new machines upto £500. Use the camcorde for general holdays but also for videoing birds and would like to try and videoscope.

Please help me out.

Robert

Click to expand...

I forgot to mention the arguments, flame wars and jerks you find on allot of the newsgroups, they ruin the whole purpose of a newsgroup for allot of people. I did just find a few review sites from the newsgroup:

http://www.simplydv.co.uk/
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/

See ya,

Hi Robert

A couple of pointers to help you on your way to decide what you need,

If you intend to videoscope, then the optical zoom should be no more than 10X , thread sizes on the lens are important if you want to hook up an adapter, eagle eye and LCE 37mm is still available, matching a camcorder to that size is not easy, the early sonys all had 37mm not so much now, if you dont find this size then you are faced with step up rings to link camcorder and scope togetherwhich may mean the camcorder lens is further away from the eyepeice lens resulting in more vignetting than is needed, also you may have to beef up your tripod head to take the extra weight, try it first and see if your current tripod head will cope, long plate etc to balance it out,

Also your eyepiece of choice has a bearing on your image, if you have a 20XWA eyepeice rather than zoom, thats where to start, the Eagleeye 10X lens is excellent for camcorders, also on some camcorders you will only have vignetting free video at say 6X optical to the 10X

0 optical to 6 X optical is not good, its best to take scope and tripod to a store to try it out, its the only sure way. other things to consider, memory card for the stills function, some kind of editing software to edit you footage/

use rewritable mini dvd's, and make sure that your dvd player if you have one can use both plus and minus format on the dvd's, your computer will be able to play both formats, again check it

Got my eye on the new Canon DC50, this comes into your budget, small and compact, 10X optical, 5mill pixel still facility, 37mm thread for the adapter, mini dvd's, easy to use and a remote to stop and start you footage or take stills, work out what you want before you buy and the money needed to do the things you require

if you itend to use a converter then look for the highest optical zoom, 18x to 25X and the sony converters are good quality to add on

Thats it really, hope it helps you on your decision

Regards

Paul

Paul Hackett said:

Hi Robert

A couple of pointers to help you on your way to decide what you need,

If you intend to videoscope, then the optical zoom should be no more than 10X , thread sizes on the lens are important if you want to hook up an adapter, eagle eye and LCE 37mm is still available, matching a camcorder to that size is not easy, the early sonys all had 37mm not so much now, if you dont find this size then you are faced with step up rings to link camcorder and scope togetherwhich may mean the camcorder lens is further away from the eyepeice lens resulting in more vignetting than is needed, also you may have to beef up your tripod head to take the extra weight, try it first and see if your current tripod head will cope, long plate etc to balance it out,

Also your eyepiece of choice has a bearing on your image, if you have a 20XWA eyepeice rather than zoom, thats where to start, the Eagleeye 10X lens is excellent for camcorders, also on some camcorders you will only have vignetting free video at say 6X optical to the 10X

0 optical to 6 X optical is not good, its best to take scope and tripod to a store to try it out, its the only sure way. other things to consider, memory card for the stills function, some kind of editing software to edit you footage/

use rewritable mini dvd's, and make sure that your dvd player if you have one can use both plus and minus format on the dvd's, your computer will be able to play both formats, again check it

Got my eye on the new Canon DC50, this comes into your budget, small and compact, 10X optical, 5mill pixel still facility, 37mm thread for the adapter, mini dvd's, easy to use and a remote to stop and start you footage or take stills, work out what you want before you buy and the money needed to do the things you require

if you itend to use a converter then look for the highest optical zoom, 18x to 25X and the sony converters are good quality to add on

Thats it really, hope it helps you on your decision

Regards

Paul

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Hi Paul,

I was wondering if you knew of decent optical quality camcorders with 20x and threading for a 1.3/1.5/2.0 doubler. Not for digiscoping. I'm thinking about two camera's. A high end camera in the future and one lower end (approx $500) to leave aimed at the suet feeders or tube feeders for the day. Having the hard drive would let me record roughly for about 4 to 7 hours in high quality. I have heard the video compression standards on the hard drive video cams is generaly worse than other cams. I would choose visual quality over recording time. Wide screen is nice to fit more of the scene in the picture but if this is worse video quality I would prefer the old standard over widescreen or hdtv.

I would like to use the cam to broadcast the video/audio to my room via PC over the network or via a wireless send / recieve device using the rca cables or such. I know some people use digicams as web cams or straming video cams via the usb port if the camera supports it. This is the cam I'm looking for.

I've heard good things about sony's optics in general.

Thanks!

YellowBudgie said:

Hi Paul,

I was wondering if you knew of decent optical quality camcorders with 20x and threading for a 1.3/1.5/2.0 doubler. Not for digiscoping. I'm thinking about two camera's. A high end camera in the future and one lower end (approx $500) to leave aimed at the suet feeders or tube feeders for the day. Having the hard drive would let me record roughly for about 4 to 7 hours in high quality. I have heard the video compression standards on the hard drive video cams is generaly worse than other cams. I would choose visual quality over recording time. Wide screen is nice to fit more of the scene in the picture but if this is worse video quality I would prefer the old standard over widescreen or hdtv.

I would like to use the cam to broadcast the video/audio to my room via PC over the network or via a wireless send / recieve device using the rca cables or such. I know some people use digicams as web cams or straming video cams via the usb port if the camera supports it. This is the cam I'm looking for.

I've heard good things about sony's optics in general.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

I have not come across a camcorder that fits your needs, its more like a time lapse camcorder you need, but again, its a question of keep looking on camcorderinfo or the other websites you mentioned, and reading the specifications to see if the recording times and format is what you need

All camcorders have a thread on the lens ranging from 30mm to 47mm, go into your local store and check them out

My best advice to you is that you checkout the quality of the formats yourself, rather than go on other people's opinions, its the only way to satisfy yourself you have purchased the right equipment

Paul

Paul Hackett said:

I have not come across a camcorder that fits your needs, its more like a time lapse camcorder you need, but again, its a question of keep looking on camcorderinfo or the other websites you mentioned, and reading the specifications to see if the recording times and format is what you need

All camcorders have a thread on the lens ranging from 30mm to 47mm, go into your local store and check them out

My best advice to you is that you checkout the quality of the formats yourself, rather than go on other people's opinions, its the only way to satisfy yourself you have purchased the right equipment

Paul

Click to expand...

Now that is the soundest advice I have read on these forums yet, well said. Make your own decisions and live with the outcome. Ernie

Paul Hackett said:

I have not come across a camcorder that fits your needs, its more like a time lapse camcorder you need, but again, its a question of keep looking on camcorderinfo or the other websites you mentioned, and reading the specifications to see if the recording times and format is what you need

All camcorders have a thread on the lens ranging from 30mm to 47mm, go into your local store and check them out

My best advice to you is that you checkout the quality of the formats yourself, rather than go on other people's opinions, its the only way to satisfy yourself you have purchased the right equipment

Paul

Click to expand...

Thanks Paul,

Just incase your interested I found the software that will do what I'm looking for. I just need a camcorder to get this going.

I figured some people may be interested in doing the same thing I want to try. I have not had the camcorder yet to try WebCamDV v2.1. The demo of WebCam XP ran great with my usb webcam.

There's some very nice software called WebCam XP and WebCam XP Professional that can be used with a plugin for camcorders. It's a package that works with most detectable video sources from the OS your running. It's a great way to publish an image every so many seconds or minutes, it also has a motion detection section I had working when my tube feeders were inches from my window.

I configured the demo to activate when motion activity was seen by so much more percent than the average motion. It would then send me an email with a photo of what activated it and would record 3 minutes of bird video, a squirrel eating my suet video or on windy days the tubes going back and fourth video on the PC. You could set the record time to whatever you wanted. You could also do allot with the motion activation settings.

Your web cams live video can also be streamed on your network or to the internet (bandwidth providing).

I was able to stream a private web site with live video of my feeders via a web cam to a friend. I don't have enough up bandwidth to keep doing this but if I every do it would be nice.

I would like to record video to a camcorder on motion detection of the birds that show up during the day.

http://www.webcamxp.com/

There's an additional plugin called WebCamDV v2.1 that workes with WebCam XP. This lets you have a very nice picture quality webcam or live video/recorded video by using your camcorder. You can have the software activate the camcorder's record to media on motion detection or always have it's video/audio streamed onto your own network or the internet.

Looks like the cam may need firewire.

Here's a section from their web site:

-Record and Webcast Simultaneously, or Pre-record, Edit and Webcast
Send the WebCamDV remote application to a friend or family member and over the Internet they will be able to "Play," "Stop," "Rewind", "Fast Forward", "Record" to your DV camcorder tape and even Zoom* or Focus* your DV camcorder.

-Pass both audio and video thru the FireWire cable to your favorite webcam application.

http://www.orangeware.com/endusers/webcamdv.html

Thanks again,

Thank you all for the advice and info. Primarily the camcorder is for holidays and taking in the birds as well but by and large is used by my wife whilst I stick to digiscoping and DSLR.

One of the first things we wanted to dispose of actually was having to carry spare tapes and/or mini dvds so we have been looking at the Hard Drive models. Well we made our decision and went for one of the latest from Sony, the HDD-SR52, comes with 30gb HDD and 25x optical zoom with a great widescreen touch LCD to amend settings etc.

Went to Pennington Flash to try it out. Compared to our old JVC, we were bowled over by the ease of operation. IT was so simple to to hold and operate even at full optical zoom without a tripod or monopod. Tried it with our 2x telephoto, it took about 8x on the zoom to get rid of the vignetting but was otherwise fine but clarity lost a bit when getting upto say 40x upwards. However without the telephoto it was realy good.

Back home the Sony software loaded up fine and it was very easy and quick to download the clips using USB2. However although the Sony software for editing was well okay it was not really user friendly in the way it operated or did the editing and saving. I struggled with my other other video editing software that I have, namely Roxio, Nero and windows moviemaker, each came up with various problems to do with the audio. However I found after a bit of tweaking with activation codes I was able to use my favourite software for editing and burnbing. Pinnacle studio 10, worked absolutley fine. The downloaded clips in terms of image quality to be honest looked far better than my old JVC minidv on both the computer and our plasma TV.

In summary anyone interested in a new camcorder, please look at new range from Sony. Gets full marks from me.

ps The camcorder is so light, about the size of a coke can.