[MW Forums]

Sony will begin selling a camcorder in March that records video to a built-in hard-disk drive rather than to tape or DVD, it said Monday. more

[MacGod]

I'm assuming this is video in SD (Standard definition) format?
Also, I haven't been watching the digital camcorder market, but is it common for modern DV cams (be the hard-disk based, MiniDV, Digital8 or whatever) to ship without a FireWire port? I know USB 2 is much more common, but this seemed like the last area where FW held ground.

[NaOH]

Actually, using USB as the transfer technology is what many manufacturers have been doing on MPEG2 based cameras.
This is most commonly cameras that record directly to DVD or memory cards.
Cameras that record to tape, using compressed or uncompressed DV formats, still use FireWire.
Hopefully, DV will continue to be a popular format, as I like to have the option of capturing video in a high quality format, that can later be encoded in a more highly compressed format of my choice.

[Deromax]

Too bad such hard drive camcorder cannot record using the DV codec. Or do they exists? With a 30 GB drive, roughly 2.5 hours could be recorded and I could live with that to have the better image quality.
Currently, the MPEG stream must be decoded to be edited, then re-encoded for DVD burning, causing a loss of quality.

[MrMe]

This camera records in MPEG-2, an output format. It is intended to record the family event and then connected directly to your TV for display. Its videos are not intended to be edited.

[Bampfer]

>This camera records in MPEG-2, an output format. It is intended to record the >family event and then connected directly to your TV for display. Its videos are >not intended to be edited.
Then why does it have a USB-2 interface on it?

[rumplestiltskin]

>Why a USB-2 interface if the video is already mpeg-2?
Because Sony designs by committee and never listens to its customers. If it had, there would be a choice for DV. Mpeg-2 is fine for final output (although mpeg4 is better and, frankly, more forward thinking) but, for editing, it bites.
Wait until you see how badly Sony screws up the digital SLR. (You know they bought KonicaMinolta's digital camera business last week.)

[fribhey]

In reply to:

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Sony to sell hard disk camcorder from March

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who's March? /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[pdbreske]

In reply to:

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Wait until you see how badly Sony screws up the digital SLR.

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Please, please, please let them not screw that up. They have a real good chance at putting Nikon and Canon in a corner if they create a winning DSLR.
But, if this hard drive camcorder is any indication, Sony really has no idea what people want. Are they going to produce some kind of MPEG-2 editing software for their VAIO computers? Why would any manufacturer build a device that records in this format? This makes no sense at all.

[tallscot]

JVC has a whole line of these and I checked them out at Fry's recently. This is brilliant.
MPEG2 at 9 Mbps is very good quality. The typical Hollywood DVD movie is around 5-6 Mbps. I don't have specs, but I'm guessing that MPEG2 at the high quality setting is going to look better than miniDV at its 3.5 Mbps (going by memory on that number, but it's close).
You can edit MPEG2 movies with the software that comes with the camera:
http://www.pixela-1.com/capty[u]mpegedit_ex/
Apple should update iMovie to edit MPEG2. It supports DV, HDV, MPEG4 now. Final Cut Pro edits MPEG2. I'm guessing that HDV versions of these camcorders will be out soon since the data rate of HDV is less than 9 Mbps.
I want one.
Oh yeah, I also saw a "Multicam" at Fry's from Panasonic. It's where all of this is going. It is a 3 megapixel still camera with flash and also a video camcorder. It comes with a 2 gig SD card. It records video in MPEG4, which isn't optimal.
It looks like I'll be able to buy a camera that is 7 megapixels as a still and HDV for video that records on Flash media sometime in the near future. That would be nirvana.

[mjvoice]

Firewire [400-Mbits/sec] became the standard for DV-based editing because the competing USB 1.0 [12-Mbits/sec] could not handle the 100-Mbps needed for transferring DV to a computer.
MPEG2 compression reduces the required bitrate to less than 12-Mbps, so even old, cheap USB 1.0 can be used. [but USB 2.0 High Speed at 480-Mbps allows the movies to be transferred to a PC much faster than the DV requirement of "real time" transfer]
The trend started with DVD-camcorders [Hitachi, Panasonic, Sony, and now Canon] recording directly to DVD (mpeg2) - progressed to JVC's camcorders [like the GZ-MC500] that record mpeg2 to 4-Gb microdrives - and has now moved to HDD-based camcorders from Panasonic and Sony.
Thia is also why some capture devices like El Gato's EyeTV [200 & EZ], and the 3rd-party hardware that uses ElGato's software, have a USB connection to the computer.
I don't know if iDVD supports importing MPEG2 directly, the way DVD Studio Pro does [which was the whole point regarding Compressor doing the conversion from DV-to-MPEG2 independently of the DVD authoring process].

[Luke_Macwalker]

Oh, it's from March? Too bad, I had hope because I had (mistakenly) read "from Mars"... /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[RichardBronosky]

Sony today has announced that it will offer MPEG2S (MPEG2 Sony proprietary hardware protected codec) camcorder. The camera will feature a USB2S connector that is only available on Sony Computers and Televisions, and SDRM protection in all video. The software used to validate the SDRM will behave similar to spyware and allow remote inspection of data on the host machine. The software is expected to be safe and free from malicious exploits for several months. Videos can be recorded to MemoryStick or UMD for playback on PSP, PS3, and Sony Televisions. Sony has declined to confuse customers by adding in support for industry standard formats. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[swedish_guy]

Sony people must live on Mars, and want to rule the world - because they always come up with proprietary solutions which no one really want or can use in the real world - outside Sony fairyland, that is.