southerndownhill.com - Forum

im not a complete noob at the whole video filming thing but i cant decide between mini dv, sd card or hard drive.

The overall consensus seems to be that mini dv shoots in better quality. I have filmed in mini dv before and transfering it to the computer was such a faf and took forever!

The most convenient seems to be hard drive but it cant be good for a hard drive being rattled about in a back pack.

Then there is the sd card this option would kick ass as theres no moving parts to get rattled about but im not sure how good the quality would be storing this way.

Anyone had good/bad experiences with any of these? if someone could post a link to there hard drive sd or mini dv film i could compare. i understand the camcorder would affect quality too however.

At the consumer end of things, MiniDV still wins hands down for quality. Also capturing footage is a piece of piss, so no idea how you had problems with it.

I know nothing about harddrive cams, but memory stick cameras are getting better and better all the time.

It all depends on what you want it for and how much you have to spend.

it might just have been poor equipment. the computer wouldn't register the cameras existence.

Strange ???

Footage from a MiniDV camera will work with literally every single editing program, whereas footage from Hard drive cameras is still not that well supported.

hmm also how much difference does firewire make?

can you get a seperate tape player thing to attach to the computer instead of using the computer?

A firewire is the ONLY way to get MiniDV footage from a camera to a computer. So in that respect, I would say they make quite a lot of difference ;)


Which way round do you mean? You said computer twice.

the second computer was meant to be camcorder oops. oh right i see. so you have to have a firewire card in your computer?

Yup, the lack of a firewire and firewire card was probably the reason your computer had no idea it was there.

As for getting a MiniDV tapedeck there is no point unless you are going to be using it professionaly. The camera performs perfectly well as a tapedeck, and with the amount of use an average user puts in it will never wear out.

There was a fire wire socket in the computer i was using at the time i didnt realise it was a necesity i thought you could usb.

Read the manual ;)

wel it doesnt matter i was using it for a media studies course. one of the fire wire cards was frying the cameras :-\

another question: what kind of shutter speed is needed for mountain biking videos.

if you want crazy slow-mo then you will obviously need a higher shutter speed

someone once told me the eye effectivly see's at around 25fps so anything slower would look slow and joultey.

so anything above will look pretty much fine..

i shoot at 30fps and i only have a hard drive camera nothing flash
looks fine!

so any idea what this means? 1/50–1/8.000 Sec.(Tape Mode), 1/25–1/500 Sec.(Card Mode)

Isn't that only true with Vista as it doesn't support USB streaming. I copied stuff off my mate's tape camcorder the other day over USB, not sure if it was MiniDV tape or something else tho.

I'm not really sure about Hard Discs and vibration either.  :-\
Memory cards seem to be the way forward if they can do the write speed (slower write speeds resulting in lower quality).
I use a DVD camcorder at them moment, its pretty easy to get the footage on the PC.

1/50 is like 50 frames shot in 1 second
i think

so mine would be 1/30

but i dont know about diffrent modes..sorry

No no no no.

There is a massive difference between shutter speed and frame rate.

Frame rate is how many individual frames your camera takes per second. This is fixed on all but the most expensive pro cameras. European cameras shoot 25 frames per second and American ones shoot 30.

Shutter speed is how long the shutter is open for. As video cameras do not have a physical shutter, this is simply how long the sensor is turned "on" for. This normally ranges from 1/3rd of a second to 1/10,000th of a second.

Therefore with a European camera, you need to set the shutter speed above 1/25th, in order to ensure the shutter is not open longer than a single frame. The standard shutter speed is normally 1/50th, with higher values being used in particularly bright conditions or where slow motion will be used in post production and the subject needs to be sharper.

Do not worry about shutter speed values when buying a camera, it is not an attribute that is going to be realisticaly any different accross models.


To the best of my knowledge you can only steam DV footage from a MiniDV camera via a Firewire. You can take nasty low-res stuff from the memory card slot present on some MiniDV cameras via USB, but thats it.

so should i worry about frame rate or shutter speed when looking at cameras.

iv been looking at this http://www.panasonic.co.uk/html/en_GB/419748/index.html

any comments?