6 Replies Latest reply: Jan 22, 2011 5:45 PM by Christopher Duncan RSS

    Inexpensive 1080 camcorders

    Christopher Duncan Community Member

      I'm planning on picking up a low cost camcorder so that someone can be shooting "behind the scenes" stuff the entire time we're in production. We'll use it for between season extras, promo on the web site, etc. Although this is web video that will ultimately get squished down to YouTube et al, my main camera (Panasonic HMC 70) shoots 1080 so that's what we'll use for the extras footage as well just to keep post simple.

       

      I hit Amazon and was surprised to find several for between $100 & $200. Naturally I don't expect much at that price but I don't really need much, either.

       

      Anyway, before I pull the trigger on one of these I thought I'd check to see if you guys had any thoughts on a worthwhile el cheapo camcorder that shoots 1080.

        • 1. Re: Inexpensive 1080 camcorders
          Colin Brougham Community Member

          Slightly off-kilter recommendation, but perhaps take a look at the GoPro HD: $259 HD HERO Naked (yeah, never mind the name )

           

          Yeah, it's a "sports cam," but these things are pretty cool. They're teeny-tiny, mountable anywhere, virtually indestructible, pretty inexpensive, and have some cool features. They have a timelapse mode, so you could record setups/teardowns--those always make for interesting extras.

           

          My buddy has one of these, and when he was working on a movie this last spring, the director had to do an underwater shot of a cellphone falling into water. The rest of the movie had been shot with a Panasonic HDX900 in 1080p--no slouch of a camera. They stuck the GoPro in a waterproof housing, hollywooded the rig off a dock and below the water's surface, and did a few takes--it took awhile due to the nature of what they were trying to do, and because there wasn't a monitor out. Anyway, once they got back to the studio and cut the shot into the scene, it meshed almost perfectly with the DVCPROHD. A little color correction, and the movie was finished. Pretty strong testament to this camera!

           

          Anyway, it's not a standard camcorder, but--you might find application for it in your movie that you wouldn't with a standard camcorder!

          • 2. Re: Inexpensive 1080 camcorders
            Chuck A. McIntyre Community Member

            Hey Christopher:

             

            It may have been 10 years ago I read an article by a respected videographer who claimed that even a cheap camcorder of that era produced quality that was adequate for SD TV. It was the audio that is the issue with these cheap camcorders.  This is still true today.  As a workaround you can record the audio separately with a $280-$500 device and simply line up the waveform on the timeline and turn off the cheapo camera's audio layer in Premiere.

             

            I have this little full HD camera one could buy now for around $280 that shoots better quality video than a $6000 Panasonic from 4 years ago.  The Panisonic I'm referring to shoots 1280 x 1080 rectangular pixel images with a 1.5 pixel aspect ratio.  Premiere reads this data in the file and stretches the image out to 1920 actual pixels on a computer screen.

             

            I have managed to get some beautiful footage from my little cheap Samsung camera.  Way more than adequate for the Internet.  The cool thing about using 1920 x 1080 footage for an SD widescreen projects is... You can edit the hi-def files in a standard def widescreen sequence.  At 100% you have a sort of faux zoom with a lot of footage outside the 960 x 540 pixel dimension.  You can do your camera moves or refine existing camera moves using keyframes in "Video/ Effects/ Motion".  There, a 1920 x 1080 shot shrunk down to 47% just fills the widescreen standard def screen. So there's lots of room to play.

             

            For instance on the Matilda's Cottage site I'm working on (Chris knows what I'm talking about) I had a shot of Mudcat's band and showed a guy playing a trumpet solo with the hi-def footage at 100%.  The site's owner said "I wish we could see Mudcat in that video clip as well".  I just went back to editing and shrunk the clip down to around 52% and Ouala!, there's Mudcat.  This type of thing always amazes clients because they think that the camera zoomed during the original shot when it should have shot wider and they're out of luck.

             

            This principle/technique can be adapted to full blown Red camera footage related to projects being delivered to 1920 x 1080.

            • 3. Re: Inexpensive 1080 camcorders
              Christopher Duncan Community Member

              Colin,

               

              Wow. That's an incredibly cool little camera. Given the types of things they're doing on those videos, the footage is extremely stable. I think I might just have to have one of those. Thanks!

              • 4. Re: Inexpensive 1080 camcorders
                Christopher Duncan Community Member

                Hey, Chuck.

                 

                Glad you mentioned audio, that hadn't been on my radar but of course needs to be.

                 

                The SD projects I've been doing for the Army were edited in 1080 but I'd occasionally get some stills much larger than that and do the virtual pan / zoom stuff. Hadn't really thought about just doing it all in an SD project but I like the flexibility to do the cropping / panning / zooming (Julianne fries, anyone?) that you're talking about.

                 

                When you do a widescreen SD project with HD footage and you want the full shot, do you just drop the HD clip into the timeline and scale it under Motion, or do you do a pre-render of your HD footage down to SD as a preliminary step and then drop that stuff into your SD project?

                 

                So how's the Matilda's project coming along? Since we haven't had a chance to hook up for pizza / tequila, I figure you must be head down, brain on.

                • 5. Re: Inexpensive 1080 camcorders
                  Chuck A. McIntyre Community Member

                  Christopher wrote:

                  "When  you do a widescreen SD project with HD footage and you want the full  shot, do you just drop the HD clip into the timeline and scale it under  Motion, or do you do a pre-render of your HD footage down to SD as a  preliminary step and then drop that stuff into your SD project?

                   

                  So  how's the Matilda's project coming along? Since we haven't had a chance  to hook up for pizza / tequila, I figure you must be head down, brain  on."

                   

                  I scale the shot using "Motion" in a standard widescreen sequence as opposed to exporting the 1920 x 1080 footage out as standard definition. This way you can refine the camerawork with moves and scaling using keyframes. When the final destination is f4v for instance, I first export as a lossless Lagarith *.avi.

                   

                  I import the solid Lagarith encoded chunk, drag it from the bin to the "New Item" icon at the bottom of the bin and next export as an f4v Web Large Widescreen Source when the video goes on a website.

                   

                  As you can see by the 4th. of July video, the text at the beginning I shot with my cheap 1920 x 1080 camera is sharp, even when compressed for the Web.

                   

                  Matilda's is coming along fine although it still has a ways to go.  I re-did the site in a 1012 pixel wide CSS format, put up several videos and I'm having a friend build a new "Zen Cart" with "Magic Thumbs" for the art product images.

                   

                  Bring some footage by and my wife will fix the pizza.

                  • 6. Re: Inexpensive 1080 camcorders
                    Christopher Duncan Community Member

                    Love the video! And the music is great. Bluegrass players are just plain scary. And Magic Thumbs is a pretty cool bolt on. That's gotta be a great one to have in your bag of tricks.

                     

                    Dude, your wife makes homemade pizza? I am so there!  I'm (hopefully) wrapping up the staffing phase next week interviewing people for crew - camera ops, lighting, hair / makeup, etc. We're scheduled to start rehearsals & shooting the first week of Feb. After a couple of weeks of that I should have some fun footage to show you guys. I'm delighted with the quality of talent I got for the cast. I'll tell you the stories over pizza, but it was just spooky how it all came together, with some hilarious coincidences.