Audio Visual Blog

I’m currently looking for a video camera as we are expecting and aren’t sure where to start.I’d ideally like something that is HD (720p is fine) with good sound pickup and is lightweight/handheld. As far as storage medium, battery life is where I am most lost.

I appreciate any information or recommendations as to specific cameras.

The new Sonys are pretty nice. There are hard drive, mini DV and direct-to-memory stick versions.

Amazon.com has them all and at decent prices.

For small size, nothing seems to beat the memory stick models, as there essentially are no moving parts other than for the lens focus and zoom. Obviously, a hard drive uses up battery power, as does tape transport. On the other hand, the compression is a bit more lossy on the memory stick models than on the mini-DV.

If you want some sample footage from the new HD camcorders I found this website http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/d…21/vcam2008.htm. Just click on the japanese text below the camera names instead of the actual camera name. They have samples of both indoor and outdoor footage. From what I’ve seen the canon and the sony are both really good while the panasonic and jvc aren’t that clear.

I have googled and everything to try to find the right term, but with no luck. Basically my picture from my TV is cut off by an inch or 2 at all sides. It is a 52 inch Sony, rear projection. I am afraid I bought it second hand and don’t know alot about it more than that. It was fine at first but it has gotten worse over time. It seems as though the projection is for a 54 inch TV, when the screen is 52 inch. I hope I am explaining this correctly, but this is all I got. For instance, text in the bottom right of the screen generally has a few characters cut off.I googled calibrating and maintence, but this all seems to just deal with color calibration. Is there something I can do to fix this? Hire someone? Its becoming more and more annoying.

You have what is called overscan and it is normal on all rear projection sets, it can be especially bad if its a crt rear projection. If you really want to do something you will need to have someone come out and calibrate it but they will probably never get you to zero overscan. You can mess with it yourself but you run the risk of really screwing stuff up.