Camcorder Specs

Thinking about buying a new camera? The number of brands, types and models around may make it hard to choose. This article will discuss a number of aspects you should pay attention to when making your choice.

1. Types

Camcorders aimed at the consumer market appeared first on the market in the 1970’s. Whatever system you would buy (Video 2000, Betacam, VHS to name some), the camcorder were rather bulky and not very practical to carry around. The cassettes themselves were already bigger than many of today’s camcorders. Although camera's with VHS-C can still be found in shops, this is definitely not the way to go.

Miniaturization in electronics and progress in precision mechanics have resulted in smaller camera’s which you can easily slip in your pocket. A real breakthrough was realized in the late 1980’s when Video8 and it’s higher quality sister Hi-8 tape hit the market and was accepted as a new standard by many camcorder manufacturers. These tapes are already quite small and also offer quite some improvement in picture and sound quality.

While Hi-8 still uses analog technology to store video and sound, in the late 1990’s video entered the digital age. Camera's arrived on the market, which store video and sound digitally on tape. One of the types of tape is Digital-8 which cassette is identical to the Hi-8 cassette. Advantage is that camera’s designed for Digital-8 can also use Hi-8 tape. The other system makes use of a slightly smaller tape, the miniDV. The compression method to store video and audio is equal for both systems. Both systems have same quality, which is superior to any of the older analog systems.

A third type of tape on the market is the microMV, which is even smaller than miniDV. The compression format used is in principle the same as for DVD (MPEG-2) but is nevertheless not directly compatible with DVD. This compression format is also not very suitable for video editing.

With the advent of recordable DVD, also camera’s have became available which record directly on DVD. Of course they will record directly to MPEG-2 format, because this is the format used for DVD. The nice thing is that you can play them directly on a DVD-player. Unlike MPEG-2 on microMV, the Disadvantage is still that editing MPEG-2 is quite difficult.

The most recent development are camcorders that record to hard drives, memory cards or microdrives. They also record in MPEG formats, mostly in MPEG-2 format. Advantage here is that you don't need to buy new blank media. Transfer to a PC is fast and simple, but they have the same disadvantage being the difficulty of MPEG editing. You can use the MPEG-2 directly to burn to DVD. Models that use memory cards or microdrives usually record in MPEG-4. They use higher compression ratios and the image is therefore of lower quality. If you want to burn to DVD you will have to transcode to MPEG-2.

Conclusions

One thing is certain: the way to go these days is digital. If you have a lot of Hi-8 tapes lying around, which you would like to play on your new camera, you can choose a Digital-8 camera. But be careful: newer Digital8 camcorders are on the market that don't play analog recorded tapes. If you just want to preserve and watch your raw video footage and don't want to do anything else with your footage, a DVD camcorder is good choice. The mainstream today is still miniDV. They offer the best quality, the largest selection of models and the highest compatibility with video editing programs. Camcorders that record to hard drive are probably going to reign in the future. But still, you will be stuck to the lower quality of MPEG-2 and the lower compatibility with video editing programs.

2. Optics

Even in this digital era, optics remains one of the most important factors to check when buying camera. A very simple first check is to look at the size of the lens. Today’s camera’s tend to get so small that the manufacturer also tries to use a lens as small as possible which will result in less light entering in the camera.

Next feature to check is the amount of optical zoom. The difference between optical and digital zoom is that optical zoom is done by shifting lenses like in a binoculars. Digital zoom is done by taking a part of the original picture and enlarge that electronically. This will result in lower resolution and therefore lower quality. So look for a camera with a decent amount of optical zoom like 10x or 20x.

Another nice feature is the ability to attach other lenses or filters on the camera. Check the availability of such accessories and the possibility to attach these to your camera of choice.

Many camera’s have some type of image stabilization. Some have optical, some have digital and some have both types of stabilization. As with zoom, the quality of optical stabilization is better. Although the amount of stabilization with an optical system is limited, it is certainly a worthwhile feature to have.

3. CCD, the heart of the camera

The CCD, or Charge Coupled Device is the most important element of the camera. It consists of a grid of small light sensitive detectors. Each detector is one pixel of the image. The detectors catch light and translate that in an electrical charge, which is sent to the electronics in the camera for further processing and storage.

There are a couple of aspects you should look at when judging CCD’s.
First is the number of pixels. It goes without saying that a larger number of pixels will enable a higher picture resolution resulting in a higher quality video. Common numbers that you will find are between 600.000 and 1.000.000 pixels. Secondly the actual size of the CCD. The larger the CCD, the more light it will catch resulting in better picture quality, certainly in low light conditions. Typical sizes are1/4 or 1/3 of an inch.

More technical specifications for which you may have to dig deeper into the brochures are the lux rating, which indicates how much light the CCD needs to catch a decent picture. The smaller the number, the better it is. Another aspect is the signal-to-noise ratio of the CCD. A high ratio will result in better quality pictures under low light circumstances.

If you are looking for a more professional camera and willing to pay for it, you can choose camera’s who have 3 CCD’s, one for each of the primary colors.

4. Sound

Many people who first start filming greatly underestimate the importance of sound in a movie. Most modern camera’s have a built-in microphone recording Hi-Fi stereo sound, but the quality is not always that good. You should therefore check if the camera has a connection allowing connecting an external microphone.

5. Photography

Many camera’s can also be used to make still pictures. Most of them make use of some type of memory card to store the pictures. Some can also store the stills on the DV-tape itself. But let’s be clear about one thing: the quality of the still pictures taken by a camcorder will not match the quality of pictures taken with today’s digital photo camera’s. The reason for that is very simple: photo camera’s usually have CCD’s with far more pixels (usually from 1 to 5 million). So, unless you want to use your camcorder to make snapshots and want to avoid carrying around two devices, don’t expect too much from still photography with a camcorder. If you are thinking about using the camera also as your primary still pictures camera, make sure that the camcorder is equipped with a flash.

6. In- and output connections

All digital camcorders are equipped with a DV-connection. This connection is based on the IEEE1934 standard (also called Firewire or iLink) and will send out the audio and video as a digital stream. It’s main purpose is to transfer your footage to any other digital device (usually your PC). This connection is also used for Device Control of your camera, meaning that you can actually control your camera through your computer.

Any camera will allow to send out video through this port, but not all camera’s will allow you to receive video from another device! This is specifically the case in Europe where many camera’s have DV-in disabled. This is called nEutered and the reason for that is that if a camera has DV-in, you can use it as a video recorder which fall under a higher tax regime in Europe. If you want to record material from other sources to digital tape or you want to store your movie after editing back on tape, you will need a camera with DV-in enabled.

In order to make direct connection to your TV a camcorder also has an analog video connection. There are two types. Most camera’s have a Composite connection either in the form of a three cinch plugs (red, yellow and white) or in the form of a mini jacket. Some camera’s have an S-Video connector which allows a little better quality transfer of analog video signals. Similar rule applies as for DV-connections: some camcorders will also allow video input and some will not. A very interesting feature if it will also allow analog input is if the analog input is bridged to the digital output. If this is the case you can use the camcorder as a pass-through to convert analog video to digital video enabling you to transfer analog material (e.g. from a VHS or Hi-8) and store it digitally on your PC for further processing.

7 Special features

Many camera's offer all kind of special features, like special effects, titlers, transitions and other video editing possibilities. We suggest that you don't pay too much attention to these features. In real life you will find out that you will hardly use them, even probably not at all. The possibilities to edit your movie afterwards on a PC are so much better and more convenient that you don't need any of these features on your camera.