Can anyone give me some advice regarding this camera.  I have never
owned a video camera and I will be getting one soon.  I only need it
for family videos, as I will be getting married soon, and vactions.  I
also have a separate digital still camera, so this is only for video.
I read alot about the CCDs and mpeg quality and all sort of stuff that
I dont fully understand.  This camera seems like it should be pretty
easy for me to store all of my film on my computer, I have a huge HD,
and I wont have to purchase or carry around several tapes or dvds.  I
will want to be able to edit the footage together, but again this wont
be anything fancy.  The camera is very lightweight and compact but it
doesnt have an eyepiece, or a place to attach an additional light to
it.  I dont know if the eyepiece is important or not, but I am
concerned about low light filming.  Although I am under the impression
that every camera will have some issues with that.  I have also heard
rumors about a very long, 14 second, boot time and the possiblity of
the camera getting very hot.  Does anyone know if any of this is true?
I am looking to spend around $1,000 for a new camera, and if this is a
bad choice can anyone offer any good ideas and please tell me why.
Thanks in advance, I really appreciate the help.

You've made a good choice. Welcome to the 21st Century of family video.
One important precaution for your tape-less camcorder is to backup the
videos you want to keep on DVD, or another hard drive. That saved me
when I had my hard drive go bad and lost all of my video from my
tape-less camcorder. I had many, many hours of video of my
grandchildren that I was able to restore.

As for your buyer's remorse over spending $1,000 on a camcorder . . . .
get over it. Don't be paying attention to rumors you read in blogs or
forums. Pay attention to more authoritative sources, such as
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/JVC-Introduces-Four-Hard-Drive-Based-Everio-Camcorders.htm

I use Womble Video Wizard ( www.womble.com ) to edit the MPEG-2 video
from my tape-less camcorder. I highly recommend it.

Bye.

PS. I wasn 't kidding about making backups.

muffinman2***@yahoo.com wrote:

Does re-editing a MPEG2 clip reduce its quality further?

If that's true, it would seem difficult to shoot a footage spontaneously.

Also, what is the video resolution for this model, 640x480?

It depends on what you mean by "re-editing."  If you're doing simple
cuts-only edits, then, no, it does not.  If you're adding titles,
transitions, effects, corrections, etc., then, yes, it does reduce the
quality because the clip must be retranscoded.

Show quoteHide quote

PTravel wrote:

Cuts-only MPEG-2 editing only retains the quality if done on GOP (Group
of Pictures) boundaries. Otherwise, parts of the video (the affected
GOP(s) around the cut point) will need to be re-encoded.

Fortunately, the same principle applies to all MPEG editing: if you want
to add a title or a fade, you will only need to re-encode the affected
parts (plus GOP overhead), but not the whole clip. The problem lies in
that not all video editing applications are MPEG GOP aware - some of
them will actually want to re-encode everything -, so one needs to check
the capabilites of the program he is using before he can be sure he is
safe.

The length of a single MPEG-2 GOP is usually about half a second, at
least for material that is intended for a DVD and encoded using a
DVD-compatible profile.

Then again, if you want to touch up large segments of video (say, by
doing some color correction, titling or noise reduction), the affected
parts of video will, of course, need to be re-encoded in their full
length - including whatever GOP overhead there might be at the beginning
and end of the segment.

Show quote Hide quote According to some of the more fanatic mpeg boosters, there are programs
around that are capable of cuts-only mpeg editing without having to
retranscode.  As I would never edit in what was intended as a delivery
medium, I simply don't know.

Premiere Pro is in the group of "retranscode-everything" programs.  It
handles all video in an internal format, which requires transcoding mpeg.
I'd be curious if the other pro- and semi-pro packages do the same thing
(I'd bet that they do).

Show quoteHide quote

Final Cut Pro up to 4.5 (HD) is as well. FCP5 introduces the possibility of
native MPEG editing as it natively supports HDV without transcoding, but I
don't know how you'd use that feature with standard MPEG-2.

The MPEG-2 video editor I recommended before is in the minimum
re-encoding group of editors. For a decent basic LNE for tape-less
camcorders, it's very good. www,womble,com

Bye.

PTravel wrote:

There are programs which allow lossless cuts-only MPEG editing, but they
limit your cut points to GOP boundaries. (If they didn't do that,
editing wouldn't be lossless.) The length of MPEG-2 GOPs is usually in
the neighborhood of 12...15 frames, so you can generally only cut at
approximately half-a-second accuracy. At least that's the case for DVD
compliant MPEG-2 video (the "normal" GOP length may be different with
applications like DVB or HDV, but the same principle applies.)

TMPGEnc's "MPEG Tools" is one example of a lossless, GOP-bound MPEG
editor (albeit a very simple one.)

Modern MPEG editors (which "MPEG Tools" is not) usually allow
frame-accurate editing, but this capability is achieved at the expense
of having to re-encode the GOPs which will get split at the edit points.
TMPGEnc MPEG Editor (not "MPEG tools") is this kind of editor, VideoReDo
is another. These editors are still relatively simple and do not really
support much else besides cuts-only editing.

Stepping up the ladder we will get a specialized, frame-accurate MPEG
editor with transition effects and a titles, such as Womble MPEG Video
Wizard:
<http://www.womble.com/products/screenshots.html>. Still not a
full-featured generic-purpose NLE, but closer.

Finally, the last step up is products like Mainconcept MPEG Pro
<http://www.mainconcept.com/mpeg_pro.shtml> (a plug-in for Adobe
Premiere Pro that adds the ability to do native MPEG editing and smart
renders within Premiere) or similar built-in capabilities added by the
major NLE companies themselves.

Whenever you step outside the realm of GOP-bound cuts-only editing, you
_will_ have to re-encode full GOPs in all places where you have touched
the video. On the other hand, all GOPs that you _haven't_ touched can be
passed through unchanged, if the NLE only supports that.

Mainconcept MPEG Pro changes that (see above.)

Avid has previously announced adding native MPEG editing capabilities to
their products. I'm not sure if they have done this yet. I don't know
about Vegas or Final Cut Pro.

That's what I always thought, but prepare for the mpeg Nazis to jump on you
for saying it.  I stay out of the fray, because I rarely have any need to
edit mpeg.


As you noted, Womble doesn't approach even the entry level tools like
Premiere Elements and Studio 9.

Not exactly native -- I have the plug-in and still have to render.  All that
it does is give Premiere Pro the ability to read MPEG, something that it can
do with only mixed results without it.

Then I need to have a long talk with my computer. ;)

If Avid does, I'll bet it's in the form of support for HDV.

Show quoteHide quote

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