Digital Video

[K9Gunner]

I need some help from you tech savvy people. O wn a company that trains Police K9's, and I also teach Interdiction. I am looking at starting to produce and offer interdiction videos. I need them to be in digital format to edit etc. I have a very nice Sony digital camera with a 256MB card, and can take up to 14 min. of video with that. The problem is if I make a 2 hour video, that is a ton of splicing.

My question is what type of video camera do I need? I saw a Canon ZR85? Will that work? Any help and suggestions are appreciated.

[not5150]

The problem with the video taken any camcorder using a memory card, is that the video is compressed MPEG2. Meaning a bunch of resolution is lost, plus it is more difficult to edit the video.

Get a camcorder that uses Mini-DV tape. After you take the video, export it with Firewire. It will show up as a .AVI file. Edit it with your favorite video editor (I use Vegas 5).

[sorrel]

It depends on your current cam and setup.
How old is your camera ?
Are there larger mem cards available for that camcorder ?
How much budget are you allowing yourself for this project ?

Have you considered pressing the finished product to a CD instead of a video ?

If you do go with a video then you must also transfer the finished product back from your computer to a medium that allows you to record. So I am guessing you plan on a CD burn to do this and using a dvd/vcr player recorder to tranfer formats ?

Unless you have a tv/in-out video card on you computer.

Depending on what you want to spend.
Using your current equipment, buy a larger (if available) mem card.
Or purchase a different recorder.
You can go with a regular high quality VHS recorder depending on what kind of other equipment you own, or plan on purchasing.
You can get more bang for your buck going VHS vs. digital. (IMO).
A good high quality video card, with TV in/out will save you a lot of time in tranfering from a one format to another.
You can tranfer and record any format with a TV video card, play it on your tv and record it on your computer. Edit it and either burn from your computer or tranfer it back to your TV system and burn it from there.

In any case, good luck to you.
Producing a good quality video is a lot of work even before you shoot any pics.