I’ve been researching online and can only find a few tapeless HD camcorders including Panasonic AG-HMC150 and AVCCAM
AG-HMC70U. There are many more HDV camcorders than SD–so if what I hear about the SD’s being better, why can’t I find more than just a few?
Thanks!!
You need to do more research then. Tapeless (no hard drive) camcorders are all over the place.
Look here:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/
At the prosumer (i.e. below pro-level), you’ll find camcorders that utilize hard disk drives and/or flash memory, such as the Panasonic AG-HSC1U.
For prosumers, your choices are going to be limited to Panasonic, Sony, Canon, and JVC.
The only limiting factor (i.e. why there aren’t more) is that editing high-def video take an intensive CPU and well-spec’d computer. HDV uses MPEG encoding, which is well-established and easier to deal with. Most tapeless recorders use AVCHD, and that requires a lot more horsepower to edit. That has to be holding back camcorder development.
You need to do more research then. Tapeless (no hard drive) camcorders are all over the place.
Look here:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/
At the prosumer (i.e. below pro-level), you’ll find camcorders that utilize hard disk drives and/or flash memory, such as the Panasonic AG-HSC1U.
For prosumers, your choices are going to be limited to Panasonic, Sony, Canon, and JVC.
The only limiting factor (i.e. why there aren’t more) is that editing high-def video take an intensive CPU and well-spec’d computer. HDV uses MPEG encoding, which is well-established and easier to deal with. Most tapeless recorders use AVCHD, and that requires a lot more horsepower to edit. That has to be holding back camcorder development.
References :
inside every HDV camera is an SD miniDV camera, you choose which format when shooting. HDV, in order to be data compatible with miniDV, uses non-square pixels. that is why its 1080 x 1440 pixels can fill a 16×9 HDTV display. Someone noticed that miniDV supports a data rate of 25 mbps which is comparable to broadcast HDTV so it was developed to be the first HD format for consumers. However HDV is not interframe compressed like miniDV so it is no where near as easy to maintain high quality when computer editing.
the consumer HDD camera is a more recent development and is the only ‘tapeless’ format of merit. it sticks with standard square pixels, ie 1080 x 1920 same as DTV. it too employs MPEG2 compression so HD program editing remains a bug a boo with consumer users.
broadcast HD camcorders use a "mezzanine" data rate, usually 50 or 100 mbps. This is higher than broadcast, but not so compressed as to preclude quality editing.
References :