For years, when you said "camcorder," it was understood that you meant "tape camcorder." And, to be sure, the least expensive and most popular camcorder type today (by a hair) records onto tape: MiniDV cassettes.
The popularity of digital tape camcorders is crashing, however. Their sales have been declining 10 to 15 percent a year.
As you can imagine, these numbers are causing some consternation at the headquarters of Sony, Canon, and other camcorder makers. What's going on? Don't people want to preserve memories of their lives anymore?
As best they can tell, the problem is the cassettes themselves. They're too hard to find in the drawer when the neighbors want to see the highlights of your latest vacation, and they take too long to rewind and fast-forward.
What the world wants, the camcorder manufacturers have decided, is random access: the ability to jump directly to any scene without having to wait. In theory, a tapeless camcorder also saves you time when transferring the video to your computer for editing, because you don't have to play the video from the camcorder in real time. The video files are stored on a memory card, hard drive, or DVD as regular computer files, which you should be able to simply drag and drop onto your Mac's hard drive. (In practice, it doesn't quite work out that way—see Importing from DVD Camcorders—but you get the idea.)
That's why the industry has been flooding the stores with tapeless camcorders: cameras that record onto memory cards, onto hard drives, or onto little DVDs—anything but tape.
Unfortunately, most tapeless camcorders can't match the incredible video quality of MiniDV tape camcorders. In order to store a reasonable amount of video on that tiny memory card, hard drive, or DVD, the camera must compress it to an alarming degree, using less information to describe each frame of video. Video recorded onto MiniDV tapes, on the other hand, is essentially uncompressed. What you see on playback is what the camera recorded.
Remember, too, that each kind of tapeless camcorder has its own kinds of storage limitations:
DVD camcorders. The miniature blank DVDs used by DVD camcorders generally hold only 20 minutes of video apiece—only 15 minutes in high definition. (Some models can record onto the newer double-sided discs, which roughly doubles the recording time.) And you can't play the resulting disc in a regular DVD player unless you first "finalize" it, a sort of software shrink-wrapping process that can take 10 or 15 minutes inside the camcorder. In fact, you can't play the resulting DVDs in a Mac at all. Macs expect full-size DVDs; these miniature, 8-centimeter discs can literally trash your drive.
Hard-drive camcorders can record several hours of video (say, five hours at best quality) before running out of space—but at that point, you're dead in the water. Your camcorder is useless until it has a date with your computer, so you can dump the video off the camcorder to empty its hard drive.
Memory-card camcorders might be able to store, for example, one hour of video on a four-gigabyte memory card. And you can carry a couple of extras around in case of emergency. But memory cards are far too expensive for long-term storage. In other words, nobody but Donald Trump can afford to buy a new memory card for every vacation, holiday, and wedding. Everybody else empties out the camcorder onto the computer every time the memory card gets full.
Note
The new world of tapeless camcorders is filled with exceptions, footnotes, and caveats. Apple has noted a few of the quirks here—http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3290—but the best advice is to use Google before you buy any camcorder to ensure its compatibility with iMovie. (Search for Sony SR7 imovie 09, for example.)
A growing number of camcorders film in gorgeous, widescreen, ultrasharp high definition. The video looks absolutely incredible when viewed on an HDTV set. Your own life looks like it was filmed by a Hollywood movie crew.
If you're shopping for a camcorder now, you should seriously consider going to high-def right now. High-definition camcorders are available in both tape and tapeless models. The really cool thing about the tape models, in fact, is that they record onto ordinary MiniDV cassettes, exactly the same ones used by regular tape camcorders. The signal recorded on these tapes is different, of course—it's in a format called HDV—but you still gain the convenience and economy of those ordinary drugstore tapes (Figure 1).
You may as well start filming your life in high definition now, because in a few years, standard definition will look as quaint as daguerreotype photographs.
Tapeless camcorder stores video as ordinary computer files—on a DVD, hard drive, or memory card—that you can copy to your Mac and edit in iMovie. But what are those files? Every computer document is some format, whether JPEG (the usual format for photos) or TXT (text files). What format are these video files?
Some digital camcorders, especially old ones, record in formats called MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4. (The abbreviation stands for Motion Picture Experts Group, the association of geeks who dream up these standards.) iMovie '09 recognizes and imports MPEG-2—usually. Unfortunately, there are multiple flavors of MPEG-2, and iMovie doesn't recognize all of them.
iMovie can also work with the movies created by most digital still cameras, like .mov, .avi and MPEG-4 files. Here again, though, your mileage may vary.
Tip
It's worth repeating: If you're tempted to buy a certain camcorder, but you're not sure if iMovie works with it, Google it.
The good news is that iMovie also recognizes AVCHD, which is the most popular file format for high-definition tapeless camcorders. (It stands for Advanced Video Coding/High Definition, and yes, it's an annoying acronym. Do they really think they're going to make video editing more attractive by dreaming up names like this?)
Anyway, AVCHD is a high-def format concocted by Sony and Panasonic in 2006, and is now available on camcorders from Sony, Panasonic, Canon, Samsung, and others. This format offers roughly the same video quality as MPEG-2 or MPEG-4, but takes up even less space on your camcorder's memory card, miniDVD, or hard drive.
As it turns out, AVCHD is the same as H.264, which is the video format as Blu-ray high-definition DVD discs (and also the format of videos from the iTunes Store). That's a handy feature for people who own both an AVCHD camcorder that records onto miniature DVDs and a Blu-ray DVD player (or Playstation 3), because you can pop the DVD right out of the camcorder and into the Blu-ray player to play on your TV.
That's the good news. The bad news is that AVCHD still takes up a lot of space; a DVD camcorder of this type holds only 15 minutes of best-quality video per disc. (On the newer double-sided discs and camcorders that accept them, you get 27 minutes.)
The bigger bummer is that AVCHD doesn't take kindly to being edited. When you import AVCHD video to iMovie, for example, your Mac first converts it to another format that can be edited (Importing from DVD Camcorders), which takes a very long time. In fact, one hour's worth of video takes over two hours to convert, which neatly erases the importing-time advantage that your tapeless camcorder would have had over a MiniDV tape camcorder.
So how do you know which camcorder to buy? Here's a rundown of the most frequently advertised camcorder features, along with a frank assessment of their value to the quality-obsessed iMovie fan.
FireWire is Apple's term for the tiny, compact connector on the side of most MiniDV tape camcorders—and most Macs. When you attach a FireWire cable, this jack connects the camera to your Mac. Other companies have different names for this connector—you may see it called IEEE-1394, i.Link, DV In/Out, or DV Terminal.
On tapeless camcorders, FireWire jacks are usually missing altogether. That's OK; you have other ways to get your video off the camcorder and onto the Mac, as described in Chapter 1.
This single feature may be important enough to determine your camcorder choice by itself. Analog inputs are connectors on the camcorder (Figure 2) into which you can connect older, pre-DV equipment, such as your VCR, your old 8mm camcorder, and so on.
Unfortunately, this is one of those features that the camcorder makers have been quietly eliminating in an effort to shave costs. That's too bad, because there's no easier, less expensive method of transferring older footage into your digital camcorder—or directly into iMovie.
This technique is described in more detail in Chapter 4. For now, note only that the only other method of transferring pre-DV footage into digital format is to buy a $200 converter box.
Figure 2. Certain tape camcorders offer inputs for older, analog video. (Actually, what you'll probably get is a special cable with RCA connectors on one end and a miniplug on the camcorder end, like the one shown here. Don't lose this cable! You also need it to play your camcorder footage on TV.) A few older models offer an S-video connector too, for much higher quality.
Professional camcorders offer three individual image sensors, one for each color component of a video picture: red, green, and blue. These camcorders are advertised as having three chips or CCDs (charge-coupled devices—electronic plates, covered with thousands of individual light sensors, that convert light rays into a digital signal). The result is even more spectacular picture quality, resolution, and color rendition than the less-expensive, one-CCD cameras.
Unfortunately, three-chip camcorders tend to be more expensive than one-chip cams—but they deliver much better color.
Not all three-chip models are big and pricey. Panasonic, in particular, has developed a line of three-chip camcorders that aren't much larger or more expensive than one-chip models. Note, however, that they usually contain three very small CCDs, so the quality improvement is visible primarily in bright, outdoor scenes.
Certain film techniques scream "Amateur!" to audiences. One of them is the instability of handheld filming. In a nutshell, professional video is shot using a camera on a tripod (Woody Allen's "handheld" period notwithstanding). Most home camcorder footage, in contrast, is shot from the palm of your hand.
A stabilizing feature (which may have a marketing name, such as Sony's SteadyShot) takes a half step toward solving that problem. As shown in Figure 3, this feature neatly eliminates the tiny, jittery moves present in handheld video. (It can't do anything about bigger jerks and bumps, which are especially difficult to avoid when you're zoomed in.) It also uses up your battery faster.
This kind of anti-shake feature comes in two forms:
Electronic or digital stabilization is what you get on cheaper camcorders. Its workings are described in Figure 3.
Optical stabilization is much preferable. This mechanism involves two transparent plates separated by a special optical fluid. As the camera shakes, these plates create a prism effect that keeps handheld shots clearer and steadier than electronic (digital) stabilizers. The images are clearer because optical stabilizers don't have to crop out part of the picture as a buffer, unlike the stabilizers illustrated in Figure 3.
Note
What could possibly be better than image stabilization on your camcorder? Image stabilization in your editing software. iMovie '09's amazing stabilizing feature is described on Video Stabilization.
Better camcorders let you turn off the automatic focus, automatic exposure control, automatic white balance, and even automatic sound level. This feature can be useful in certain situations, like when you want to change focus between two objects in the same shot (known to the pros as a focus-pull). If you've decided to pay extra for this feature, look for a model that lets you focus manually by turning a ring around the lens, which is much easier than using sliders.
Figure 3. Digital stabilization features work by "taking in" more image than you actually see in the viewfinder. Because the camcorder has some buffer, its computer can compensate for small bumps and jitters by keeping an "eye" on prominent features of the image. On less-expensive camcorders, unfortunately, this buffer zone means that your camcorder is absorbing less video information, to the detriment of picture quality.
When you read the specs for a camcorder—or read the logos painted on its body—you frequently encounter numbers like "12X/300X ZOOM!" The number before the slash tells you how many times the camera can magnify a distant image, much like a telescope. That number measures the optical zoom, which is the actual amount that the lenses themselves can zoom in. Such zooming, of course, is useful when you want to film something that's far away. (As for the number after the slash, see Date/time stamp.)
You should know, however, that the more you've zoomed in, the shakier your footage is likely to be, since every microscopic wobble is magnified by, say, 12 times. You also have to be much more careful about focusing. When you're zoomed out all the way, everything is in focus—things near you, and things far away. But when you're zoomed in, very near and very far objects go out of focus. Put into photographic terms, the more you zoom in, the shorter the depth of field (the range of distance from the camera that can be kept in focus simultaneously).
Finally, remember that magnifying the picture doesn't magnify the sound. If you're relying on the built-in microphone of your camcorder, always get as close as you can to the subject, both for the sound and for the wobble.
Tip
Professional video and film work includes very little zooming, unlike most amateur video work. The best zooming is subtle zooming, such as when you very slowly "move toward" the face of somebody you're interviewing.
For this reason, when shopping for camcorders, test the zooming if at all possible. Find out if the camcorder has variable-speed zooming, where the zooming speed increases as you press the Zoom button harder. Some camcorders offer only two different speeds—fast and faster—but that's still better than having no control at all. (Variable-speed zooming isn't something mentioned in the standard camcorder literature; you generally have to try the camcorder in the store to find out how it does.)
Fortunately, the problems exhibited by camcorder batteries of old—such as the "memory effect"—are a thing of the past. (When you halfway depleted a pre-digital camcorder battery's charge several times in a row, the battery would adopt that halfway-empty point as its new completely empty point, effectively halving its capacity.) Today's lithium-ion battery technology eliminates that problem.
Some camcorders—mostly from Sony, JVC, and Canon—even display, in minutes, how much juice the battery has remaining. A glance at the viewfinder or the LCD screen tells you how many minutes of recording or playback you've got left—a worthy feature.
Tip
The number of minutes' recording time advertised for camcorder batteries is continuous recording time—that is, the time you'll get if you turn the camcorder on, press Record, and go out to lunch. If you stop and start the camera to capture shorter scenes, as almost everyone does, you'll get much less than the advertised amount of time out of each battery charge.
Insufficient lighting is one of the leading causes of "amateuritis," a telltale form of poor video quality that lets viewers know that the footage is homemade. In the best—and most expensive—of all possible worlds, you'd get your scene correctly lit before filming, or you'd attach a light to the "shoe" (light connector) on top of the camera. Those few cameras that have such a shoe, or even have a built-in light, give you a distinct advantage in filming accurate colors.
Many camcorders come with a number of canned focus/shutter speed/aperture settings for different indoor and outdoor environments: Sports Lesson, Beach and Snow, Twilight, and so on. They're a useful compromise between the all-automatic operation of less expensive models and the all-manual operation of professional cameras.
Some camcorders come with a pocket-sized remote control. It serves two purposes. First, its Record and Stop buttons give you a means of recording yourself, with or without other people in the shot. Second, when you're playing back footage with the camcorder connected to your TV or VCR, the remote lets you control the playback without needing to have the camcorder on your lap. You may be surprised at how useful the remote can be.
All camcorders offer automatic focus. Most work by focusing on the image in the center of your frame as you line up the shot.
That's fine if the subject of your shot is in the center of the frame. But if it's off-center, you have no choice but to turn off the autofocus feature and use the manual-focus ring. (Using the camcorder isn't like using a still camera, where you can point the camera directly at the subject for focusing purposes, and then—before taking the shot—shift the angle so that the subject is no longer in the center. Camcorders continually refocus, so pointing the camera slightly away from your subject makes you lose the off-center focus you've established.)
Some Canon, Sony, and Sharp camcorders let you point to a specific spot in the frame that you want to serve as the focus point, even if it's not the center of the picture. (This feature is called FlexiZone on the Canon models, or Push Focus on high-end Sony models. On Sony cams with touch-screen LCD panels, it's especially easy to indicate which spot in the frame should get the focus.) If the model you're eyeing has this feature, it's worth having.
Most Sony camcorders offer a mode called NightShot that works like night-vision goggles. In this mode, you can actually film (and see, as you watch the LCD screen) in total darkness. The infrared transmitter on the front of the camcorder measures the heat given off by various objects in its path, letting you capture an eerie, greenish night scene. Rent The Silence of the Lambs for an idea of how creepy night-vision filming can be. Or watch any episode of Survivor.
The transmitter's range is only about 15 feet or so. Still, you may be surprised how often it comes in handy: on campouts, during sleepovers, on nighttime nature walks, and so on.
All modern camcorders can take still photos. The camcorder freezes one frame of what it's seeing, and records it either on the tape (for, say, a 7-second stretch) or as a regular JPEG photo file on a memory card.
The photo quality, unfortunately, is pretty terrible. The resolution may be OK (some camcorders offer two- or even three-megapixel resolution), but the quality isn't anywhere near what you'd get using a dedicated digital still camera. It turns out that the lenses and circuitry that best serve video are all wrong for stills.
If the camcorder you're considering offers this feature, fine. But it may be redundant for the iMovie owner. iMovie can grab one-megapixel still frames from any captured video, as described in Chapter 10.
This special kind of image sensor is primarily useful for capturing still images. It ensures that the entire image is grabbed, not just one set of alternating, interlaced scan lines (the usual video signal). If you plan to catch still frames from your camcorder, a progressive-scan CCD will spare you some of the jagged lines that may appear. However, if your primary goal is to make movies, this expensive feature isn't worth paying for, especially since you can buy a digital still camera with much greater resolution for about the same added cost.
Here are some features you'll see in camcorder advertising that you should ignore completely (and definitely not pay extra for).
Some camcorders let you superimpose titles (that is, lettering) on your video as you film. In your case, dear iMovie owner, a title-generating feature is useless. Your Mac can add gorgeous, smooth-edged type, with a selection of sizes, fonts, colors, and even scrolling animations, to your finished movies, with far more precision and power than the blocky text available to your camcorder. (Chapter 8 shows you how.)
Tip
A title generator on the camcorder is actually worse than useless, because it permanently stamps your original footage with something you may wish you could amend later. In fact, as a general rule, you should avoid using (or paying for) any of the in-camera editing features described in this chapter—title generator, fader, special effects—because you can do this kind of editing much more effectively in iMovie. Not only are they redundant, but they commit you to an editing choice in advance, thus limiting how you can use your footage.
Most DV camcorders offer a selection of six or seven cheesy-looking special effects. They can make your footage look solarized, or digitized, or otherwise processed (see Figure 4).
Figure 4. Using the stock collection of special effects built into your camcorder, you can create special, hallucinogenic visuals. The question is: why?
Avoid using these effects. iMovie has its own special-effects options. And it gives you far greater control over when they start, when they end, and how intensely they affect the video.
In fact, unless you're shooting a documentary about nuclear explosions or bad drug episodes, consider avoiding these effects altogether.
Every camcorder offers the ability to stamp the date and time directly onto the footage. As you've no doubt seen (on America's Funniest Home Videos or America's Scariest Cop Chases), the result is a blocky, typographically hideous stamp that permanently mars the footage. Few things take the romance out of a wedding video, or are more distracting in spectacular weather footage, than a huge 20 SEP 09 12:34 PM stamped in the corner.
Nor do you have to worry that you'll one day forget when you filmed some event. As it turns out, digital camcorders automatically and invisibly date- and time-stamp all footage. You'll be able to see this information when you connect the camcorder to your Mac; then you can choose whether or not to add it to the finished footage (and with much more control over the timing, location, and typography of the stamp).
Much as camera owners mistakenly jockey for superiority by comparing the megapixel rating of their cameras (more megapixels don't necessarily make sharper pictures), camcorder makers seem to think that what consumers want most in a camcorder is a powerful digital zoom. Your camcorder's packaging may "boast" zoom ratings of "50X," "100X," or "500X!"
When a camcorder uses its digital zoom—the number after the slash on the camcorder box—it simply enlarges the individual dots that compose its image. Yes, the image gets bigger, but it doesn't get any sharper. As the dots get larger, the image gets chunkier, coarser, and less recognizable, until it ends up looking like the blocky areas you see superimposed over criminals' faces to conceal their identity on Cops. After your digital zoom feature has blown up the picture by 3X, the image falls to pieces. Greater digital zoom is not something worth paying extra for.
No matter which kind of camcorder you choose, you have more to think about than just features and prices; you have the future to consider. Every kind of camcorder presents serious challenges if you hope to preserve your video for future generations.
DVD camcorders. Nobody has yet figured out how long those home-burned DVDs actually last. They don't last essentially forever, as Hollywood DVDs do. In Hollywood, they stamp DVDs, pressing a pattern into the plastic. Home DVD burners, though, record a pattern in a layer of organic dye on the bottom of the disc—a dye that can take between several months and several decades to break down.
Memory-card and hard-drive camcorders. Once the card or drive is full, you're finished shooting for the day. The camcorder is worthless until you offload the video to a computer, thereby freeing up space to continue shooting.
But what then? Are you going to burn hour after hour of captured video onto DVDs? Not only is that practically a full-time job, but then you're stuck with those homemade DVDs and their questionable lifespan.
You could, of course, just keep the video on hard drives, even though that's a very expensive and bulky solution. Here again, though, you have to wonder: Will the hard drive you buy today still be functioning 50 years from now?
Tape camcorders. Digital tapes may deteriorate over a decade or two, just as traditional tapes do.
The solution to all of these problems, of course, is simple vigilance. Every 10 or so years, you'll have to copy your masterworks onto newer tapes, discs, hard drives, or whatever the latest storage format happens to be.
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