Camcorder buyer beware: the new breed of “tapeless” camcorders, that is, those that record to DVD or built-in hard disk, record in MPEG-2 format, which is NOT a good originating format, especially for editing.

A few months ago I had a friend call me who was eager to get into video production. He called me
and said, “I want to start editing some stuff. I bought a new Dell and Sony Vegas and I’ve got this DVD
camcorder and I can’t wait to put something together. But I can’t figure out how to get the footage into my computer.” At the time, I was under the impression that NO low-budget editor was capable of editing MPEG-2 natively, and I gently told him he’d have to find some utility to convert the MPEG-2 footage to an “editable” format such as DV. I’ve since discovered that Sony Vegas Movie Studio ($89.95) does have the ability to import footage from DVD Handycams, although I have not tested this and don’t know how well it works or if it works with footage from the hard-disk-based camcorders (non-Sony). Having worked with MPEG-2 footage and knowing how it’s encoded, I remain skeptical of this prospect, particularly the stability and the quality. I do understand this stuff is not intended for professionals, but I can’t shake the video purist in me that demands a higher quality video format to edit with. I would assume these cameras are intended for those that don’t want to edit, but simply want to shoot casually and have unedited archives on DVD. So if that’s you, this article is not for you. Grab one of those cams and shoot to your heart’s content. If you do want to edit your footage, or may want to some day, and are eyeing these new “tapeless” camcorders, read on.

To put it simply, these tapeless camcorders don’t play nice with most NLEs (non-linear editors) like iMovie. Specifically with iMovie, there is no way to import footage from these cameras directly. You might be thinking this is a deficiency of iMovie and it’s imitators, and I somewhat agree, but before blaming the software developers, you might point the finger in the direction of the camera makers. These new cams record in MPEG-2 format, which is a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. MPEG-2 is a highly compressed format that traditionally been used as a “finishing” delivery format. After you’ve edited and want to burn a DVD, you encode in MPEG-2. This has been the routine for anyone who’s ever shot and edited with miniDV. The camera-makers have decided to speed up the process and encode straight to MPEG-2 while video is being shot. This does take you one step closer to DVD, but it limits your opportunities for editing as well as lowers the quality.

Standard DV, including miniDV, utilizes the DV codec, which is a compressed, but still a frame-based codec. In English, this means every frame is specifically written to tape. Contrast this with a codec like MPEG-2, which basically only writes a few frames per second, and lots of “predicted frames” in between to fill in the gaps. This is similar to the difference between RAW and JPEG formats in digital photography. The result is smaller file size, but as with any compression, you also get a significant quality loss when you decompress the files (say, when you want to edit it).

In my opinion as a “no compromises” video professional, these cameras are a step in the wrong direction. Until they include the option to record in DV, I would avoid them altogether. I’m surprised to see that even JVC’s newest offering in the HDD (hard drive) market, which sports a high-quality 3-CCD imaging system, does NOT include the option to record in DV. There are some major advances in tapeless acquisition happening in the pro video market. Panasonic’s newish HVX-200 records a myriad of high-quality formats directly to a pair of P2 memory cards. There are also several add-on devices available that record to an external hard drive via Firewire.

My fear is that lots of people are snatching these things up not realizing that editing their footage is not going to be as fun and easy (if possible at all) as it’s been with the likes of iMovie and miniDV. The camera manufacturers certainly don’t make it clear that this is not the same game as miniDV, and why would they? They want to sell cameras, and even if they did want to fully disclose this disadvantage, it would be tough to explain. It’s certainly not a selling point in my book.

The pie in the sky: a consumer-market camcorder with a built-in 80 GB hard drive, and switchable recording formats including DV. Frankly, I’m surprised we haven’t see it yet, but I have a feeling it’s due in part to the fact that Sony, Panasonic and the others want to keep selling us removable media like tape.

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