Friday, August 15, 2008
19:26 by FoxTwo
Ok I'm kidding. It's only because I just renewed my contract with them for my Internet services. Seriously speaking, I don't take a lot of videos. Yes I do MAKE alot of movies, but they're all machinima's. For real-life stuff, I hardly record anything on video. Even when I do want to record on video, my Canon Digital Ixus 60 already does video pretty dang well, as can be seen from my video uploads on Vimeo.
The camcorder is a "memory camcorder". In other words, you don't need a DVD, or a DAT tape or anything. It has 4GBs of memory (like a thumbdrive) to record your videos. All videos taken with this camcorder is 720x576 resolution, ie PAL DVD standard. However, you can drop it down to 352x288 (PAL VCD size) if you want. Therefore, the length of video you can record onto its internal 4GB memory depends on the size you set.
The camcorder compresses the videos you record automatically, depending on the setting. You can choose from "Normal", "Fine" and "SuperFine". These settings only affects compression quality, not video resolution. "Normal" gives best compression while "SuperFine" gives the least. The tradeoff is that, the more you compress, the worse the quality is. Even at "SuperFine" setting there's still some compression. I would have preferred one more setting - no compression.
You can also use a SD card as a memory storage too, and you can select the target media before you record your video. It is supposed to be able to use a SDHC card (SD cards over 2GBs), and it says so in the manual as well as the box. However when I stuck my 4GB SDHC card into it, it tells me "card error" and refuse to recognise the card. The card works fine on the PC when I checked it. Pretty dang weird. I will probably borrow an 8GB or a a16GB SDHC card from someone just to check the camcorder for technical defects in not being able to detect a SDHC card.
On average, you should be able to record about 2 to 3 hours worth of video on the camcorder, depending on the various settings you have selected. The battery life itself, is just 2 hours. With that in mind, I configured the settings on the camcorder to record just about 2 hours worth of video onto its internal 4GB memory (besides I don't have any SDHC cards bigger than 4GB anyway).
The videos taken with the camcorder are, to put it mildly, disappointing. First of all, they look ok on the LCD screen when you're recording them. However when you view them on the PC, they're all too dark.After running the video through VirtualDub to brighten it up, you start to see artifacts when the video is playing, due to the compression. I have no idea what sort of engine they used to compress the video, but it's very badly done in my opinion.
The camcorder does come with video related software but I never installed any of them. I already have my own tools to edit and make movies, I don't need yet-another-beginner-friendly one cluttering up my harddisk.
Comparing the video quality taken with my digital camera, it's nowhere near. My digital camera can take videos up to 640x480 resolution, and because it has no compression whatsoever, the pictures look CLEAR and SHARP on the PC. The downside is, the camera is a pre-SDHC one, so the maximum size card I can stick into it is a 2GB one. The camera itself does not have any internal memory. Generally though, I have it set to a 320x240 resolution - NTSC VCD size, so that I can record more minutes onto the 2GB card in the camera. Even so, at 320x240, the quality is pretty good. You can see the quality for yourself here at Vimeo - all (except the upside down fish) were taken with the Canon digital camera at 320x240 resolution.
Actually I had wanted to upload a sample video taken with the Samsung camcorder to compare the quality of the video from it, to the one taken with my Canon digital camera. However Vimeo was doing some work on their website and I couldn't do it last night.
However, trust me. The video quality from the Samsung camcorder is disappointing. As a dedicated video recording device, the picture quality is ho-hum. I would probably continue using my Canon digital camera to record video.
Good thing I got it free - if I had spent money on getting this camcorder I would have kicked myself.
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19:26 by FoxTwo
My Free Samsung VP-MX10 Camcorder
Ok I'm kidding. It's only because I just renewed my contract with them for my Internet services. Seriously speaking, I don't take a lot of videos. Yes I do MAKE alot of movies, but they're all machinima's. For real-life stuff, I hardly record anything on video. Even when I do want to record on video, my Canon Digital Ixus 60 already does video pretty dang well, as can be seen from my video uploads on Vimeo.
The camcorder is a "memory camcorder". In other words, you don't need a DVD, or a DAT tape or anything. It has 4GBs of memory (like a thumbdrive) to record your videos. All videos taken with this camcorder is 720x576 resolution, ie PAL DVD standard. However, you can drop it down to 352x288 (PAL VCD size) if you want. Therefore, the length of video you can record onto its internal 4GB memory depends on the size you set.
The camcorder compresses the videos you record automatically, depending on the setting. You can choose from "Normal", "Fine" and "SuperFine". These settings only affects compression quality, not video resolution. "Normal" gives best compression while "SuperFine" gives the least. The tradeoff is that, the more you compress, the worse the quality is. Even at "SuperFine" setting there's still some compression. I would have preferred one more setting - no compression.
You can also use a SD card as a memory storage too, and you can select the target media before you record your video. It is supposed to be able to use a SDHC card (SD cards over 2GBs), and it says so in the manual as well as the box. However when I stuck my 4GB SDHC card into it, it tells me "card error" and refuse to recognise the card. The card works fine on the PC when I checked it. Pretty dang weird. I will probably borrow an 8GB or a a16GB SDHC card from someone just to check the camcorder for technical defects in not being able to detect a SDHC card.
On average, you should be able to record about 2 to 3 hours worth of video on the camcorder, depending on the various settings you have selected. The battery life itself, is just 2 hours. With that in mind, I configured the settings on the camcorder to record just about 2 hours worth of video onto its internal 4GB memory (besides I don't have any SDHC cards bigger than 4GB anyway).
The videos taken with the camcorder are, to put it mildly, disappointing. First of all, they look ok on the LCD screen when you're recording them. However when you view them on the PC, they're all too dark.After running the video through VirtualDub to brighten it up, you start to see artifacts when the video is playing, due to the compression. I have no idea what sort of engine they used to compress the video, but it's very badly done in my opinion.
The camcorder does come with video related software but I never installed any of them. I already have my own tools to edit and make movies, I don't need yet-another-beginner-friendly one cluttering up my harddisk.
Comparing the video quality taken with my digital camera, it's nowhere near. My digital camera can take videos up to 640x480 resolution, and because it has no compression whatsoever, the pictures look CLEAR and SHARP on the PC. The downside is, the camera is a pre-SDHC one, so the maximum size card I can stick into it is a 2GB one. The camera itself does not have any internal memory. Generally though, I have it set to a 320x240 resolution - NTSC VCD size, so that I can record more minutes onto the 2GB card in the camera. Even so, at 320x240, the quality is pretty good. You can see the quality for yourself here at Vimeo - all (except the upside down fish) were taken with the Canon digital camera at 320x240 resolution.
Actually I had wanted to upload a sample video taken with the Samsung camcorder to compare the quality of the video from it, to the one taken with my Canon digital camera. However Vimeo was doing some work on their website and I couldn't do it last night.
However, trust me. The video quality from the Samsung camcorder is disappointing. As a dedicated video recording device, the picture quality is ho-hum. I would probably continue using my Canon digital camera to record video.
Good thing I got it free - if I had spent money on getting this camcorder I would have kicked myself.
