no need for a camcorder

says the Gadget Show, that is what they said on a show I just watched on Demand 5. They seem to think that mobile phones are good enough and that SLI cameras also are good enough, well some of them anyway.

I admit even on my Nexus 4 phone I have got some good footage, but it still don't up to the quality of my JVC camcorder and the camcorder is a lot easier to use for zooming in and also easier to keep steady than the phone.

Then there is also space, my camcorder can record for hours as long as I got a large enough SD card and extra batteries, many phones now comes with built in batteries and built in storage. Then we come to the more expensive camcorders with more control on the body, so it is easier to change settings.


Well a phone can be useful as it is something you carry with you, I do not think it can replace a decent camcorder, what do other people think?

Video on phones far exceeds the old vhs-c that many people had. So for the average person probably the case.

For those pushing boundaries and want editing options decent camera/video camera still wins

Editing 1080p can still be a pain.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Editing 1080p can still be a pain.

Even H.264 1080p 40Mbps can be edited quite easily if one uses standard definition MPEG-2 proxy files on a timeline or transcode to an editing friendly AVI codec such as CineForm neoscene

And final render times?

Sound quality capture on camcorders is generally leagues ahead of phones and most digital cameras.

I expect most phones are better than the old analogue camcorders, I had a Sanyo video 8, which while it was better than VHS, it is still not a patch on even my old HTC wildfire for video.
My Canon MiniDV was great quality, and fantastic in low light, better than both my JCV camcorders.

Editing HD files are a pain, but as 4M2 says, proxy files are a good way to work, sadly to do that in Vegas it is all manual. i saw one Video editor that would make the proxy files for you and then do all the swapping and changing automatically, i think it was one I was looking at on Linux.

The sound is better on my camcorder than my phone I must admit, the phone seems to pick up everything, which is not always good, the camcorder is more directional.

Saying that if I want better sound I will use my Zoom h1 as it picks up the stereo and I can record in better quality.

At some point maybe next year I want to get something a little better than my JVC, get something in the £700 range, i want it easier to adjust controls as it is not easy with the JVC as it is all menus.

as I said i have used my mobile phone for video and I have put it into the final edit some videos, and in that context you would not notice the difference as it is not on screen long enough to notice.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

And final render times?

Ah yes, I know what you mean: an eight minute 1080p rendered to 720p 5Mbps VBR .mp4 (2 passes) can take more than a hour on my 3GHz Core 2 Duo machine!

Edited by 4M2 (Sat 03-Aug-13 13:20:30)

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

...proxy files are a good way to work, sadly to do that in Vegas it is all manual. i saw one Video editor that would make the proxy files for you and then do all the swapping and changing automatically, i think it was one I was looking at on Linux.

I transcode all 720p and 1080p H.264 stuff to CineForm AVI these days - the CineForm codec is quite expensive but in the long term it makes life much easier. Also any work that needs doing on HD H.264 stuff with VirtualDub (and AviSynth) can be exported as CineForm AVI which means there is no problem with conforming clips on the Vegas timeline