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Prosumer Digital Video Camera Review – the Canon HV-40, HG-21, HF S21, HF S200

Posted: 24 Jun 2010 09:00 AM PDT

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Canon VIXIA HV40 HD HDV Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom
Canon VIXIA HG21 AVCHD 120 GB HDD Camcorder with 12x Optical Zoom
Canon VIXIA HF S21 HD Dual Flash Memory Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom
Canon VIXIA HF S200 HD Flash Memory Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom

Prosumer Digital Video Camera Review – the Canon HV-40, HG-21, HF S21, HF S200

It's been over a year since the post Prosumer Digital Video Camera Review – the Canon HV-30, HG-20, HF-10 so it's time for an updated review as technology is changing rapidly.

If you simply want to buy a camera to film your kids and connect to your high definition HD TV, then any camera will do. You don't need to read this article.

But there's a lot more you need to know first before buying a camera if you plan on filming athletes in practice or at competition, and what you plan to do with the videos. How about editing? Are you making a DVD? Are you posting to Youtube, Vimeo or Blip.tv?

Teaching a course from How to Choose a Video camera to Producing a DVD playable on your TV or Blu-Ray player requires much more than a single Blog post. Like a Rock and Roll or Pop song from the 1960's, I am going to attempt to do it all in 2 and a half minutes. However, this will be my American Pie version.

On the flip side, you can always buy a Mac and use iMovie and most of this blog post will be irrelevant too. If that was the case, the title would have been called Consumer Digital Video Cameras Camcorder.

Choosing a Digital Movie Camera

In choosing a video camera, here are some decisions I used for my selection process. Remember, the criteria is buying a camera to record Track and Field events:

Optical Zoom. Get the highest OPTICAL zoom as possible preferably over 10X zoom, especially when you film a 100m or 200m start Ignore the DIGITAL ZOOM sales pitch. It's like using Photoshop… you are only as good as the original.
Media Format. Choose the media format of the camera. You can choose from DV tapes, Hard Drive, Flash disk, and now Memory sticks (removable media). Most, if not all Flash cameras, are dual Flash and Memory stick.
Video Format and Resolutions. Choose the final video format of the files. File formats includes MPEG2, AVI, MOV, raw DV or AVCHD (which is a high def (HD) compressed file format like MTS or MP4). You have to decide what you plan on doing with the video files. Are you burning DVDs for sale? Just viewing them on a computer? Or uploading to YouTube or Vimeo?
Light vs. Heavy Cameras. If you DO NOT plan on using a tripod, get a "heavy" camera, as it is easier to stabilize, especially when zooming. If you want a video camera for vacation videos or for producing videos for your Blog, then you might want to consider the ones with removable media ONLY. These are very small and superlight and fit in the palm of your hand.
Batteries. Get a spare battery (adds $80 -$120 to your budget), or buy from a 3rd party battery retailer. Make sure you rotate your batteries. Like the cliché, if you don't use it, you'll lose it. Leaving a battery unused will kill the battery after 1 year or more and will no longer hold a charge.
Accessories. If you already own a Canon camera, buying another Canon makes sense if the batteries or AC adapters are interchangeable. Having a spare charge, like a car charge, comes in handy.
Output and cables. Don't forget the USB and HDMI cables. What are you connecting? Camera to laptop? Camera to HD TV? These will add up, and you can always buy 3rd party cables. Your sales clerk will try to convince you on buying that $80 HDMI cable.

6 Things You Need to Know about making DVDs from Video Cameras

If you plan on burning home movie DVDs, here is a quick summary of terminology on making DVDs from your video recordings:

Record. This is recording the video footage, with the best possible light, sound and focus.
Capture. This process is copying the media from the camera to the computer. Today's USB cable makes the process fast and easy.
Edit. You have to view, cut and trim your video clips.
Convert. The video format you record is probably different than the format required to make the DVD. There are some exceptions.
Author. This is the process where you make menus, chapters, and add any fancy stuff like titles, credits and transitions. Also, you can add sound clips and do fancy overlays like picture in picture.
Burning & Copying. If you plan on selling your final product, then you'll need to mass produce the DVD including the cover label.

Recording Media

The biggest choice in costs is the recoding media.

Canon makes several models (DV tape, Hard Drive, Flash disk, Memory Card, and Dual Memory card and Flash Disk) at various prices.

Check out the Amazon price for the best deals:

DV tape based – Because tapes are cheap, you can store them off site, but the recoding format is MPEG2, not MP4. Pros: lower costs. See Canon VIXIA HV40 HD HDV Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom
Hard Drive based – The cost of these are dropping rapidly in favor for flash disks. In theory, there is more chance of failure due to more mechanical parts, but a flash disk does have a FINITE number of reads and writes. See Canon VIXIA HG21 AVCHD 120 GB HDD Camcorder with 12x Optical Zoom
Flash Drive (and dual removable media) – The advantage of flash disks is writing to the disk is lightning fast. Like a Netbook, a flash disk does have a FINITE number of reads and write. See Canon VIXIA HF S21 HD Dual Flash Memory Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom
Memory card based– The biggest advantage is smaller size and therefore lower costs. It's also convenient at a meet or conference to pop in a new media and start processing the video in a pseudo-live stream. See Canon VIXIA HF S200 HD Flash Memory Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom

Storing the video files requires disk space, but if you use DV tapes or other removable media, you can store them off-site. Much cheaper than an external HD. You do practice disaster recovery, don't you?

Some cameras have a viewfinder and/or LCD display while recording. The LCD mode may be hard to view in bright sunlight from my experience.

Capturing

The term capturing refers to copying the recording from one media to another.

Older DV camera records in raw DV, which can easily be transferred to your computer using Adobe Premier (AVI file output) or Windows Live Movie Maker (Windows 7, WMV format and included in the operating system). Older versions of Windows is called Windows Movie Maker .

My original Canon was a DV camera. The reason why I didn't buy another DV camera was DV cameras take 1 hour minimum to copy 1 hour of "tape" to your computer with a 1394 Firewire cable connected. Basically you have to "playback" the entire video.

The Hard drive and Flash based models are at the mercy of the the USB 2.0 connection, which copies at 400Mb/sec… which is fast. Faster than 1 hour per hour of video with 1394 Firewire, so I am happy. When I record a track meet and publish it on my Blog, the faster I can process files, the better.

So with today's camera, capturing isn't an issue, as long as you have a good cable. Watch for USB 3.0 cameras soon.

Editing Raw Video Files

Here's a little primer on codecs and resolutions first…

NOTE: The term "HD or high def video" refers to videos with a display resolution of either 1280×720 (720p) or 1920×1080 (1080i or 1080p which is full HD). YouTube now supports 1080p HD resolution (as of Nov 2009) with a 16:9 widescreen with an aspect ratio and 24fps frame rate. Some default settings are set to 30 fps. It now uses the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec, with stereo AAC audio.

By comparison, the old video standard was 720×480 or 640×480 (4:3 ratio) MPEG2 and H.263 codec and MP3 for audio. How times have changed.

Editing a video from a DV based camera is easy with Windows Live Movie Maker (Windows 7) or other commercial software.

If you are still running Windows XP or Windows Vista, Hard drive and Flash based cameras with AVCHD files require the "codec" to play onto your computer. The format on the camera is a MTS proprietary format, but it comes with basic video software to view the video on your computer. Thus, you will need to have the file converted to another format such as MPEG4 or MP4 (see below)

There are 3 types of software: free, consumer and professional.

A good Consumer product is Nero when I had Vista. For a good free program, try Windows Live Movie Maker for Windows 7. More on those two on the next section.

Converting or Exporting to another File Format

The standard DVD uses the MPEG-2 format. It is compressed and not great for frame by frame analysis.
If you want to get fancy using Converting or Authoring techniques, without the headache of converting files to compatible DVD formats, you are probably better off buying a $50-100 software package like Nero 9 or Pinnacle Studio. There are literally hundreds of software packages out there.

Everyone is going towards the AVCHD video format, which is 1920×1080 (MXP, FXP, XP), but the standard setting is 1440×1080 SP mode, which still looks fantastic. The higher the resolution, the longer it will take to "convert" the file formats to a lower setting.

NOTE: Converting AVCHD files requires a "good" powerful computer, and it can take hours.

Nero is a good consumer program to sample size down to the MP4 video format.

For FREE, Windows Movie Maker (from XP and Vista), is now called Windows Live Movie Maker (for Windows 7) and that is an easy program to sample size down to the WMV (pseudo-streaming) video format.

Authoring the DVD

The software that comes with the Camera is the ImageMixer SE. It allows you to simply make a DVD playable onto a regular DVD or Blu-Ray player. There are no special effects to this software other than making a simple menu for your different chapter selection. It is limited to about 40 minutes per single sided DVD-R disc.

If you are using a DV method, the simplest program is using Windows Movie Maker in Windows XP. The file format is a lower quality streaming video (not a frame by frame one) but all the older videos on this blog uses this method. It is very easy to capture, edit and trim the videos, add a Title or credits page, and add fancy transitions, like fade in/fade out between scenes. You can also dub or overlay extra audio clips.

Otherwise, consider buying a $50-100 software package like Nero 9 or Pinnacle Studio that will create a fancy DVD. Of course, there are higher end software products over $1000 that professionals use.

Burning the Final Disc and Mass Reproduction

If you have a Blu-Ray player at home, then recording the video in the highest quality and burning them in AVCHD mode using a regular DVD-R will yield fantastic results. This is the big selling point today. You can get about 40 minutes on a single 4.7Gb DVD. Otherwise, you will need an Authoring program that will downsize, compress and convert your video. If you do, I hope you have a powerful computer. Laptops can get very hot trying to process this.

As for copying or mass producing your final DVD, try using LightScribe technology. These are essentially a 2 sided DVD. One side is for the data, and the other is for the "silkscreen" label by simply "burning" the image using a Lightscribe DVD burner. The DVD burners are as low as $28, and the discs are inexpensive.

There's no need to mess around with sticky labels that can produce "bubbles" and look very unprofessional.

Conclusion

In my opinion, in the next year or two (if not now), AVCHD, Blu-Ray optical discs, Solid State & Flash Disk drives will become the norm. Until then, you can choose depending on your budget as older technologies will still be supported.

I hope this helps you in your decision on what camera to buy. If you have any questions, please comment below.

Good Luck.