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How much is a camcorder worth?

How much video can a flash memory card hold when using it with a flash memory camcorder?

  • I'm thinking of getting a flash memory card camcorder. I currently have a camcorder that uses digital8 tapes which works great, but i'm gonna be using it to record a hockey tournament coming up so I'll have to be holding it for 8+ hours. So my reason for wanting to switch is that the flash memory camcorders is much lighter (only about 6 ounces vs 2 lbs with my digital 8). I realize i may lose a little quality, but it will be worth it for the weight. However this brings up a second issue. Storage space. Since the tournament will all be held in one day I wont have time to upload the video to my computer to reuse the same card/tape over again. So I'm trying to figure out how many cards I will need to buy. Is there any set guide as to how much video is stored per gigabyte of memory card??? I know that my digital8 tapes hold 1 hour of video, but I haven't been to find any type of guide that says how much video will be held on a 1 gig memory card (like wise there are now 4 gig or larger memory cards available and I have no idea how much those will hold). I will not be recording in high def, just standard video. Any help would be great.

  • Answer:

    It depends - different camcorders uses different video formats (.avi, .mov, .mp4, etc.) and thus different compression levels. However, you should be able to download a users guide for a particular camcorder that you're interested in - for example, here's the users guide for the Canon FS100: http://gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/0300000959/fs10-11-100nim-en.pdf according to the specs on p.102 - a 4gb SD card can record up to 2 hr. 35 min. in LP mode.

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you may be very dissappointed by the results of using flash memory recording. Your digital 8 system (as with any miniDV) handles motion sports very well. This is because the compression is very light, but more importantly, it is inter-frame compression. ie it makes a complete picture for every frame, every 1/30 second. Mpeg2 compression, used in low datarate systems like flash cards, use a keyframe system and then extrapolate or fill-in a series of virtual pictures. Typically there are 6 virtual frames for every real frame. This works great when there is little motion, either subject or camera. But a hockey game? get real. you won't be able to find the puck, and you can forget slo-mo playback. DVD quality mpeg2 datarate will consume about 2 GB per hour.

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