What CHEAP camcorder for FCP (UK)?

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What CHEAP camcorder for FCP (UK)?

Hi all,

I work in a college and we have lots of cheap mini DV camcorders which we use with FCP. We find cheap is better cos on our limited budget we cannot afford to replace expensive kit, and also we have so many students doing media we could not afford expensive camcorders for all.

Obviously now mini DV is on the way out we are hoping to gradually go over to flash-memory based camcorders. I am aware that FCP does not handle AVCHD easily, and it seems most (all?) camcorders in the sub-£400 bracket are AVCHD based. Can anyone recommend any camocorders that are not, and that work well with FCP6? If not, what about FCP7?

Thanks,

Sean

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on May 19, 2010 1:44 AM

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Answer 1

hyphen

Level 6

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May 19, 2010 3:25 AM in response to seanofford

FCP can import AVCHD files via File>Log and Transfer. It transcodes them to ProRes. The downside is the ProRes file are much larger in size.

All that in FCP 7 right in front of me

Message was edited by: hyphen

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Answer 2

seanofford Author

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May 19, 2010 5:25 AM in response to hyphen

Thanks Hyphen. I realise we can get round the problem in that way, but I believe the transcoding process takes longer than real time capture, and the hard drive srorage would be much larger. We use iMacs with partitioned HDs and we have sometimes five projects on the go on one machine.

I would much rather find a camcorder which was cheap and which didn't require transcoding.

Sean

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Answer 3

seanofford Author

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May 20, 2010 11:21 AM in response to seanofford

OK so I'm guessing from the lack of responses that there is not a cheap non AVCHD camcorder. Since Premiere Pro CS4 and CS5 work with AVCHD, and we have these at work, then I guess we have to consider using that instead of FCP. Oh dear. Unless anyone who uses AVCHD camcorders with FCP can come along and tell me it's dead straightforward, transcoding does not take for ever, and file sizes are only about the same as movs?
Sean

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Answer 4

May 21, 2010 4:58 PM in response to seanofford

seanofford wrote:
...transcoding does not take for ever, and file sizes are only about the same as movs?
Sean

Transcoding times are directly dependent on the type of the machine, the file size and the end medium. You're using a laptop so it's not gonna leave markings on the tarmac.
ProRes is a very fine format. It is much bigger than AVCHD but we're talking about a master quality professional codec with relatively small size compared to a codec never meant for editing. Try not to confuse the .mov extension, it is a wrapper and can contain from e.g 4k RGB 10 bit uncompressed up to plain ol' .H263-4, and the sort.
If you're going to use an AVCHD camcorder you're going to have to deal with the this process or switch to something like Adobe CS5 which has however yet to prove its robustness. CS4 proved to be very, very, very buggy and unreliable.

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Answer 5

seanofford Author

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May 22, 2010 12:49 AM in response to jazzistic

Thanks for that Jazzistic - very useful. We do not need to use a professional format as our students only do A level and BTEC Media so are only learning the basics of video production. I really don't like Premiere Pro and although we have it at work I would hate to have to give up FCP. I downloaded the trial version ClipWrap 2 which easily and quickly produced useable files for which worked in FCP and were only about a third bigger than the original files, and seem good enough quality for us, so I think this is the route we will take. I guess that ClipWrap somehow wraps AVCHD files in the .mov shell in the way you were saying?
Thanks,
Sean

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Answer 6

trabant

Level 1

10 points

May 23, 2010 3:20 AM in response to seanofford

Take my advice and forget AVCHD for the moment it's more trouble than it's worth. Get a nice little Canon HV40 tape based HDV camcorder and you wont be scrabbling around in years to come wondering where "That shoot has gone" cos you'll still have a tape!

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