Shopping For A Camcorder

Sunday, April 20, 2008

I've been doing the usual dance when it comes to buying any sort of new electronic device. Go to CNET.com, find the latest models, read about all the existing technologies and standards, and lastly try to make a decision on a model that won't be obsolete the day after you buy it.

Here are a couple of terms / acronymns that one might familiarize themself with before making a camcorder or video camera purchase.

SDHC Cards - Secure Digital High Capacity it's a specific format in the flash drive market. They are used in pdas, camcorders, and digital cameras. SDHC cards are designed for devices that are compatible with the SDHC 2.00 specification. Devices built for the 1.0 and 1.1. specification are not compatible.

DTS - Data Transfer Speed. SDHC 2.0 has 3 classifications for DTS including:

• Class 2: minimum sustained DTS of 2MB/sec


• Class 4: minimum sustained DTS of 4MB/sec


• Class 6: minimum sustained DTS of 6MB/sec

AVCHD - Avanced Video Codec High Definition. A high definition video recording format introduced by sony and panasonic. AVCHD uses an MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video code. It competes with HDV and MiniDV.

HDV - High Definition Video. An inexpensive ecording format which uses MPEG2 compression to fit HD content onto the same DV or MiniDV tapes originally developed for standard definition recording.

CMOS Sensor - complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor. It converts light into electrons. The sensor uses 2-D array of thousands or millions of tiny solar cells, each of which transforms the light from one small portion of the image into electrons. There are several transistors per pixel which magnify the charge in analog to digital format using traditional wiring.

CCD Sensor - does the same process of light to electron conversion but uses a special process to move the charge across the chip from which less distortion ensues.

Labels: Technology