Monday, September 10, 2007
Camcorders
A camcorder is a handy electronic device which allows recording videos, images and audio onto an internal storage device which could be on a 8mm tape or digital form. Camcorders have been around since the early 1980s. The early camcorders were bulky and large in size. Today camcorders are A camcorder can be divided into two basic units, one being a video camera and another video cassette recorder, hence the name is derived by combining both names. Initially the camcorders used analog videotape but since mid-1990s camcorders recording digital video have become the standard.
Camcorders comprise of 3 chief components:
• Recorder
• Lens
• Imager
The light is gathered by the lens and is focused on the imager. In today’s camcorders the imager is usually a CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) or CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) sensor whereas earlier camcorders used vidicon or hivicon tubes. The incident light is converted into video signal by the imager. The recorder at the end encodes the video signal into a storable form. The lens and the imager together are commonly referred to as the camera unit.
There are two type of Camcorders, namely:
• Analog Camcorders
• Digital Camcorders.
Analog Camcorders: Analog Camcorders record video and audio signals in an analog track on a video tape. Every time a copy of the tape is made, some image and audio quality is lost. Analog formats include:
Digital Camcorders
Digital Camcorders record information digitally in form of bytes. The image and audio quality is not affected as it is duplicated from the bytes. Digital video can be easily downloaded to a computer where it can be edited and even posted onto the web. Digital videos usually have a much superior resolution than the analog video. A new class of digital camcorders use internal hard drives to store the video directly. These have the advantage of allowing video to be copied directly to the hard-disk rather than being played through and recorded by the computer.
Widely used consumer Digital formats are:
Camcorders are priced basically depending on the media being used and level of quality. A good quality MiniDV camcorder may be available for under 300 USD, while a hard-drive based camcorder will cost around 600 USD.
Camcorders comprise of 3 chief components:
• Recorder
• Lens
• Imager
The light is gathered by the lens and is focused on the imager. In today’s camcorders the imager is usually a CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) or CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) sensor whereas earlier camcorders used vidicon or hivicon tubes. The incident light is converted into video signal by the imager. The recorder at the end encodes the video signal into a storable form. The lens and the imager together are commonly referred to as the camera unit.
There are two type of Camcorders, namely:
• Analog Camcorders
• Digital Camcorders.
Analog Camcorders: Analog Camcorders record video and audio signals in an analog track on a video tape. Every time a copy of the tape is made, some image and audio quality is lost. Analog formats include:
- Standard VHS (Video Home System): It is a half inch video tape format.
- VHS-C (Video Home System-Compact): It is a compact version of the standard VHS format used in camcorders.
- Super VHS: A superior or improved version of the standard Video Home System
- Super VHS-C: A compact version of the Super VHS format
- 8MM: Is an actual film format and denotes the actual size of the negative film in millimeters.
- Hi-8: It is a high density 8 mm camcorder tape
Digital Camcorders
Digital Camcorders record information digitally in form of bytes. The image and audio quality is not affected as it is duplicated from the bytes. Digital video can be easily downloaded to a computer where it can be edited and even posted onto the web. Digital videos usually have a much superior resolution than the analog video. A new class of digital camcorders use internal hard drives to store the video directly. These have the advantage of allowing video to be copied directly to the hard-disk rather than being played through and recorded by the computer.
Widely used consumer Digital formats are:
- MiniDV (Mini Digital Video): It is a video cassette designed for use in Digital Camcorders. These tapes can be copied repeatedly without any loss of quality. A single tape can hold around 3 hours of recording.
- Digital8: This recording format uses DV compression to store data digitally on 8mm tape. These camcorders are able to run both 8mm and Hi8 tapes, making them a good choice for people upgrading from an existing 8mm format.
- DVD (Digital Video Disc): DVDs are of the same size as a CD but store seven times more data than a CD on a single side. These have gained popularity because of the cheap DVDs available and portability.
- Memory Card: Are storage devices used to store data, such as digital photos or movie files. They storage capacity is less compared to the other digital formats and are available in capacities of 8, 32 and 256 MB.
Camcorders are priced basically depending on the media being used and level of quality. A good quality MiniDV camcorder may be available for under 300 USD, while a hard-drive based camcorder will cost around 600 USD.
Labels: Camcorders
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