Professional Camcorders

Professional Camcorders

An HDV camcorder is a cost effective way to record HD resolution video. They use a normal DV cassette but instead of compressing video in DV format they use the MPEG 2 standard. Most HDV camcorders use three chip CCDs, this gives the video more clarity and truer colours as each chip is used for only one colour. HDV camcorders usually have a bigger zoom and eyepiece than consumer models and most incorporate some form of image stabilisation to achieve a more professional looking video when tracking or at high zoom. Sound quality is also higher on HDV cameras and there is the option to record in four channel sound, albeit at a lower bitrate. They also come with an XLR connection for professional standard microphones. There are often more manual controls such as white balance and sharpness settings and the user can often set different colour tones to suit the subject. There is support for recording in either PAL or NTSC formats and a video streaming function allows low bitrate video to be taken that can then easily be streamed on the internet. Along with a standard firewire or iLink interface there os often provision made for professional video editing systems with the inclusion of an HD-SDI connection.