How to Buy a Camcorder

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Christopher Rokosz, actor, director, producer and I'm going to tell you how to buy a camcorder. First of all, congratulations on your decision. Buying a camcorder is an awesome, awesome thing. I make my money with them everyday. I love it, they're like an extension of my body. Choosing the right one though for the right application is important. What are you going to do with it? Are you going to make home movies? Are you going to make videos for YouTube on the Internet? Are you going to make independent films? Are you going to make feature films? That's going to dictate a lot. The other thing that dictates a lot, as always, is your budget. How much cash do you have to spend? You can get some basic ones in the three hundred dollar range, in the eight hundred dollar range, in the twelve hundred, three thousand, eight thousand and six thousand, not quite in order there but you get what I'm saying, good decisions to be made in any category. Alright, my opinion on what to look for in a good camcorder; if you're doing it for home video then auto, auto, auto is your best bet, fully automatic. And you may even consider a one that goes right to DVD. Now that's for somebody who just wants to, to keep their memories. This is not about, it doesn't make it easy necessarily to edit and post produce. What the DVD burning ones are nice for is you take it out of the camera and you place it in to something that everybody has, a DVD player so you can start watching it. So if you're using it the way your parents used their Super8 movie cameras then that's the way to do it. You could of course, you can digitize it, edit it, but it's not its primary function. If you are wanting to do some editing and some posting and getting it digital, but make sure it's got a fire wire cable. Some of them have HDMI but fire wire's going to be the easiest to plug in to the camera and then right in to your computer and begin the post production process. The other thing that I recommend is to get it if you can, at very least, a three chip camera. O.k., and what three chip means is that there's an individual pick up chip or brain for each of the three colors of the video spectrum, which is R, G and B, red, blue and green. Those three colors make up the spectrum that we use for a video. That'll offer you a lot of information there. The other thing is you want to get the very best glass you can, o.k. And by glass, I mean lens, alright. You can see here with these two different ones there is a varying difference between them and you know, yes. But the biggest thing is the size of their lens, alright. The better the lens the better the pick up. This one could have comparable chips to this one but if it's not getting the picture in, in the same way it's not going to have the same resolution and fidelity. The other that you're going to notice, that this one has a professional camera versus the other one, is ability to push buttons and do things manually. This one you're going to go through as far in through menu functions to make it happen. Whatever you choose, have fun with it. I'm Chris Rokosz and we'll see you in Hollywood."