Blu-ray camcorder

[Ron]

Is there a plan for such a camcorder, for consumers (and with a standard (compact) form-factor), in the near future?

It could be awesom!
The high capacity cheap media and the efficient H264 codec are ideal for video cameras.

Maybe they'll use small discs - with 8cm diameter instead of 12 (like in the situation of the DVD cameras), but I hope that it'll be double-layer ones...

And if so - would it be a HD camera (HD like JVC's) or a regular one?

If it'll also have 3CCD's, at least 3 mega pixel quality and will be compact - it would be the ultimate camera!!!

[hmurchison]

It's already here in a PRO version. It's called XDCAM

http://pro.sony.com.hk/pr20030826h.html

However you won't see the h.264 codec used because for recording video you want a codec suitable for editing. h.264 is a delivery codec which means it uses interframe compression which makes it hard to make frame accurate edits. Sony's XDCAM is for recording as close to uncrompressed as possible.

If Blu Ray take ahold then you could see an eventual Prosumer cam based on Blu Ray. It would likely stick with MPEG2 because of the NLE support for HDV but it's not unlikely that more than one codec will be supported.

The future is very bright for camcorders. We're beginning to see the migration away from tape and on to new storage. Panasonic will be utilizing P2 which is Secure Digital flash cards for their video cameras. Need more time just pop in a new card stack. The advantage here is no moving parts, you could run with the camera and not worry about jams or laser alignment issues.

The next vital piece will be the MXF format which is a open standard format for ingesting video captured at beyond realtime into NLE or storage networks. Hell broadcasters will likely take a flash card filled with video and edit right off the card to save the ingesting slowdown for time. You'll see some wicked things when this happens like halftime sports shows with lots of edited video being shown from the 1st half etc.

Very cool stuff coming and Blu Ray has a significant part in it. [/quote]

[Blu-rave]

"Grrrrrr looks like i'm buying both a Blu Ray player and HD-DVD. Thanks a lot guys"

I don't think so...! There are too many manufacturers supporting Blu Ray and I think that HD-DVD will go the way of Beta and Divx!

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by Blu-rave

"Grrrrrr looks like i'm buying both a Blu Ray player and HD-DVD. Thanks a lot guys"

I don't think so...! There are too many manufacturers supporting Blu Ray and I think that HD-DVD will go the way of Beta and Divx!

Dell
HP
Samsung etc


Mean nothing for Blu Ray's acceptance. The victor will be the one that get the majors on board. Hollywood doesn't care about the needs of Dell or HP or Samsung or any computer manufacturer. They want to choose the format that is best for them. It could be Blu Ray but it could be HD-DVD. The jury is still out.

[Blu-Wave]

Note that Sony's XDCAM range, whilst not currently high definition, supports 72Mbps and 144Mbps recording and playback on Blu-ray type discs ... 8)

[Ron]

Well, I think it would take "a while" :wink: until such a product will be available - for my humble opinion, maybe 3 years or even more (and I am talking about the prosumer market... A model for consumers would probably be available much later - maybe within 5 years or more...):

First of all, Blu-ray recorders are pretty big (it seems to me that they are bigger than set-top DVD recorders - am i wrong?), so it would take some time to minimize it to a compact form-factor...

And secondly: HD camcorders are just in their early stage (I know only about a model from JVC and a new model from SONY...).

Here is a link about this new model from SONY - HDR-FX1, that I found:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...-Camcorder.htm

Here is a link to a comparison between it and JVC's model:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...1-compared.htm

This prosumer model supports HD, it has 3CCD's (but they are only ~ 1 MegaPixel gross). But it records on casseettes, not on Blu-ray media, it's pretty big, and it costs a lot (~ 3700$)...

I'll have to wait a lot for my dream camcorder to come...

[Ron]

By the way: in my opinion, the ultimate camera should be a hybrid between a stills camera and a video camera, and function good enough (for average users) in both types of uses (this is why I think that a 3 MegaPixel CCD is the minimum requirement), eliminating the need for seperate cameras (at least for average users).

This is another feature that would take a long time to be added... (in spite of the fact that already today there are some consumer camcorders that offer this).

[Ron]

So Blu-ray camcorders will use 8 cm discs. :mrgreen:
This media will apparently hold about 15GB of information (it is single-sided and single-layered).

(Note that the early generations of DVD camcorders used 12 cm discs, but now - they all use 8 cm ones. The form-factor of the camcorders is very important for consumers...).

And maybe the release date of Blu-ray camcorders is not so far away after all... (although it's not known yet).

Here is a link that I found:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...rs-in-2005.htm

[Ron]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

It's already here in a PRO version. It's called XDCAM

http://pro.sony.com.hk/pr20030826h.html

Originally Posted by Blu-Wave

Note that Sony's XDCAM range, whilst not currently high definition, supports 72Mbps and 144Mbps recording and playback on Blu-ray type discs ... 8)

I just want to mention that XDCAM doesn't use the Blu-ray format, but another blue laser one ("Professional Disc™"):

"... Rick Clancy, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications at Sony stated: '... what you will see emerge in time is the Blu-ray format for blue laser disc based home and consumer products including further into the future camcorders. That would probably be based on the Blu-ray format which is slightly different than the blue laser based XDCAM lineup that you saw here today.' "

This quote is from http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...e-04_18_04.htm

[Ron]

Two years have passed - and there are two more years to go:
http://news.com.com/Hitachi+concocti...16.html?tag=nl


P.S.: sorry for using this old thread - I just couldn't help myself...

[Jeff®]

I posted a thread regarding the Hitachi announcement an hour ago here:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=2849

Mods, let me know if that's the correct place for BD video camera news.

Thanks,

Jeff

[georgir]

seeing this a whole two years later really annoys me. we've gotten nowhere. its like the corporations are just stalling on purpose because they can milk us just fine with the old tech for now...