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Re: What kind of digital video camera



On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 02:44:19AM +0800, Augustin wrote:
> Hello,
>  
>  I am about to purchase my very first digital video camera. I have never bought 
> this kind of hardware before, and as a KDE user, I'd like to enquire what the 
> linux community would recommend. I want a low-to-mid range camera (up to $500, 
> more only if specific features are worth the price difference).
>  
>  What specs should I pay attention to?
>  Storage?
>  Generally speaking, how is the linux support for digital video camera?
>  What about kdenlive support?
>  
If you get one with an SD card or other removable media, then you don't
need to worry about whether the manufacturer plays stupid games with the
camera-to-computer interface.  Just pull the SD card and put it into a
$10 card reader.

Several years back I bought a low-end Sanyo Xacti for $150.  My dad
bought a higher-end one for around $600.  I am not really happy with the
low-light performance of mine, and the colors seem dull.  My dad's (with
a larger lens) seems ok.  

Those cameras produce mp4 files that ffmpeg tells me are h264 video and 
aac audio.  I can edit them with avidemux on Squeeze.  Kdenlive seemed
hit-or-miss.  If I remember correctly, it choked on the larger files but
did ok with the smaller ones.  I experimented with Cinelerra a bit, but
I think I needed to convert the files to mjpeg or something similar
(very large files).

I haven't had any need to do a large-scale video project.  I mainly am
concerned with creating small clips to share with friends/family.  I cut
out the junk, resize, and convert to a less resource-intensive format
such as xvid, theora, or mpeg2.  For these purposes, avidemux works
fine.

-Rob


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