A lightweight, handheld video camera, especially one that records data in digital form onto a storage device such as a videotape, DVD, or hard disk.
[CAM(ERA) + (RE)CORDER.]
Dictionary:
cam·cord·er (kăm'kôr'dər) ![]() |
[CAM(ERA) + (RE)CORDER.]
| Computer Desktop Encyclopedia: camcorder |
(video CAMera reCORDER) A combination video camera and videocassette recorder in one unit. Sony introduced the first camcorder in 1983 with its Betamovie. It recorded directly onto Sony half-inch Betamax videotape cassettes, but did not play back. Subsequently, camcorders were made to play back, and today, camcorders record and play back using videotape cassettes or DVDs (DVD-R or DVD-RAM).
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| Wikipedia: Camcorder |
A camcorder (video CAMera reCORDER) is an electronic device that combines a video camera and a video recorder into one unit.[1][2][3] Equipment manufacturers do not seem to have strict guidelines for the term usage. Marketing materials may present a video recording device as a camcorder, but the delivery package would identify content as video camera recorder.
In order to differentiate a camcorder from other devices that are capable of recording video, like cell phones and compact digital cameras, a camcorder is generally identified as a portable device having video capture and recording as its primary function.[4][5]
The earliest camcorders employed analog recording onto videotape. Since the 1990s digital recording has become the norm, but tape remained the primary recording media. Starting from early 2000s tape as storage media is being gradually replaced with tapeless solutions like optical disks, hard disk drives and flash memory.
All tape-based camcorders use removable media in form of video cassettes. Camcorders that do not use magnetic tape are often called tapeless camcorders and may use optical discs (removable), solid-state flash memory (removable or built-in) or a hard disk drive (removable or built-in).
Camcorders that permit using more than one type of media, like built-in hard disk drive and memory card, are often called hybrid camcorders.
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Video cameras originally designed for television broadcast were large and heavy, mounted on special pedestals, and wired to remote recorders located in separate rooms.
As technology advanced, out-of-studio video recording was made possible by means of compact video cameras and portable video recorders. The recording unit could be detached from the camera and carried to a shooting location. While the camera itself could be quite compact, the fact that a separate recorder had to be carried along made on-location shooting a two-man job.[7] Specialized video cassette recorders were introduced by both JVC (VHS) and Sony (Umatic & Betamax) to be used for mobile work. The advent of the portable recorders helped to eliminate the phrase "film at eleven" — rather than wait for the lengthy process of film developing, recorded video could be shown during the 6 o'clock news.
In 1982 Sony released the Betacam system. A part of this system was a single camera-recorder unit, which eliminated the cable between camera and recorder and dramatically improved the freedom of a cameraman. Betacam quickly became the standard for both news-gathering and in-studio video editing.
In 1983 Sony released the first consumer camcorder - the Betamovie BMC-100P. It used a Betamax cassette and could not be held with one hand, so it was typically resting on a shoulder. In the same year JVC released the first camcorder based on VHS-C format.[8] In 1985 Sony came up with its own compact video cassette format — Video8. Both formats had their benefits and drawbacks, and neither won the format war.
In 1985, Panasonic, RCA, and Hitachi began producing camcorders that recorded to full-sized VHS cassette and offered up to 3 hours of record time. These shoulder mount camcorders found a niche with videophiles, industrial videographers, and college TV studios. Super VHS full-sized camcorders were released in 1987 which exceeded broadcast quality and provided an inexpensive way to collect news segments or videographies.
In 1986 Sony introduced the first digital video format, D1. Video was recorded in uncompressed form and required enormous bandwidth for its time. In 1992 Ampex used D1 form-factor to create DCT, the first digital video format that utilized data compression. The compression utilized discrete cosine transform algorithm, which is used in most modern commercial digital video formats.
In 1995 Sony, JVC, Panasonic and other video camera manufacturers launched DV. Its variant using a smaller MiniDV cassette quickly became a de-facto standard for home and semi-professional video production, for independent filmmaking and for citizen journalism.
In 2000 Panasonic launched DVCPRO HD, expanding DV codec to support high definition. The format was intended for use in professional camcorders and used full-size DVCPRO cassettes. In 2003 Sony, JVC, Canon and Sharp introduced HDV, the first truly affordable high definition video format, which used inexpensive MiniDV cassettes.
In 2003 Sony pioneered XDCAM, the first tapeless video format, which uses Professional Disc as recording media. Panasonic followed next year, offering P2 solid state memory cards as recording medium for DVCPRO HD video.
In 2006 Panasonic and Sony introduced AVCHD as an inexpensive consumer-grade tapeless high definition video format. Presently AVCHD camcorders are manufactured by Sony, Panasonic, Canon, JVC and Hitachi.
In 2007 Sony introduced XDCAM EX, which offers similar recording modes to XDCAM HD, but records on SxS memory cards.
With proliferation of file-based digital formats the relationship between recording media and recording format became weaker than ever: the same video can be recorded onto different media. With tapeless formats, recording media has become a storage device for digital files, signifying convergence of video and computer industries.
Camcorders contain 3 major components: lens, imager, and recorder. The lens gathers and focuses light on the imager. The imager (usually a CCD or CMOS sensor on modern camcorders; earlier examples often used vidicon tubes) converts incident light into an electrical signal. Finally, the recorder converts the electric signal into digital video and encodes it into a storable form. More commonly, the optics and imager are referred to as the camera section.
The lens is the first component in the light path. The camcorder's optics generally have one or more of the following adjustments:
In consumer units, the above adjustments are often automatically controlled by the camcorder's electronics, but can be adjusted manually if desired. Professional units offer direct user control of all major optical functions.
The imager converts light into electric signal. The camera lens projects an image onto the imager surface, exposing the photosensitive array to light. The light exposure is converted into electrical charge. At the end of the timed exposure, the imager converts the accumulated charge into a continuous analog voltage at the imager's output terminals. After scan-out is complete, the photosites are reset to start the exposure-process for the next video frame.
CCD chips will generally see better in low light conditions because of the CCD's nature of capturing more light in the infrared range, but will severely lack in the human visibility spectrum, thus sacrificing color, on the other hand CMOS imagers do not have great low light capability but will capture the visible spectrum better and thus displaying color properly.
The third section, the recorder, is responsible for writing the video-signal onto a recording medium (such as magnetic videotape.) The record function involves many signal-processing steps, and historically, the recording-process introduced some distortion and noise into the stored video, such that playback of the stored-signal may not retain the same characteristics/detail as the live video feed.
All but the most primitive camcorders imaginable also need to have a recorder-controlling section which allows the user to control the camcorder, switch the recorder into playback mode for reviewing the recorded footage and an image control section which controls exposure, focus and white-balance.
The image recorded need not be limited to what appeared in the viewfinder. For documentation of events, such as used by police, the field of view overlays such things as the time and date of the recording along the top and bottom of the image. Such things as the police car or constable to which the recorder has been allotted may also appear; also the speed of the car at the time of recording. Compass direction at time of recording and geographical coordinates may also be possible. These are not kept to world-standard fields; "month/day/year" may be seen, as well as "day/month/year", besides the ISO standard "year-month-day". And the Danish police have the speed of the police car in the units "km/t" sic (time being Danish for "hour").
Camcorders are often classified by their storage device: VHS, VHS-C, Betamax, Video8 are examples of older, videotape-based camcorders which record video in analog form. Newer camcorders include Digital8, MiniDV, DVD, Hard Disk and solid-state (flash) semiconductor memory, which all record video in digital form. (Please see the digital video page for details.) In older digital camcorders, the imager-chip, the CCD was considered an analog component, so the digital namesake is in reference to the camcorder's processing and recording of the video. Many next generation camcorders use a CMOS imager, which register photons as binary data as soon as the photons hit the imager and thus tightly marrying part 2 and 3.
It should be noted that the take up of digital video storage in camcorders was an enormous milestone. MiniDV storage allows full resolution video (720x576 for PAL,720x480 for NTSC), unlike previous analogue video standards. Digital video doesn't experience colour bleeding, jitter, or fade, although some users still prefer the analog nature of Hi8 and Super VHS-C, since neither of these produce the "background blur" or "mosquito noise" of Digital compression. In many cases, a high-quality analog recording shows more detail (such as rough textures on a wall) than a compressed digital recording (which would show the same wall as flat and featureless). Although, the low resolution of analogue camcorders may negate any such benefits.
The highest-quality digital formats, such as Digital Betacam and DVCPRO HD, have the advantage over analog of suffering little generation loss in recording, dubbing, and editing (MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 do suffer from generation loss in the editing process only). Whereas noise and bandwidth problems relating to cables, amplifiers, and mixers can greatly affect analog recordings, such problems are minimal in digital formats using digital connections (generally IEEE 1394, SDI/SDTI, or HDMI).
Although both analog and digital can suffer from archival problems, digital is more prone to complete loss. Theoretically digital information can be stored indefinitely with zero deterioration on a digital storage device (such as a hard drive), however since some digital formats (like MiniDV) often squeeze tracks only ~10 micrometers apart (versus ~500 μm for VHS), a digital recording is more vulnerable to wrinkles or stretches in the tape that could permanently erase several scenes worth of digital data, but the additions tracking and error correction code on the tape will generally compensate for most defects. On analog media similar damage barely registers as "noise" in the video, still leaving a deteriorated but watchable video. The only limitation is that this video has to be played on a completely analogue viewing system, otherwise the tape will not display any video due to the damage and sync problems. Even digital recordings on DVD are known to suffer from DVD rot that permanently erase huge chunks of data. Thus the one advantage analog seems to have in this respect is that an analog recording may be "usable" even after the media it is stored on has suffered severe deterioration whereas it has been noticed[9] that even slight media degradation in digital recordings may cause them to suffer from an "all or nothing" failure, i.e. the digital recording will end up being totally un-playable without very expensive restoration work.
For more information, see tapeless camcorder.
Some recent camcorders record video on flash memory devices, Microdrives, small hard disks, and size-reduced DVD-RAM or DVD-Rs using MPEG-1, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 formats. However because these codecs use inter-frame compression, frame-specific-editing requires frame regeneration, which incurs additional processing and can cause loss of picture information. (In professional usage, it is common to use a codec that will store every frame inidividually. This provides easier and faster frame-specific editing of scenes.)
Most other digital consumer camcorders record in DV or HDV format on tape and transfer content over FireWire (some also use USB 2.0) to a computer, where the huge files (for DV, 1GB for 4 to 4.6 minutes in PAL/NTSC resolutions) can be edited, converted, and (with many camcorders) also recorded back to tape. The transfer is done in real time, so the complete transfer of a 60 minute tape needs one hour to transfer and about 13GB disk space for the raw footage only - excluding any space needed for render files, and other media. Time spent in post-production (editing) to select and cut the best shots varies from instantaneous "magic" movies to hours of tedious selection, arrangement and rendering.
As the mass consumer market favors ease of use, portability, and price, most of the consumer-grade camcorders sold today emphasize handling and automation features over raw audio/video performance. This segment has followed an evolutionary path driven by relentless miniaturization and cost-reduction, made possible by progress in design and manufacturing. Miniaturization conflicts with the imager's ability to gather-light, and designers have delicately balanced improvements in sensor-sensitivity with sensor-size reduction, shrinking the overall camera imager & optics, while maintaining reasonablely noise-free video in broad daylight. Indoor or dim light shooting is generally unacceptably noisy, and in such conditions, artificial lighting is highly recommended. Mechanical controls do not scale below a certain-size, and manual camera-operation has given way to camera-controlled automation for every shooting parameter (focus, aperature, shutter-speed, white balance, etc.) The few models that do retain manual-override frequently require the user to navigate a cumbersome menu-interface. Outputs include USB 2.0, Composite and S-Video, and IEEE 1394/Firewire (for MiniDV models). On the plus-side, today's camcorders are affordable to a wider-segment of the consumer market, and available in a wider variety of formfactors and functionality, from the classic camcorder-shape, to small flip-cameras, to video-capable camera-phones and digicams.
At the high-end of the consumer-market, there is a greater emphasis on user-control and advanced shooting modes. Feature-wise, there is some overlap between the high-end consumer and prosumer markets. More expensive consumer camcorders generally offer manual exposure control, HDMI-output and external audio-input, progressive-scan frame-rates (24fps, 25fps, 30fps), and better lenses than basic models. In order to maximize low-light capability, color-reproduction, and frame-resolution, a few manufacturers offer multi-CCD/CMOS camcorders, which mimic the 3-element imager design used in professional equipment. Field tests have demonstrated most consumer camcorders (regardless of price), to produce noisy video in low light.
Before the 21st century, video editing was a difficult task requiring a minimum of two recorders. Now, the typical home Personal Computer can hold several hours of standard-definition video, and is fast enough to edit footage without additional upgrades. Most consumer camcorders are sold with a basic video editing program, so users can easily create their own DVD-videos, or share their edited-footage online.
In the first world market, nearly all camcorders sold today are digital. Tape-based (MiniDV/HDV) camcorders are declining in popularity, as tapeless models (miniDVD, SD-card, hard-drive) cost almost the same, but offer greater convenience. For example, video captured on SD-card can be transferred to PC much faster than digital-tape. Hard-disk camcorders feature the longest continuous recording-time, though the durability of the Hard Drive is a concern for harsh and high-altitude environments. Footage from miniDVD camcorders can be dropped into and player on a DVD-player.
As of 2007, analog camcorders are still available but not widely marketed anymore. Even with a street price below US$200, both digital-tape and basic-tapeless technology have reached price parity with the older analog-tape, which suffers many disadvantages compared to the newer units, and all low-end camcorders face market pressure from the rising popularity of multi-function devices (cameraphones, digicams) with basic video-recording capability.
Video-capture capability is not confined to camcorders. Cellphones, digital single lens reflex and compact digicams, laptops, and personal media players frequently offer some form of video-capture capability. In general, these multipurpose-devices offer less functionality for video-capture, than a traditional camcorder. The absence of manual adjustments, external-audio input, and even basic usability functions (such as autofocus and lens-zoom) are common limitations. More importantly, few can capture to standard TV-video formats (480p60, 720p60, 1080i30), and instead record in either non-TV resolutions (320x240, 640x480, etc.) or slower frame-rates (15fps, 30fps.)
When used in the role of a camcorder, a multipurpose-device tends to offer inferior handling and audio/video performance, which limits its usability for extended and/or adverse shooting situations. However, much as camera-equipped cellphones are now ubiquitous, video-equipped electronic devices will likely become commonplace, replacing the market for low-end camcorders.
The past few years have seen the introduction of a slew of DSLR cameras with high-definition video. Although the current crop still suffer from the typical handling and usability deficiencies of other multipurpose-devices, DSLR video offers two videographic features unavailable on consumer camcorders, shallow depth-of-field and interchangeable lenses. Professional video-cameras possessing these capabilities are currently more expensive than even the most expensive video-capable DSLR. In video applications where the DSLR's operational deficiencies can be mitigated by meticulous planning of the each shooting location, a growing number of video productions are employing DSLRs, such as the Canon 5D Mark II, to fulfill the desire for depth-of-field and optical-perspective control. Whether in a studio or on-location setup, the scene's environmental factors and camera placement are known beforehand, allowing the directory of photography to determine the proper camera/lens setup and apply any necessary environmental adjustments, such as lighting.
A recent development to combine the feature-sets of full-feature still-camera and camcorder in a single unit, is the combo-camera. The Sanyo Xacti HD1 was the first such combo unit, combining the features of a 5.1 megapixel still-camera with a 720p video recorder. Overall, the product was a step forward in terms of a single-device's combined level of handling and usability . The combo camera's concept has caught on with competing manufacturers; Canon and Sony have introduced camcorders with still-photo performance approaching a traditional digicam, while Panasonic has introduced a DSLR-body with video features approaching a traditional camcorder.
Camcorders have found use in nearly all corners of electronic media, from electronic news organizations to TV/current-affairs productions. In locations away from a distribution infrastructure, camcorders are invaluable for initial video acquisition. Subsequently, the video is transmitted electronically to a studio/production center for broadcast. Scheduled events such as official press conferences, where a video infrastructure is readily available or can be feasibly deployed in advance, are still covered by studio-type video cameras (tethered to "production trucks.")
For casual use, camcorders often cover weddings, birthdays, graduation ceremonies, kids growing up, and other personal events. The rise of the consumer camcorder in the mid to late '80s led to the creation of shows such as the long-running America's Funniest Home Videos, where people could showcase homemade video footage.
Political protestors who have capitalized on the value of media coverage use camcorders to film things they believe to be unjust. Animal rights protesters who break into factory farms and animal testing labs use camcorders to film the conditions the animals are living in. Anti-hunting protesters film fox hunts. Tax protesters provide live coverage of anti-tax demonstrations and protests. Anti-globalization protesters film the police to deter police brutality. If the police do use violence there will be evidence on video. Activist videos often appear on Indymedia.
The police use camcorders to film riots, protests and the crowds at sporting events. The film can be used to spot and pick out troublemakers, who can then be prosecuted in court.
Camcorders are often used in the production of low-budget TV shows where the production crew does not have access to more expensive equipment. There are even examples of movies shot entirely on consumer camcorder equipment (such as The Blair Witch Project and 28 Days Later). In addition, many academic filmmaking programs have switched from 16mm film to digital video, due to the vastly reduced expense and ease of editing of the digital medium as well as the increasing scarcity of film stock and equipment. Some camcorder manufacturers cater to this market, particularly Canon and Panasonic, who both support "24p" (24 frame/s, progressive scan; same frame rate as standard cinema film) video in some of their high-end models for easy film conversion.
Even high-budget cinema is done using camcorders in some cases; George Lucas used Sony CineAlta camcorders in two of his three Star Wars prequel movies. This process is referred to as digital cinematography.
The following list covers consumer equipment only. (For other formats see Videotape)
Since most manufacturers focus their support on Windows and Mac users, users of other operating systems often are unable to receive support for these devices. However, open source products such as Cinelerra and Kino (written for the Linux operating system) do allow full editing of some digital formats on alternative operating systems, and software to edit DV streams in particular is available on most platforms.
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| Translations: Camcorder |
Dansk (Danish)
n. - videokamera
Nederlands (Dutch)
videocamera en -recorder ineen
Français (French)
n. - caméscope
Deutsch (German)
n. - Camcorder, Kamerarecorder
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - φορητή βιντεοκάμερα
Português (Portuguese)
n. - câmara (f) de vídeo
Русский (Russian)
портативная видеокамера
Español (Spanish)
n. - cámara de vídeo, cámcorder
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - videokamera (med inbyggd bandspelare)
中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
摄录像机
中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 攝錄影機
한국어 (Korean)
n. - VTR과 VCR을 한데 합친 소형 전자기기
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) مسجل فيديو نقال
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - מצלמת וידאו
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