Thinking of buying new video camera, need advice

[Mokong]

Hey guys need some help.

 

Thinking of getting a new pocket camera before I go on holidays.

 

Was looking at this in Argos Samsung U20 HD Digital Mini Camcorder

 

Price is good and it record in full 1080P HD which would be good.

 

Just wondering if anyone here might know if it is worth it. Is the picture and audio good?

 

Mainly want I want to try find out that I can't seem to find through regular googling is what format it records videos in?

.AVI, .MPEG (mp2 or mp4?) or something else?

 

Need to know this for editing (Windows Movie Maker), at the moment I have a JVC camcorder which is good but it records in a .MOD format at I have to go through a hassle to convert files to .AVI so that I can edit it and I lose some quality in the process. Looking for something that records in a format I won't have to convert before I can edit.

[Mr_Odwin]

.MOD is just a crappy container for mpeg2. You can use ffmpeg to extract the video to an mpg file with no loss of quality and it won't take long either. Something like

ffmpeg -i myclip.MOD -acodec copy -vcodec copy myclip.mpg

 

Get ffmpeg from here.

 

Or ... when you convert your MOD to avi, convert to lossless HuffyUV video and lossless wav sound.

[Mokong]

.MOD is just a crappy container for mpeg2. You can use ffmpeg to extract the video to an mpg file with no loss of quality and it won't take long either. Something like

ffmpeg -i myclip.MOD -acodec copy -vcodec copy myclip.mpg

 

Get ffmpeg from here.

 

Or ... when you convert your MOD to avi, convert to lossless HuffyUV video and lossless wav sound.

 

Cheers Odders.... do I need a certain program to use that ffmpeg

 

(I have no idea what you mean by that code or where/how I should use it)

 

At the moment I use VirtualDubMod and a DivX codec to convert the MOD to AVI as that is the best result I can seem to get but still not perfect.

[Mr_Odwin]

I linked to the ffmpeg program. Download it. Unzip it. Put an MOD video file in the same folder as the ffmpeg.exe then, with a command line window (start>run> type "command" and press enter) run something like the command I gave (all you need to change is the -i filename.MOD and the myclip.mpg which is the output name).

It may look something like this:

 

"C:\Documents and Settings\james.pike\My Documents\Downloads\ffmpeg\ffmpeg.exe" -i "C:\Documents and Settings\james.pike\My Documents\Downloads\ffmpeg\myclip.MOD" -acodec copy -vcodec copy "C:\Documents and Settings\james.pike\My Documents\Downloads\ffmpeg\myclip.mpg"

 

But all the above does is turn the file into an mpg file. They're still not the easiest to edit.