Evening folks.

I have recently been having good fun editing some pretty shoddy videos taken from my Sony digital camera, and I have been thinking that it would be quite nice to start doing this with something that is a little bit more capable of catching decent video, than a small digital camera.

I've been doing a bit of reading, and looking around the net (whilst at work, shhhh, don't tell the boss!), and I am leaning heavily towards one of the solid state cameras that record on to memory cards. The reason is I want to be able to record stuff like model planes, rockets etc, but also get some "action" footage from things like mountain biking, kite buggying and some footage recorded from my car once that hits the road later this year.

I havin't got a vast amount of money to spend, in fact it will eat into the "new PC fund", but I do want something that is reasonably capable. I was thinking around £300-400 or so? I would like something approaching HD resolution if possible, purely to future proof it. I wouldn't object to there being an AV input to record from either, but I'm aware that this seems to be quite rare on camcorders for some reason.

I have been looking at the Sanyo VPC-HD1000, and it seems to fit the bill nicely, although I am not entirely sure which reviews to trust. Some say it is excellent, some say it is a bit poor.

Does anyone have any adivce when it comes to selecting a camcorder, anything to avoid etc? any advice on the Solid state camcorders out there would be most useful! If anyone can recommend any camcorders that might sound like they would be ideal for me, I would love to know about them!

Cheers
Andy

Samsung full HD, records Mpeg4 H264 onto sdhc cards

Look here

[Edited on 1/10/08 by JohnN]

Looks very good except for the comment at the bottom about no external MIC input. For me that makes it no good for recording in an open top sports car. I often use an external MIC tucked away from the wind buffeting or even a low sensitivity MIC in particularly noisy cars.

Hi
I go the Sanyo Xacti (Waterproof)
It's not HQ quality. but more than happy with the results.
Very quick start up, and being waterproof you can record in the pyzzing rain.
They may do a HQ one now I've had mine for a year now.
David

I have the Sanyo HD1, which I am very happy with. My only complaint about it is the quality at night time suffers, also the image stabablizer is good if you are not panning round but if you are the image starts to jump. I think the latest versions have sorted both these problems so I would certainly buy the sanyo if I was looking for a new one.

JVC and Sony HD cams are also excellent but more expensive and more bulky.

We have a Sanyo Xacti not the HD type.

+ side its small easy to use and reletavly cheap ( so we tend to take it eveywhere )
- Side image is not as good as some of the lager usits.

But the are perfect for what we need.

regards

Agriv8

[Edited on 2/10/08 by Agriv8]

good camera and decent video lack of external mike makes a problem
get a spare battery from america for 60 pence
45 quid from pixmania

There is an external mike input at the back, bottom right.

Finding a spare battery for it is, however a nightmare. The identically sized and specc'd battery (IA-BP85ST) for its smaller sibling the HMX10 won't work in the HMX20. It seems only Samsung can provide a spare battery at the moment.