Making Movies: New Camcorders Shake Up the Market

Canon recently announced four new camcorder models within the space of just a few days, a move that I believe is going to shake up the market.

The launch of the Canon HV10, which will be available in September, means that Sony isn't the only company offering a consumer HDV camcorder.

With a radically different design than the Sony HC3, the $1299 Canon HV10 undercuts the price of the HC3 by $200--and $1200 is the list price. The HV10 will be available for about $1100 to $1200 on the street once it starts appearing in quantity. That's great news for buyers: Competition helps push prices down and boost the market for new camcorders.

I would expect that Sony will announce price cuts soon that will lower the HC3's price to the same level as that of the HV10, or perhaps even a touch below, with an eye toward tempting consumers who are looking to buy a new camcorder for the holidays. If you are thinking about upgrading to a high-def camcorder, it's probably worth waiting a month or two to see how the prices fall as the HV10 hits the stores and competition heats up.

For those of you with a slightly higher indie-film-type budget, Canon also announced two new interesting high-end HDV camcorders: The $6999 XH G1 and the $3999 XH A1 are cheaper than the professional $8999 XL H1, but have a lot of features that serious moviemakers will like.

For one thing, both camcorders can shoot in 24-frames-per-second mode (which looks like film). Both of these camcorders look like they will be big hits with indie filmmakers: They are designed with the wide selection of professional controls that appeal to aspiring directors who like to take control of their shooting.

Canon also announced a new DVD camcorder that has an interesting feature. The $699 DC22 is a nicely designed, small camcorder that Canon claims is the world's smallest. The new model (which will be available later this month) can write to the new 8cm DVD-R dual-layer discs, which hold 2.6GB of data--double the 1.3GB capacity of their single-layer cousins.

This greater disc capacity goes some way toward alleviating one of my major complaints about current DVD camcorders: You end up swapping discs every few minutes. The DC22 can store 36 minutes of video at the highest quality on a dual-layer disc, up from 20 minutes on a single-layer disc. But while that capacity is an improvement, it's still not as good as that of a MiniDV camcorder (which can hold 60 minutes) or the new breed of hard-drive camcorders, which can hold many hours of video. The new dual-layer 8cm discs are expensive, as well: about $20 for a pack of three. For that price, you can buy a pack of 20 single-layer discs.

This certainly won't be the last camcorder to use the new higher-capacity discs: I expect that the next generation of Sony DVD camcorders will also support dual-layer discs. The recently announced HDR-UX1 can write to DVD+R dual-layer discs, and Sony will probably use the same DVD mechanism in its next generation of standard-definition DVD camcorders. But right now, Canon is the only manufacturer offering this extra recording capacity in a DVD camcorder.

In my last column, I discussed the new AVCHD format, and mentioned that I didn't think the new name was an acronym for anything. A few people have pointed out that it may be a combination of the AVC (Advanced Video Compression) and HD (High Definition) acronyms; Macworld editorial director Jason Snell described it as a "smash-o-nym."

But according to Yolanda Hunt-Boes of Sony, "It's not an acronym." Still, she acknowledges that "when you see AVC, you do think of compression technology, and HD often refers to high definition. Together, the letters make sense as it relates to the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec that is being used in our new high-def Handycam camcorders." So I guess that means you're free to make up your own. One wit suggested Advancing Video Can Harm Devotees, but personally I vote for A Very Confusing & Hard Definition.