The button that will probably cause the most grief is the picture effect button; to press it while shooting, you have to rotate the LCD monitor out about 30 degrees. In general, buttons and controls on the camera body are a little difficult to operate; the buttons in particular need a good hard push to get them to perform. The picture effects themselves are an improvement over many earlier Samsung models. When calculating the cost of purchasing the SCL, factor in the price of an extra battery.
The slim nickel-cadmium battery included in the box will operate the camera for about 20 minutes tops—less if you use the LCD screen frequently. On the Bright Side Images shot on the SCL have a warm overall tone, with minimal noise appearing in the darker portions of the scene. Resolution is average for a current-model 8mm camcorder—in other words, not very good.
Manufacturers as a whole seem to have contented themselves with a "good-enough" approach for their latest 8mm camcorders, which is a shame. Its main attraction is its low price, especially for a camera with an LCD monitor. Farmingdale, NY www. Of all the microphone types you can use with video, perhaps the most all-around useful variety is the shotgun microphone, because you can use it on a camera mount, on a fishpole or even hand-held with excellent results.
Beyerdynamic offers a "short" shotgun condenser microphone designed for the rigors of studio and on-location video and film production, the MCE 86 N C S. Targeted primarily at people who shoot video for a living, it offers battery power, light weight, rugged construction and a series of accessory mounting adapters for simple attachment to cameras, fishpoles or pistol grips.
Directionality The rugged physical construction of the MCE 86 N C S is one of the first things you notice when you take the microphone out of the box. Its aluminum body and Nextel finish give a feeling of security while shooting in adverse conditions including those adverse conditions caused by fumble-fingered fishpole operators.
The MCE 86 N C S has a balanced XLR-style connector, which means that you can use long cable throws without fear of increasing the noise caused by interference if, of course, you plug it into a balanced input adapter. The main reasons why videographers tend to prefer shotgun microphones over the standard hand-held variety are twofold: first, they have a highly directional hypercardioid pickup pattern, which means you can aim them at a subject several yards away and pick up only the audio coming from them, rejecting most of the environmental noise to the sides.
Second, they tend to be very sensitive—which, combined with the directional pickup pattern, makes for an excellent solution when the microphone cannot be near the talent. The MCE 86 N C S performs very admirably in these regards, picking up a clear audio signal from three to four yards away from the talent. When shooting on the sidewalk of a busy street, the microphone effectively reduced the sounds of the traffic zooming by to a dull murmur, as long as the videographer kept it pointed about degrees away from the street.
Be cautioned about one thing, though: when you attach the MCE 86 N C S or any other shotgun microphone to a small camcorder we used a mid-level DV camcorder , you may have to be careful when you shoot wide-angle shots, because the microphone tends to show up in the top of the frame.
The EA 86 elastic suspension mount, which is supplied with the mike, also effectively cancels hand noise from the camera. The tonal quality of voices it recorded was crisp, clean and true to life.
Woodinville, WA www. At the time, it was the only DV video capture board on the market; since then, the DV capture marketplace has grown, and the DV Master has gone through several software upgrades. Another benefit of the hardware DV codec: significantly shorter rendering times. Out of the box, the DV Master Pro appears identical to the earlier version of the hardware. Everything worked perfectly on the first try, and the instructions in the manual were straightforward and easy to understand.
The installation software places a handful of programs into their own folder on the Start menu. The most important among these is DV Manager, a very useful tool that includes controls for viewing, capturing, recording and arranging clips. Also included in DV Manager is FireWire-based device control, which allows the user to control all of the transport functions of the DV device connected to the board. This simplifies the capturing of clips almost—but not quite—as much as a batch-capturing system.
A curious thing about the DV Manager interface is the Edit pull-down menu, which at the time of this review contained nothing whatsoever. The DV Master Pro manual states that this menu is reserved for future upgrades of the software; might we see a full-blown edit control for hybrid editing capabilities? The possibilities are intriguing. As it is, the DV Manager allows you to perform a very simple form of cuts-only editing by capturing a handful of clips, re-arranging their order, then recording the sequence back to tape via FireWire.
When the clips on this playback list are ready to go, the DV Manager offers the option of preparing a RAM cache for seamless playback—a nice option that ensures glitch-free operation. Our test system operated flawlessly with the DV Master Pro installed. It never crashed or dropped a frame, and even offered decent render times. Rendering a simple wipe, for example, required roughly two seconds per frame about a minute for a one-second transition. Titles took a bit longer, requiring closer to four seconds per frame to render.
Naturally, systems with faster processors and more RAM will perform much better, but even our minimal system produced workable results. The DV Master Pro still retains most of the minor flaws it had when we reviewed its predecessor over a year ago. One significant flaw, however, which has been remedied since the earlier review is the price.
To anyone who is looking for a high-quality nonlinear DV editing solution, we give the DV Master Pro an enthusiastic recommendation. As technology advances, the average price of video capture boards continues to drop. Iomega, a company best known for its popular removable media products, has jumped into the low-cost digital video capture board market with the introduction of the Buz Multimedia Producer for the PC and the Macintosh G3.
The Buz Multimedia Producer is a good, low-cost nonlinear editing system for the video hobbyist or home movie producer. The system includes a video and audio breakout box, called the Buz Box, that moves the audio and video input and output connections around to the front of the computer where they are easier to reach.
The Buz Box connects to the sound card with two mini stereo plugs. To install the Buz Box, you remove the speaker plug from the sound card and plug it into the Buz Box pass-through connector. You then plug the other end of the pass-through connector into the audio output of the sound card. Installation of the Buz software was an easy matter, taking just under five minutes.
After the software installation was complete, the program played a short video that demonstrated, step-by-step, how to install the hardware. This made hardware installation very simple. The Buz worked almost seamlessly with the bundled VideoWave software for capture, editing and playback.
The VGA preview was sharp and full-speed. The playback was good quality about equal to VHS. We did notice some digital artifacts in the images. Some of the diagonal lines were slightly jagged and tight patterns in clothing developed mild distortion.
To remedy this, we decided to change the compression ratio. The lower settings had less data per frame more compression and the larger settings had more data per frame less compression. Panasonic or any of its distributors or dealers shall not be liable for any damage suffered by Licensee, either directly or through claims from a third party, arising from or in connection with Licensee's use of the Software.
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