I put this here as it is an audio question .

I'm currently shooting on a Sony HVR V1e , bought a few months back as my way of upgrading from SD mini DV to HD , retaining the same tape based workflow ( the tapes are inexpensive so I can use a new one every time and archive what I've shot , just as I've done with miniDV for years ) and I really like it .

The one downside was that the supplied onboard mic is mono , so I just bought an ECM-MS2 mid-side stereo mic which will give some ambience to my recordings . It does revert back to a mono mic if I unplug ch2 should I wish to plug a radiomic or shotgun mic in for an interview , but it would be nice to be able to always have stereo ambience , even when I have someone talking centre stage . I have a Manfrotto magic arm so I can mount the mic off the camera when I don't want it to pan the soundstage along with the picture ( such as recording a steam train passing by ) .

While I do have a portable minidisc recorder which I could very easily plug my Sennheisser radiomic receiver into ( I have both XLR and mini jack output leads ) , I'd prefer to have the dialogue track on the videotape to avoid having to lip sync in post ; ambience wouldn't always need to be synced at all - certainly in a lot of cases I could just shoot a few minutes of stereo ambience before shooting an interview , then add it to the timeline . Other times if the interviewee is narrating a live event , it would be better to have the background in real time .

I know I could use a small audio mixer to superimpose the interviewee panned centre over the stereo background , but this would severely limit options in post and not a good idea .

While my Sony MZ-R35 does record in stereo , it is just a domestic device with mini-jack input and no phantom power , besides the curse of AGC when recording in stereo , but manual level control in mono mode . I am handy enough to make up cables and do have a couple of AKG B18 battery phantom power supplies so could certainly cobble something up but it would start to get messy with lots of extra add ons everywhere ; a better solution would be an external recorder with XLR inputs and phantom , I've seen the Tascam ones which would certainly do the job , but they look bulkier than I would ideally want , and the small Zoom recorders which I could mount on the camera don't have phantom .

I was toying with looking at a Z7 , which would become my main camera , relegating the V1 to backup/2nd cam as these are now very affordable ( most of what I do is just my hobby with the odd paying job to help buy new toys ; I do have a day job :) ) , then I saw the HVR S270 with its 4 channel audio , which would be ideal for me , but these still command higher prices . Are/were there any other HDV camcorders with 4 channel sound ? I've looked at reviews on Canon , JVC and Panasonic but haven't come across anything .

Any comments re other compact and inexpensive sound recorders which I could use alongside the V1 or Z7 , or any other HDV camcorders besides the S270 with 4 audio channels , please ?

I believe the discontinued Canon XL-H1 offered 4 channel recording in HDV mode as well as SD mode.

While 1920x1080 HD (not HDV and costly), the current XF-200 offers 4 channel recording.

The TASCAM DR-70 or lower priced DR-60 might be worth considering for 4-channel recording in a compact package. They apparently includes features to help with sound sync. However, I've not used either. (I have used other TASCAM gear and been satisfied with it.)

Thanks , I'll look at the Canon range , IIRC you had to buy add on XLR modules for these ?

While I know that a lot of newer kit offers 4 channel recording , I'm not so keen to go solid state , mainly because of the media costs , we use XDCAM at work and SxS cards are outrageous , as are P2 . Besides I had a PMW100 for a short while and didn't like it .

The great thing about a lot of the older kit is that it is now very affordable for hobbyists like myself : I picked my V1 up for £500 , and I see Z7's now go for not much more than £1000 ! Alas , S270's still command more than double that amount - but give it a year or two .

The two Tascam units you mentioned were the ones I'd seen ; the cost is certainly reasonable and they could be quite useful . I'll look into the syncing thing .

The last Tascam kit I used were either 4 track open reel decks or the 133 AV cassette deck with sync tracks .

Derek, I don't know how you would define "compact" or "inexpensive" but is a Zoom H5 (http://www.gak.co.uk/en/zoom-h5-handy-recorder/99515?gclid=CK2a78u-9cICFVHItAodLA8AZw) worth considering? 4 Channels + B/U (-12dB); the X/Y mic is OK for ambient stereo and 48v phantom is available through the 2 XLR inputs. I use an H6 and it's a big improvement on the H4n for quiet recordings. User manual (www.zoom.co.jp/download/E_H5.pdf) link if you want to have a look.

FWIW I went off Tascam after quality control issues on the later Portastudio units, but I haven't heard of any similar problems recently.
I also remember using the TEAC 4 channel open reel recorders:-)

Thanks Colin , that also looks a good option .

The XL-H1 has two XLR inputs with phantom power available out of the box.
The MA-300 mic adapter offered for it allowed connection of two additional XLR mics, but no phantom power.
Alternatively one could use the RCA jack inputs for channels 3 & 4.

The XL1 and XL1s DV camcorders also did 4 channel audio, using the MA-100 or MA-200 adapters, but the camcorders were SD, and the adapters were not rated for the XL-H1. ( The XL2 DV camcorder also used the MA-300 to add additional XLR inputs for 4 channel recording.)

I'll add a side note about camera media. There are many models of HD camera with phantom-powered XLR connectors that record to SDHC cards. Even very high quality, very high speed, name brand SDHC cards are $25 for a 32Gb card now. So the current costs for regular media aren't like the specialized solid state types you mentioned from the past.
I know you said you're doing this for a hobby, possibly not justifying the cost of a "new" camera, but I wanted to mention that SDHC media has become very affordable especially considering the time it saves in transferring your footage.

I am also hoping to get a DR-70 this year to use with a dSLR. So far no one on this forum has mentioned their real world experiences with one yet, just some quick reviews.

Mic on camera = bad, stereo mic on camera = worse. There's at least a thousand threads here explaining why.

Must be my day to be a curmudgeon.

The XL-H1 has two XLR inputs with phantom power available out of the box.
The MA-300 mic adapter offered for it allowed connection of two additional XLR mics, but no phantom power.
Alternatively one could use the RCA jack inputs for channels 3 & 4.

The XL1 and XL1s DV camcorders also did 4 channel audio, using the MA-100 or MA-200 adapters, but the camcorders were SD, and the adapters were not rated for the XL-H1. ( The XL2 DV camcorder also used the MA-300 to add additional XLR inputs for 4 channel recording.)

Useful to know , thanks .

I'll add a side note about camera media. There are many models of HD camera with phantom-powered XLR connectors that record to SDHC cards. Even very high quality, very high speed, name brand SDHC cards are $25 for a 32Gb card now. So the current costs for regular media aren't like the specialized solid state types you mentioned from the past.
I know you said you're doing this for a hobby, possibly not justifying the cost of a "new" camera, but I wanted to mention that SDHC media has become very affordable especially considering the time it saves in transferring your footage.

I am also hoping to get a DR-70 this year to use with a dSLR. So far no one on this forum has mentioned their real world experiences with one yet, just some quick reviews.

I have looked at SD cameras before , still not 100% sold on the reliability of this media , nor archiving to hard discs , which are even less reliable .

A mini DV cassette is only £2.50 or so ; even with the £ to $ conversion that is still a lot less than $25

More so , the HDV cameras of just a few years ago can now be picked up for pocket money ; I couldn't contemplate spending thousands on newer kit , even if I thought it better .

Mic on camera = bad, stereo mic on camera = worse. There's at least a thousand threads here explaining why.

Must be my day to be a curmudgeon.

Can be , but there are times when an on board mic is the only option .

Stereo , done correctly , is far superior to mono .

I forgot to specify that a 32Gb card would record just under 3 hours of 1920x1080 30p 24Mbps footage in, for example, a Canon XA10 camera.

For HDV size 1440x1080 30p at 17Mbps data rate, a 32Gb card would record just over 4 hours. So you would have to multiply the cost of your tapes accordingly to match up.

Also that camera has 64Gb of memory built in, which can also be copied to SDHC cards inside the camera.

I've never had a failure of an SD card, but certainly many of my digital tape decks in various formats have all eventually become unreliable due to long and frequent use.

I haven't shot to tape since 2008 and don't have any regrets about that.

I always backup the SDHC cards to two separate drives, and usually keep the original card indefinitely unless it becomes clear the footage has no further value.

...still not 100% sold on the reliability of this media

Tape has issues, such as drop out and wear if played a lot, but if handled and stored with reasonable respect it lasts a long time (over 35 years for some VHS stuff I have, 50+ years for some audio tapes I have). That of course assumes one buys quality tape, and maintains the players for the media.

SD (and its kin) is variable depending on the brand and lot, and it is volatile in that it is quite possible to trash a memory card (or hard drive) by accident. Other wise there wouldn't be much of a market for recovery software; e.g., Rescue Pro. It is a good capture media, especially considering that there are camcorders that can write a backup file to a second media card while recording (you get two copies as long as the camcorder is functioning properly). The time saved in transfer to your PC is a plus for professionals for whom time is money. However, memory cards are not yet proven for long term storage, and the media comes with similar warnings as well.

My pragmatic view sees that I have, with one exception, never had reason to go back more than a year or so to reedit old projects or recapture old camera footage. But I have transferred old projects from the edit master tapes (S-VHS, Hi8, and DV) to DVD.

For long term storage I am considering the MDisc technology, perhaps the Blu-ray variant, for bulk storage. of important stuff.

The problem with any of this will be finding a working reader/playback system 20 years from now.

- - - - -

Keep the negatives/tapes of the wild parties you attended years ago, you never know when that idiot you had to put up with will run for high public office - and the photos/video will become valuable to the opposition.

I forgot to specify that a 32Gb card would record just under 3 hours of 1920x1080 30p 24Mbps footage in, for example, a Canon XA10 camera.

For HDV size 1440x1080 30p at 17Mbps data rate, a 32Gb card would record just over 4 hours. So you would have to multiply the cost of your tapes accordingly to match up.

Also that camera has 64Gb of memory built in, which can also be copied to SDHC cards inside the camera.

I've never had a failure of an SD card, but certainly many of my digital tape decks in various formats have all eventually become unreliable due to long and frequent use.

I haven't shot to tape since 2008 and don't have any regrets about that.

I always backup the SDHC cards to two separate drives, and usually keep the original card indefinitely unless it becomes clear the footage has no further value.

My HDV footage , when i capture it into FCP comes in as 1920x1080 50i ( that's the timeline preset I work to ) , and if I capture a full 63 minute cassette , the resulting file is approx 42 Gb - I was surprised at this the first time I did it !

My understanding is that HDV is basically the same format as the XDCAM kit I use at work , which uses 25 Mb/s data rate ( some of the newer ones run 50 Mb/s .

Even so , unless you buy the cheap & nasty ones , 32Gb SDHC class 10 cards hereabouts still tend to cost £15 or £20 , we use them a lot for still photography and , while I haven't personally lost one yet , my colleagues have lost data from a fair few ; I have had a handful of CF cards used for still photography fail and don't trust hard drives at all - I've lost a few domestic ones ( decent makes like iOmega and laCie ) ; our Buffalo Terastation raid arrays at work suffer failed drives quite regularly , thankfully we have automatic backups and have never failed to rebuild after changing out the individual drive , but only five years or so in , it doesn't inspire confidence .

OTOH , I have recently pulled hi-8 , Digital-8 and low band U-Matic tapes from archives to copy requested footage over to DVD for clients - the U-Matic tapes must have been 20+ years old , but other than spending half an hour before discovering that my young son had dropped a Lego brick inside my VO-5800 , hence it would lace up but not run , all these tapes have been fine . Back in the 80's and 90's I used to shoot a lot of weddings on Video 8 and then Hi-8 , I kept every single master tape , just in case anyone ever came back saying their , supplied at the time , VHS copy was damaged or lost - no one ever has , but it was something I always said I would do . Yes , one can get the odd drop-out , but these only tend to result in a momentary glitch , which can be fudged round in the edit suite , as opposed to when SD or CF cards fail , losing an entire file . I suffered this with XDCAM about 18 months ago when an entire clip of an unrepeatable event was found to be corrupted and unplayable - this with a new SxS card . Thankfully we had the wide shot from the safety camera , but not good .

What I do get quite a lot of now , is people with old video tapes wanting them transferred to DVD and this is why I try to keep a set of players for all the formats I have used to date . Sadly my EV-S800 and EV-S1000 have both died but I acquired a couple of consumer Hi-8 and Digital-8 camcorders which serve to play tapes on occasion , my HDV camera plays all my old miniDV tapes and I have good working S-VHS and U-Matic players . My own tapes have all been dry stored in sealed plastic storage boxes and have yet to give trouble , but some of the stuff I have had handed to me can be quite 'variable' .

I also have open reel audio tapes going back 40+ years , all playable , although print through can be a problem since I don't bother to spool through them ; my vinyl albums all play like new though even though some are that old too - newest technology isn't always best .

I had the Z7 and then an S270 and they were both about as good as you can get for HDV, the hybrid record function was most useful as you could use the cards as active media and have the tape as back-up or record HDV on the tape and DVCam on the cards. I did have to use clipwrap to import though as the sony plug in never worked on my systems.

HDV is recorded 1440x1080 at 25mbs but I found that the compression was not very good and I switched to panasonic P2 with HPX301 and 371 cameras as the AVC Intra 50/100 codec was 10 bit 1920x1080 and also fully broadcast HD standard.

I also seem to recall that only the DVcam codec is four channel capable and you lose some quality as it is all done at 32k rather than 48k.

At the end of the day it all depends what you wish to do but I never found a problem with the P2 system and the usb hard drives I use as back-up are low cost.

Thanks Gary , yes I find the HDV output from my HVR-V1e good enough ; if I take the HDMI output straight to my TV it shows up as 1920x1080 , and from tape via Firewire into FCP it can be ingested into a 1920x1080 timeline , so it works for me . I've also shot stuff on it alongside a PDW 350 at work and it doesn't look obviously inferior alongside ( considering the difference in cost between the two cameras ) .

I've noticed that recently Z7's now seem to sell for around £1K or just a little more , pretty much what you'd pay for a new high end domestic palmcorder , so the next time I get a decent overtime cheque I'm going to look for one . The S270 only took my interest because of the 4ch audio .

I had been used , over the many years I shot with my DCR VX1000 to having on board stereo sound , then after it died and I picked up my JVC GY-DV500 camcorders , it was something of a culture shock going back to mono sound - something I had moved away from 10 years or more earlier . The camcorders , of course , had 2 channel audio , but I had just never got around to getting a stereo mic ( other than when I plugged in a mixer and had multiple mics connected , which 'could' be configured for stereo ) .

I only had the DV500's for about a year before I decided that 4:3 and SD was outdated and I needed to get HD and 16:9 , and I managed to find a buyer who wanted the 500's to film his football team and they were good enough .

Because we use XDCAM at work , I managed to borrow a PMW100 for a while , using an SD card adaptor , but wasn't impressed with the camera , mainly because of the poor depth of field and terrible viewfinder which made focussing very difficult .

In the end , I came across the V1e for sale locally , was able to shoot a short test tape on it and go home to view it , then bought it .

More than delighted with the size of the camera , image quality , and ease of use , the only drawback was the supplied mono mic . While not a major drawback , I had meant to get a stereo mic for a while - I feel that with most people playing back in stereo , it just adds another dimension to anything I shoot , and while proper technique is perhaps a little more demanding , it can only be beneficial .

If I'm honest , I shot most of the time with the onboard mic back in the days of my VX1000 , and never felt anything was wrong with the sound panning with the camera , but I do take onboard comments made on here that the soundstage moving can seem quite unnatural and disorienting . I suppose if I'm working handheld and moving around then there's little option but to have the mic mounted on the camera , but when tripod mounted then I can either have a separate mic stand beside the camera , which will not move , or mount the mic on a magic arm fixed to the tripod leg so it won't pan .

The above is all well and good as long as I'm using only the stereo mic . Clearly , if I need to mic a speaker , using a radiomic or whatever , then I need more channels of audio . Back in the old days of filming weddings , I used to use my Sony portable minidisc recorder to record pipers as the guests were arriving , but this was just so I could have a continuous soundtrack whilst starting and stopping the camera . These days I 'could' easily record the stereo ambient track onto the camera and plug my radiomic into the minidisc recorder , but this would create work lip-syncing later . Having looked at things , it seems that something like a Zoom H4n would record ambience well enough ( sync not critical ) and allow radiomic ( or shotgun ) to be recorded onto the video tape in sync with the picture . The interviewee can then be mono panned centre , but I will have the stereo base track with ambience - this is just my thinking ; I haven't tried it yet !

If this works well enough , then I'll probably get a Z7 in the not too distant future , and have a second camera for safety , as well as the possibility of getting a wide angle lens ; the advantages being reasonably compact size and using same batteries etc as the V1 . Otherwise I'll hold off for a bit until the S270's become more affordable .

I rarely record stereo to the camera and have certainly never recorded any dialogue stereo in my 35 years in TV and film.

My main stereo recorder for many years was a minidisc with a sony M/S mic and that was used to capture ambience and sound effects for adding in the edit or dubbing stages. I now use a marantz recorder but there are now numerous devices that can be a quick way of getting ambience for use in post.

Virtually all of the drama and doco's I have done for broadcast have always had mono dialogue or natural sound and I have added stereo backgrounds as and when required and there is always a problem of image shift if you record stereo on the camera as once edited the soundstage can go all over the place.

As for HDV it may look like xdcam at first generation but it falls apart pretty rapid once going thru post or transmission networks so that is why it tend not to be used for broadcast, the Z1 was only ever used in SD mode anyway and whilst xdcam is acceptable for most news at 35mbs it is still better to shoot 50 or 100mbs.

The HDMI out from HDV cameras is 1920x1080 but it only records in 1440x1080 as the bandwidth on the tape is just not there for full 1920 HD recording so you end up with stretched pixels.

HDV cameras are cheap as pretty much not many people tend to use tape these days and you can even get pro DVcam DSR450 cameras for next to nothing too.

Z7 and the S270 were as good as HDV got but I seem to recall them being dropped as soon as xdcam became more widely accepted but if you add an external recorder they can still do full HD via the HDMI or HD SDI outputs.

What type of audio to record will depend on the intended final result. Mic on camcorder is generally the least desirable choice for most purposes, but it does provide ambient sound, and helps the sync of externally recorded audio. For the one-man-band shooter on a tight budget it may be the only practical choice. Stereo may be of little value for dialog or point sound sources, but quite useful for recording ensembles. And of course, fix-it-in-post costs time.

Consumer DV also allowed 4-channel, unlocked 32 kHz/12- bit audio, but most miniDV camcorder did not support it. I found it handy for wedding/event work with an XL1.

Products like the DataVideo DN-60 provided a way to add memory card recording to HDV camcorders. Some folks really like it, but they are not low priced.

FCP (e.g., ProRes formats) generally is not very efficient for storage - it is more an intermediate CODEC for editing purposes. However, I have no desire to debate the merits of FCP vs the alternatives.

Thankfully there are many choices, so we all can find and use that which meets our personal needs. Taht is good enough for one may not be for another.