Hi looked and did research on 1080 i 1080 p and 720 p. The article said can't broadcast in 1080 p . I'm not into broadcasting, but, does that effect dvds i'd like to put out to publicif i did shoot at 108op? I have the xl-2 and want to get a new hd camera without a heavy price tag. I use the xl-2 for railroad videos and have a adobe premiere pro 1.5 . I'd like the camera to shoot in low light and maybe iris control so the video doesn;t get blurrier on playback when in fact it isn't thanks for help .Tom

Hi Tom,

I'm not sure quite what your expectations are, but 1080/720 are HD formats and DVDs are strictly SD. you can write short HD files to a DVD, but they will not be read by a standard DVD player. If you want HD playback, you will either need to write to a BluRay disc for playback on a BluRay player, or to a USB drive.

You can certainly film in 1080p, 1080i or 720 etc, but when you write a DVD it will have to be dropped down to SD format. I sometimes film in 4K, but that still needs reducing way down to SD if outputting a DVD.

Camera choice these days is massive, but Sony and Panasonic both have various prosumer cams that balance pretty good low light performance with wide ranging zoom and manual controls. Bear in mind that generally speaking, bigger sensors give better low light performance, so many videographers have turned to dslr and bridge cameras for bigger sensors and flexibility. If you can manage with a maximum continuous recording time of 29 mins, then the Dslr/bridge route would be worth investigating.

Roger

It would help if you said what your budget is.

i'm looking at putting out commercial dvds for public.Have a xl2 and recording to a data dn 60 machine onto a memory card ( standard def).I guess price range would be as high as $1200-1500.00 depending what i need and don't need. Following is the quality that i'd like to get.

Heritage Unit Roundup Preview - YouTube

The panasonic ag-ac90 might be an interesting camera for the price: Panasonic AG-AC90A AVCCAM Handheld Camcorder AG-AC90APJ B&H

thanks for suggestion , will do some research on it , tom