Posted by zwsdotcom on 04/16/06 05:03

Bible John wrote:

> Why do you claim that .asf is good?

Er... where exactly do you see me claiming this? The only thing I said
about it was that it's hard to work with on a Mac.

ASF is a container file format, like AVI. It says nothing about the
quality of the contents - that's set by the codec and bit rate. In the
case of the VGA-resolution output from this particular camera, it
happens to be MPEG-4 at approximately 176kbps (plus about 40kbps for
the audio stream).

After recording out to VHS tape, I suspect you could not tell much
difference between a VGA-resolution MPEG-4 stream and a DV source,
depending on the subject matter of course. (I don't have any analog
equipment here, so I can't test this. I have, however, put the camera
on my TV and observed the quality there. As you'd expect, the low bit
rate leads to significantly worse artifacts in scenes with
high-frequency components, particularly low light scenes).

In my case, the convenience of immediate access and not needing to futz
about with huge files, Firewire transfers and transcoding, is worth
spending $100 for this camera. If I was making something that I wanted
to look more professional, I'd use MiniDV for editability and
distribute the finished product on DVD (or as MPEG-4 AVIs if this was
for online use).

I think pretty much by definition, any video that's going to be written
out to VHS tape on consumer equipment qualifies as "quick snap quality"
though.

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