Dear all,

First, I would like to say to all the community and developer: what a great job!
Kdenlive is now a great video editor with a lot of nice features.
Thank you all for this hard work.

I would like to buy a new camcorder, ideally a DSLR camera with HD features:
* 1080/25p.
* microphone plug.
* h264 with a lot of banwidth.
* Switchable lens.
etc ...

Could you point out to me some links.

Kind regards,
Jean-Michel

Hi, I still happily use a HDV camcorder (Canon HV10) but I think there is still one "queen" of the video DSLR: Canon 550D (with magic lantern alternate firmware eventually). Nikons have lower bitrate (around 20 Mb/s) and the Canon 7D it's not considered much better (for video work). Canon 5DMK2 if you have money. That's what I read everywhere at least.
Greetings from Italy

http://dvxuser.com/
http://nofilmschool.com/ (?)

Afair the D7000 has lower bitrate but still higher image quality because it uses higher H.264 levels (requires more computing power instead).

But atm Canon and Panasonic are most used.
Nikon does not support 60 fps yet (which Canon does). The aperture can be changed in Live View with either a manual lens or by temporarily leaving Live View (not necessary on Canon). Yet people claim that the Nikons look more film-like.
Also, no live histogram for Nikons.

Best thing would be to get your hands on each of the brands and look what you like most (which takes some time and testing, i.e. more than what is available when shopping), and perhaps read dvxuser.com.

Imho they're all more or less equal. All have pros and cons.


And, thanks :)

"Imho they're all more or less equal. All have pros and cons".
You're right, man.
And what about the man behind the camera? ;-)
I have to confess that, despite the fact I talked only about Canons, I'm really attracted by D7000 and by Nikon in general...

Back again, thanks for your comments.

At my brother wedding, I could test the DSLR of a friend (not one of those you mentioned).
To my surprise, there was no autofocus while filming (contrary to a real camcorder).

When you start filming, you are stuck to your settings: aperture, etc ...
Is that the case with other DSLRs?

No. The D7000 has pretty good autofocus. But still, it is an autofocus which usually does not do exactly what it sould, i.e. when focusing it may lock on the wrong object, over-correct and drive back, and so on. That's why it is usually done manually for DSLRs (and larger video cameras). I once watched a good video about this, but cannot find it anymore currently, but the keyword to search for is follow focus.

edit: Ah, one of them was this one. Starting around 3:00. German, but it should be clear from the images as well.

Granjow is right. Right now we can't speak of real full working AF on DSLRs yet. I guess there are external devices (follow focus) or a function on the Magic Lantern firmware for the 550D (focus peaking)...
From what I read and see, apart from known issues like moire, jello/rolling shutter ecc. DSLR give stunning image quality itself, maybe better than $$$ camcorders but you have to know how to shoot and use always accessories: tripod, steadycam, ecc. ...