Hi yymun bro,
Looks like you are quite passionate about videography and filming too. =)
Just share with you some tips and tricks i've learnt along the way. Actually is nothing much, but hope it gives you a better insight to hd video workflows.
For personal, travel or for fun, a handycam is adequate, even iphone does a great job for this kind of videos too. But for work, weddings, commercial purposes, you need a professional grade camcorder. This is the same reason why ppl use dslr for commercial photo shoots.
The main difference in Consumer camcorders and professional camcorders are the sensor sizes and the bit rate it records in. Tape camcorders usually uses ccd sensors. These are the analog type of sensors, for digital camcorders, they are equipped with cmos sensors, which are also known as digital sensors. Both sets of sensors comes in various sizes. For entry to mid level dv and hdv camcorders, they possess 3CCD 1/3" sensors, for beta comcorders which are used in tv broadcast camcorders, they possess 3CCD 2/3" sensors. For film camaras used fir movie production they use film sensors equivalent to 35mm film size, which explains why film always have shallower depth of field and nicer colors than camcorders. For digital camcorders, they come with 1/3",1/2",2/3". and those large format sensors found in 5dmk2, red one etc, which are close or equivalent to 35mm film size.
Basically, the larger the sensor the cleaner your video quality will be. Smaller sensors usually will generate noise during low exposure shooting due to the increase in gain or iso value which subsequently leads to sensor overheating. Sensor heating ia the cuz of the graininess or noise you see in your videos.
Alot of ppl are wondering why dslrs like 5dmk2 etc are able to capture videos at such sharp and clean and filmic quality, even better than beta camcorders. That is because ppl always overlook at the amount of megapixels it can record. 5dmk2 records at 21.1 megapixels. Digital cams like red one shoots at even higher megapixels. Try shooting and comparing footages shot with 5dmk2 and your legria which both can shoot in 24fps prgressively. Push both cams to the max settings, you will see the difference. And not forgetting 5dmk2 uses full frame 35mm equivalent sized sensors, giving it more filmic look and colors plus shallow filmic depth of field.
Bit rate wise, honestly i do not know whether camcorder records to tapes with any amount of bit rate or not. But when it comes to digital workflows, bit rates are heavily involved. 5dmk2 records at a bit rate of abt 40mbps. With firmware hacks, it can record at 100mbps! The higher the bit rate, the better quality your videos are. Legria i m not sure, maybe 12 at the max? You can record at higher bitrates and render out to a lower bit rate without explicit drop in video quality, but you cant do the reverse.
Post production wise, of course there are many 3rd party plugins out there to touch up on all these, but trust me, it will just make your videos look "artificial" which is something you do not wish to achieve at the end of the day.
As for editing, if u r really into videography, perhaps you might want to try your hands on apple final cut or adobe premiere pro. Of course there are other big names like avid, ulead etc, but adobe and apple are the more commonly used and user friendly ones.
Hope thesr infos helps! =)
Oh yes, hd-dvd format is not ur regular Dvd format, thus it cant be played on ur dvd player. Simple as that.
