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Old 01-12-2012, 07:54 PM
ferg ferg is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: The Land of Gracious Living
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My personal opinion of the Q3HD is that the video is very poor - definitely below that of the Kodak pocket cameras. I have a Zi8 which is better, and I also have Kodak Zx3, which I prefer even over the Zi8 for video. The Zx3 can be had for about $100. While it's true that the NOS Zi8s going on eBay are pretty nuts, used ones can be had for around $80.

Again, I think the Zx3 has better picture quality, but it's a slight difference. The Zi8's advantage is that it actually has a jack for an external mic. Unfortunately, the audio processing is still nowhere near that of the Q3HD.

This has been said many times around here, but for about the same price as a Q3HD, you can buy a different point-and-shoot HD camcorder (such as the Kodak Zx3 or Zx5) and a Zoom H2 audio recorder. The ADVANTAGE of this is that you can keep the video camera at a distance while putting the audio recorder closer to the source. The DISADVANTAGE (and a dealbreaker for many) of this setup is that it requires you to sync the audio in post.

I'll reiterate this here though: in my opinion, it's unequivocally worth it, and once you get a handle on it, you'll find that doing it is relatively simple. Fran did a great demonstration of syncing audio with video using Reaper - the process is the same or similar with most video editing software.
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