Videomaker's 2005 Best Products of the Year (page 2)

Hitachi DZ-GX20A DVD Camcorder ($1,000)

The DVD camcorder market blossomed this year, and we particularly liked the Hitachi DZ-GX20A. Hitachi managed to greatly improve on one of the biggest problems in the DVD camcorder arena: start-up time. Given the large amount of compression involved in DVD acquisition, you'll be surprised at the sharpness of the GX20A. The compact camera comes with an accessory shoe and mic jack, though it lacks a headphone jack and manual audio level adjustments. If you would rather have the freedom to take your freshly-shot media out of the camera and into a DVD player without editing, transcoding and burning, check out the GX20A.

JVC GZ-MG70 ($1,100)

Remember when a 30GB hard drive in a computer was huge? Now JVC makes a camera with that size hard drive. You read that right, a 30GB hard drive in a video camera. The MG70 can record over seven hours of MPEG-2 video at its highest quality. It records Dolby Digital audio, though you should know there is no mic jack, headphone jack or accessory shoe. Don't want to deal with editing and DVD authoring software? Burn right from the camera to a burner developed by JVC and Apacer Technology. CyberLink software is included for those who want to polish their stories.

Sony HDR-HC1 HDV 1080I Camcorder ($2,000)

Everyone is calling 2005 the year of HD (or at least the folks trying to sell this stuff to us) but very few imagined that this could be the Consumer Year of HD. That was until Sony came out with an HDV camcorder with a street price below $2,000. The HC1 is an easy-to-use consumer camcorder with a 1/3" CMOS sensor and a 10x Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar lens.

Alienware Area 51 m7700 Notebook ($3,150)

If you're looking for some of the most powerful computing power available, you don't have to go past "A" in the phone book (do people still use phonebooks?). Alienware's computers, favorites with the gaming community, are naturals for video producers looking for souped-up machines. Truth is, this notebook was more powerful than most of our desktops. You probably want to stay close to a power outlet with this HyperThreaded 3.4GHz Pentium 4 computer with NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 ULTRA graphics, though, as it consumes power quickly. The 17" 1920x1200 monitor and built-in still/video camera round out the laptop nicely.

Kanai Avid Liquid P4 Based Editing Solution ($3,000)

NLE Systems' Kanai system combines a selection of quality parts (including Lian Li cases, Asus motherboards and Pioneer DVD burners) with an interesting but well thought-out selection of software. Our test system, configured with Avid Liquid 7 Pro, was as stable as we've seen and a good value for the money. The addition of Avid Liquid 7 Pro also brings in one of Pinnacle's renowned breakout boxes for importing and exporting video and audio from multiple sources seamlessly.

Creative USB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Video Editor Sound/Video Capture Device ($250)

For those of you who still need a way to get your analog video into your computer, the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS is a great converter plus a whole lot more. This breakout box has just about every consumer in/out imaginable: RCA stereo in/out, S-video in/out, optical in/out, mic in, 3x line-out, SPDIF out, DV in/out and DIN for our European readers. The box also has extensive audio functions for those of you who want a bit more than just an analog/digital converter.

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