Av500 + Digital Mini-cam

[Oracle]

Hi all,

Firstly, impressive forum you guys have here - friendly, helpful and people post as if they were smiling - Kudos

Anyhoo, I have a question for you about the combination of the Archos AV500 and the Archos Digital Mini-Cam.  I run a film company and am looking for light-weight, compact cameras for action-shots (imagine the sort of shots you see from inside cars on Top Gear or motor racing coverage on TV - that sort of thing).

Now a friend turned me on to the Archos devices but neither he nor I have ever owned one.  Does anyone here actually have the AV500 and Mini-Cam and can they give me a good idea of what the best quality captured footage looks like using this setup?  Is it as good as a standard video-camera?  Better?  Worse?  What is the colour-balance like?

We'll be looking to get a few of these so it could be a costly mistake if it's not up to the job.  The quality doesn't need to be "broadcast" quality, but it does need to be good.

Any help or information would be very much appreciated.  If anyone actually has a clip or two recorded with this setup, I'd love to see it.

Many thanks in advance.

[Paris7]

I wish I knew Oracle, I was thinking of one of those PAL camers too.  I use my AV 500 for broadcast work but in a different way.  I use a "travel kit" to plug it to my DigiBetacam test out and XLR out and record to disk too when I'm taping, or dump the rushes off later.  This gives me a copy with burnt in camera time code - wonderful for a number of things!   Beware the trap of using it for framing though it's not accurate while in record - and it can't cope with true 16x9 as recorded input - it squishes.

[VA-Bigfoot]

The Archos minicams are history. I spoke with customer support today and was told that Archos will no longer sell or support them. If you own one and it breaks, they will credit you towards the purchase of another Archos product, thats it!

It's too bad, they could have sold a lot of them.

[Paris7]

Hi all,

Firstly, impressive forum you guys have here - friendly, helpful and people post as if they were smiling - Kudos

Anyhoo, I have a question for you about the combination of the Archos AV500 and the Archos Digital Mini-Cam.  I run a film company and am looking for light-weight, compact cameras for action-shots (imagine the sort of shots you see from inside cars on Top Gear or motor racing coverage on TV - that sort of thing).

Now a friend turned me on to the Archos devices but neither he nor I have ever owned one.  Does anyone here actually have the AV500 and Mini-Cam and can they give me a good idea of what the best quality captured footage looks like using this setup?  Is it as good as a standard video-camera?  Better?  Worse?  What is the colour-balance like?

We'll be looking to get a few of these so it could be a costly mistake if it's not up to the job.  The quality doesn't need to be "broadcast" quality, but it does need to be good.

Any help or information would be very much appreciated.  If anyone actually has a clip or two recorded with this setup, I'd love to see it.

Many thanks in advance.
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Don't do it, there are serious problems with Archos as a company- they no longer reply to customers. Their otherwise great kit is seriously dud in key respects - (see other positngs here)

Archos customer service?    0/10 - yes, that bad.