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General discussion

Digital Camera to Record Lectures?

Dec 17, 2004 5:26AM PST

Hello,

I'm a grad student and I'd like to use the video recording function on my digital camera (SONY DSC-P72)
to record lectures, and am wondering if this would be possible?

The longest I have recorded so far has been about 5 minutes, I believe, so I am wondering whether it's even possible to record for say, 2 hours?? Of course, I only have one 16MB Memory Stick right now, so I would need to buy a larger capacity Memory Stick. But I wanted to find out first of all if it *is* possible to record for much longer periods--that is, I wanted to make sure that save for the memory factor, there is no other reason why it wouldn't work? I'm just concerned because I have been reading up on the posts on this forum and I saw some people saying that the battery may heat up and this might damage the digital camera. Is this true of my model, SONY DSC-P72 too? FYI this model does come with sound recording.

Another related question is:

Is it possible to JUST record sound, and not the whole video image, on the SONY DSC-P72? To save memory space is why I'm asking... I've looked at the manual and it does not mention this, so I'm suspecting it's not possible, but I wanted to ask you DiCa-savvy people, just in case you knew of something I'm not aware of Happy.

And of course, I am asking all this because I would prefer not to buy an additional gadget like a camcorder, but hopefully just spend a little more and tweak and modify my current DiCa, being the poor grad student that I am Happy.

Discussion is locked

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Sony P72
Dec 17, 2004 6:38AM PST

According to the specifications I found, the P72 can record to the end of its memory stick.

If you can record 5 minutes of a 16meg stick, it would take 384meg to record 2 hours. (16 x 24).

If the camera is rated to record for the capacity of the memory stick, it should not overheat. Now you need to find out if the camera battery will last for two hour continuous usage.

Some cameras can record sound messages, but they are usually for a limited time length. I can't find that the P72 can do that.

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Audio recording
Jan 24, 2005 12:23AM PST

My Konica/Minolta Dimage Xt can record audio only
and its recording length is limited to the size of the card.

That said.

My Iriver H320 MP3 Player/Recorder 20GB would be a better solution. It has a built in microphone it also can record from line in - which means you could get a directional microphone. Which would be much better than the omni-directional microphones that are built in to most small devices. The recordings are saved as MP3s.

I used to do this with a mini-disc recorder - I had to get a microphone pre-amp for that - but it had a bass rolloff function that was very nice.

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Casio Exilms record audio only
Mar 11, 2005 4:35PM PST

Casio Exilms record audio alone, which is the main reason I am probably going to replace my Ex-M2 with an Ex-Z50 instead of the Cannon SD300, which would be the perfect camera if it did audio recording.

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Also the K.Minolta X50, the Pentax Optio S5i,
Mar 21, 2005 12:56AM PST

and the Nikon Coolpix S1. I can't imagine why more camera's don't have this function, especially when the have audio recording but cap it at 30 secs or a minute.