I bought the Zoom Q3 from Frank, and even though it does great with Audio, the video quality is poor except in really good lighting.

So Sanyo came out with a video that has 3x optical (http://woot.com/), HD quality video, and stereo mics that are 48KHz and 16 bit - obviously not as high quality as the Zoom's, but better than most pocket camcorders.

Do you think that for the purpose of putting video demos on my website that the drop off in audio quality is worth the way improved video quality?

An Amazon review says that it cannot do more than 30 minutes of continuous video - otherwise you have to press record again. I have a feeling that this can changed in the settings menu.

Does anyone have an opinion on this?

Beakybird

I don't see any line input for audio. That would be a deal-killer to me, to have to completely rely on the mics.
DonM

Larry can you post the video in question so we can see what yoru talking about and maybe advide better?..

The Q3 doesn't have any line in for video either. The premise of the Q3 is to combine a cheap camcorder with a quality stereo mic so that musicians can put stuff up on Youtube and do other promotional things. The box of the Q3 says "A little bit of video, a whole lot of audio" (I'm maybe paraphrasing. The only problem is that the video quality is not so good. I've done a handful of shows where the lighting wasn't optimal - but we're talking about a retirement home. How bad can lighting be inside a retirement home? And when I watch the video, I can hardly see myself.

So this Sanyo camcorder looks like it has much better video and a little less audio. It still has digital stereo mics that record at 48KHz and 16 bit. The Q3 can record at 96kHz and 24 bit. But who needs that great of an audio when it's going to be condensed to put up on youtube?

I would say that any musician wanting to make a quality video of an arranger performance should look for a camcorder with line-ins. Sadly, this feature is absent from most of them...

Mikes always leave you at the mercy of room acoustics and the speakers the arranger is played through, and this accounts for just how excremental most arranger videos are, at least in the audio department...

I was astonished that Zoom, an audio company who ought to know better, would market a video recorder to musicians, primarily, leaving off this utterly OBVIOUS feature.