I don't know the answer, but I know how you can find out.

1 & 2. Today is Sunday. You probably do not have class. Charge up both camera to full. Then start recording, and leave them on the table. Three hours later, check both and see how many hours of video has been recorded.

3. Go to the venue on Monday. Record maybe 5 to 10 minutes of test video. Then check on your computer.

What is the purpose of the recording? Are you going to produce a DVD or VCD or BD. Or are you just making a computer readable file, which you would copy for other people. Who would then edit. Or are you doing the editing. Or is the finished product just a small file uploaded to youtube or vimeo. Only after knowing this, would you be able to know what is the resolution and quality you require.

Even an old minidv camcorder has enough resolution to produce a good dvd. Unless you plan on cropping the video in post production. This is rarely done. Most people just use the zoom button.

Low light condition, yes, your SLR would probably capture more light. Go test and find out for sure.

The terrible sound is because you're recording from so far away. The mic on your camera is recording all the environmental sound. You can't really test the sound before the actual event. During the event itself, the background noise level would be much higher, due to the many people present.

Professional recordings have crystal clear sound. The way this is done is by plugging the camera mic input directly into the PA system. If you cannot do this, an option is to use a separate sound recording plugged into the PA, which records the entire event non-stop. The camera also records everything non-stop. Do not pause even for breaks. If there are pauses, it would extremely difficult to sync the audio to the video again. After the event, you mux the audio and video together. Only after that, do you cut out the breaks/etc that you don't want in your final video.

When recording, be sure that you do not record too loud. Real events could be *VERY LOUD*. Which would result in clipped audio. There's not much you can do with clipped audio recordings. They pretty much make your entire recording useless. It's better to record everything a bit too soft. This can be amplified later. Make sure you're recording the audio at 16-bit.

If the event is scheduled for 1.5 hours max, you should nevertheless have contigency plans for what if it overshoots. Or what if for some unexplained reason, on that day, your battery low light starts to show at the 60 minute mark? You could use one camera as the backup. I would just bring the chargers plus extension cord, arrive early to stake out good positions, and then record most of the event on electric power.

Does the handycam have a power adapter so that you can run it off the electric supply? Bring an extension cable and your problems are solved. (Note that with many camcorders, when you plug in the electric cable, and is using it to record, it does not recharge the battery at that point. Recharging only starts when you turn off the camcorder).

Did the 550D stop because the SD card was full? Or can you just press the shutter again to record another 11 minutes? How many 11 minutes can you record before you fill up the memory card? If that works, you can just stop the recording around the 10 min mark, and quickly start the next one.

Check the resolution you need (talk to your friend and ask what it is for), and record at that. If to upload to youtube, DVD resolution is good enough. DVD resolution is just 768x576 (Malaysia uses PAL format, USA using NTSC format, the resolution is lower at only 720x480). If you record at a lower resolution, the 11 minutes might extend to a longer time.

Worse come to worse, you record the first 11 minutes with the 550D. Then record the next 1 hour an 11 minutes on the camcorder. During this time, transfer the file from the SD card to your notebook. And then record the final 11 minutes on the SLR again.

Might be the file grew too big. Shouldn't be a problem.

Possible, but don't expect miracles ...

Yes. No point recording at 1080p, especially if that lets your 550D record for only 11 minutes.

Skip that. It's very time consuming.

He's talking about still shots, instead of video recording. With normal photos, the shutter is open for only around 1/1000th to 1/30th of a second. But 30 second exposures would be kind of like shooting video, where the shutter opens at the start of the video recording and remains open until the recording stops.

Still, you can snap only 20 of those 30 second exposures? How could it possibly drain the battery that fast?

This post has been edited by dkk: Jun 25 2012, 12:41 AM