I see that TerraMatrix raised a highly technical issue by saying,

been trying to find an affordable but highly capable video camera

I have a Sony CamCorder.  It seems to take reasonable videos -- but
when I try to use it to capture detail (such as videos of cars in traffic),
I find that the resolution is sub-par -- in fact, unusable for my purpose. 

I have an inexpensive hp point and shoot with a video mode.  While this
camera is capable of reasonable resolution for stills (~4MP), in the video
mode, the pixel resolution is 1/64 of the still resolution = ~60,000 pixels. 
This camera does have a burst mode that will take about 5 images in
sequence -- up to the available RAM in the camera.  OTOH, that must be
manually triggered -- unsuitable for my purpose. 

I have not yet tried an HD CamCorder, but from the published specs it
seems that the pixels per image would still be too low for my purpose. 

I have to guess that the problem facing the camera manufacturers is
that the file size of high resolution still images (4Mp image requires about
a 1.5MBy image file) at 30 fps exceeds the data recording rate of flash
memory.  That would require a file system capable of recording 45MBy
per second -- and to sustain that rate for the entire scene. 

Perhaps there is a camera with a video mode that is full resolution but
at a reduced frame rate.  Of course that might still not meet your needs. 

--
Martin