OK I may be a novice when it comes to woodworking, but I spent the last few months trying to decide on a camcorderso i know a thing or 3!!!
I actually had the same problem of which video camera to buy and it’s a minefield in the market at the moment with a lot of new standards being introduced.
Basically you have a choice of Tape, DVD, Hard Disk or Solid State mediums to record onto.
Tape - Been around for a long time, but will die out soon as due to its linear nature. The thing is with tape it still provides the BEST image quality since it’s able to lay down a massive data rate. It’s also the best by far for archive ability since it’s a stable medium. As I said though, its seen by consumers as an old technology, and will die its death soon, I would have bought mini DV but its no good having great archive ability if you cannot buy a camera to play all those tapes back on in 20 years!
DVD - this is what everyone thinks was the breakthru , as soon as they have DVD camcorders, no-one will use tape, but it didn’t work like that..... Why not I hear you cry? Because DVD camcorders were not the answer everyone had hoped for. Each disk can only hold 18 mins of high quality footage per side, so on a day out you’re having to change disks all the time. Also DVD's are actually very fragile, one scratch while your out and you have lost all your footage. One main reason that everyone hated DVD was the poor picture quality, compared to some to tape, DVD is a slow medium and cannot put down a large data rate, so it compensates by compressing the film by removing bits the human eye doesn’t really need to see. DVD's are pretty unstable too only keeping their data for a few years, so people MUST every few years make a copy of their film. I bet there’s a LOT of people with these recorders that have filmed weddings, and births etc and put the disk in a drawer happy they captured it. If they don’t make regular copies then it’s just not going to be there to look at when they’re old!!! One great thing is you just put it into your DVD player and watch the film, no plugging leads into the TV etc.
Hard Disk - A great idea, no tapes, instant use and instant access, massive storage capacity, so what’s the problem? Well HDD are delicate things, if you drop them they break. So imagine recording a weeks worth of holiday onto your camera, then having it nicked or dropping it. You loose it all. If you use a removable medium such as tape or DVD then you have a copy in your hotel room. If you drop it, then although the camera is broke, you can wrench out the tape or disk and still have the film u made. The other thing with HDD is where do you store it all??? Fine if you don’t mind playing with your PC and putting it all on disk but, that’s not my idea of fun.
High Definition - So now we have high deff and again lots of different formats they record in. However the good news is there is a new format that may save us from all this, AVCHD is being adopted by the big brands as a way to separate the recording medium from the final film. It can be recorded onto DVD, tape, solid state or Hard Disk but in the end you get a file that’s easy to work with, copy, stick onto DVD etc. You can buy these now, but there very young and will have teething problems im sure. Also there is no guarantee that it’s not going to be replaced soon by something else because consumers don’t like it.
SOOOOoooooooo what did I end up buying???? Well actually I got myself a hybrid, a Hitachi DZHS300E, its got a Hard Disk for recording lots of film too, but also a built in DVD recorder for backing up what you have filmed. Also you press 1 button and you can make as many copies of the film as you want for family and friends. It expected the picture quality to be rubbish, but its not, its great for me ok it may not be as good as some other models, but I find it FINE, I would deff buy one again. Currys are selling them for £300 now, which is a good price. Its easy, quick and it works!
PHEW that came out longer that I imagined, but its SUCH a big topic these days, not just a case of buying a cart of Kodachrome K40 anymore !!!!!!
