Hard Drive Camcorder

jeffers1969

Hello,

I have a Canon MV400I which is coming to end of it's life.

I have looked at JVC GZMG21 Digital Camcorder in Dixons for £380.

Hard drive camcorders do not seems to have taken off.

it makes sense to me just to transfer from hard drive to PC,
anyone any experiences they can share?

thanks

movieman

What do you do when you're in Disneyland and you run out of recording time?

With a DV or DVD camcorder you just buy another tape or disk for $5 and carry on. With a hard disk camcorder you're stuffed unless you carry a laptop with you to copy off the footage you've already shot.

I just don't get the idea of hard disk and 'solid state' camcorders at all. They add a whole host of complexity for no reason.

Anne_Marie_2

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=216448&highlight=camcorder

See above thread where there was a bit of discussion re camcorders. After a lot of thought I narrowed choice down between GZMG21 and the 36.....so was pricing them at the time. Left it for a bit and in the process of purchasing the GZMG21 from https://www.cameras2u.com - current price £344.50 free p&p.
Will let you know how I get on.
Suppose it depends on how much filming you are doing, but doubt I would need more than 20GB hard drive of filming on a holiday. Mind you, we are taking laptop with us anyway, so covered either way.

Not much of a help to you at the moment, but thought hard drive was easier for us, rather than carrying tapes or discs.

Cardew

Although I am a complete novice I did quite a bit of research before buying.
(AVforums are very good)

The experts advise that the technology is not yet fully developed and you pay a considerable premium over the equivalent mini DV model.

Also it is very difficult to edit any video you have downloaded to a PC. Even very expensive software packages cannot cope easily.

Repeat this is just what I have read; but I suspect in a few years 'solid state' will be the way to go with 10,000GB hard discs common place!!!!