Camcorders

sheryldoc

Hey,

I want a camcorder for Christmas day however have NO IDEA what kind is best value?

Was thinkin a dvd camcorder seemedbest bet and easy to use.. but hav heard about Mini DV.. whats is this anyone?

You can get mini DV much less that DVD camcorders so is it worth paying less?

thanx in advance

BillScarab

Mini DV is a small digital tape format. Mini DV camcorders are usually smaller than DVD camcorders as the media is a lot more compact.

The main benefit of a DVD Camcorder is you canrecord to disc and then play the disc in your DVD player or computer. Wtih a Mini DV camcorder you need to connec t the camcorder to the TV or computer with a cable (usually firewire or USB 2) to watch the recordings.

I have a Mini DV cacorder as DVD ones weren't around when I got mine and I don't find it a big problem to connect to the TV to watch things. I usually transfer everything to my PC for editing and then burn to DVD anyway.

To sum up

DVD camcorder is bigger and more expensive but very easy to watch or transfer to PC

Mini DV camcorder is smaller and cheaper but slightly less convenient to watch or transfer to PC.

wonka

I bought a new camcorder a month ago, and decided to opt for MiniDV.

I understand that the small discs you need to purchase for a DVD camcorder will only capture no more than 20 minutes (I may be wrong, but I was told this by a few people).

Also, video captured to DVD will be compressed, which means that *some* of the quality is lost. MiniDV is loss-less - what is stored on the tape is what was captured through the lens, with no quality lost.

I know it's likely you will ultimately put it on DVD, but it's reassuring to know you have a faithful copy.

Finally, these days with Firewire (i.Link / IEEE1394), you can output straight from camcorder onto DVD with a DVD recorder, which can be bought for under £70.

Just my opinion.

sheryldoc

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/209703?camp_id=hp-p1sale-209703

jst seen add for this on TV.. any ideas if its worth the ££

I jst want some footgae of ma wee bhoy.. crimbo day.. hols etc.. nuthing amazin.. hopefully the odd clip for you've been framed for sum cash hahah!

movieman

MiniDV is loss-less - what is stored on the tape is what was captured through the lens, with no quality lost.

Not exactly. DV uses about 5:1 lossy compression, but DVD uses more like 20:1 lossy compression.

The big benefit of DV is lossless editing: if you just capture the footage from the camera by Firewire, cut out the crappy parts, and then output back to tape, the final video on the edited tape will be the same as the video you originally shot (tape and Firewire dropouts permitting). DV only needs to be recompressed (with associated quality loss) if you change the video, whereas if you try to edit DVD footage you'll usually end up having to recompress everything.

sheryldoc

this is all so confusing LoL..

Movieman.. is the camcorder in the link I posted abve sufficient for all u jst said?

My laptop hav firewire

movieman

That one apparently only has Firewire out of the camera so you can't output back to tape from the computer, but if you're just going to capture the video, cut out the crappy parts and burn it to a DVD that's not a problem. It appears to come with some basic video editing software too, I've no idea whether it's any good.

BillScarab

If it's only got firewire out you can often get dongles that convert it to bi-directional so you can copy back to DV tape if you want. I got one with my Panasonic camcorder although I've never used it as stuff gets put on the PC, edited and burned to DVD.

The one at Currys looks OK to me but I'm no expert. The key thing is to get a good optical zoom as the digital zooms are crap. That one has a 25x optical zoom so should be OK.

this site has some good info on formats and lots of reviews, not one for the MV901 though unfortunately

http://www.simplydv.co.uk/index.html