Video Camcorder Basics: The Recording Format

DIGITAL VIDEO RECORDING FORMATS

If you plan on buying a video camcorder soon, you’ll be glad to hear that you have lots of choices.  The state-of-the-art with video cameras is so high in the 21st century that any camera you buy is going to be top quality.  Even the cheap ones.

Modern camcorders blow my mind.  Compared to the gargantuan clunkers I learned on, which always shot blue video no matter how much you fiddled with the white balance knob, modern camcorders get fantastic video and are simple to use.  Today, you don’t even need to know about white balance in order to get it right.

Having lots of choices is great, but too much choice leaves lots of folks confused.  So I’ve tried to boil it down for you in this four-part series of articles.  Read on if you’re in the consumer video camcorder market and want to make a smart investment.

Your first decision should be, What Recording Format Do I Want To Buy?

Recording Format:   Video formats can be quite confusing because there are so many.  The technology keeps evolving so new formats are constantly introduced.  The new ones are fantastic.  Ultra fantastic.  Many of the old ones aren’t bad either, but analogue formats like VHS, SVHS and Hi 8 are essentially ancient history.  That’s a good thing!

Deciding what format you want makes a big difference to your ultimate enjoyment of the camera.  Here’s a list of possibilities for buying camcorders in today’s digital market.

Hard Drive : This is a huge leap in camcorder technology.  Forget tapes and discs, now you can record video in a camcorder with a built-in hard drive.  This is an incredible convenience, not having to bother with DVDs or tapes. Depending on how big your hard drive is, you can hold 8–10 hours worth, the video equivalent to about 8-10 Mini DV tapes or more.

DVD Format – Many of the newest camcorders are now recording directly to mini DVDs, not much bigger than a credit card.  These are currently the most popular and best-selling camcorders. If you are going to transfer your footage, this can be a real time saver. Recording straight onto digital like this makes video production easier.

However, this format uses more compression than tape, so your video will not be as high quality as digital tape, like mini DV.  It’s still miles above VHS though and is on par with an internal hard drive.

As DVD camcorder technology has evolved, the biggest drawback to re-coding on disc has been intermittent breaks in recording.  This has largely been resolved by now, and most camera enthusiasts are recommending this technology.

A camcorder that records on DVD or hard drive saves time because transferring digital data can be faster than transferring tape in real time, although if your files are hug, HD resolution, they can take just as long.

Unfortunately, you cannot edit the DVDs directly.  You can play them in most players, but to edit you must transfer the DVD video to your computer to get it in a compatible format with editing software.  Drat!  It is just another step in the process.

The top-rated camcorders using the DVD disc format are the Sony DVD408, Sony DVD505, and the Sony HDR-UX1.

UPDATE:  SADLY, MINI DV IS NOW CONSIDERED AN OBSOLETE FORMAT

MiniDV Tape – The MiniDV tape has been a very popular format for recording video for years.  Mini DV is small and gets great quality. As a consumer grade format, mini-DV is superior to other tape formats.  The tiny cameras were a welcome relief over VHS.  Mini-DV tapes last 60-90 minutes.

Mini DV is good for editing because the quality is high, but you will spend a lot of time transferring your data.  Mini DV is like a bizarre hybrid of digital and analogue video.  Tapes can only be transferred to a computer by playing the tape in real time.  That means your three hours of vacation footage will take three hours to load.  However, you can hook a mini DV output signal up to any analogue TV and watch your tapes that way.

To transfer the Mini-DV digital videotape to your computer, a FireWire or USB cable will be necessary.  The correct one should come with your camera.  Most mini DV cameras and computers today have outlets for both.

SD Memory Card Recording directly onto memory cards is another great leap in digital video camcorder technology.  Using a memory card can be much more convenient that using individual tapes or discs, and they are less expensive than other methods of digital video recording, like having an internal hard drive.

SD memory card camcorders are extra tiny, with smaller video sensors, and smaller lenses. They hold varying amounts of video per card.  Memory card video relies on heavy compression.  Lots of compression will give you grainy video, but many people don’t mind the decreased quality because the small size is so handy.

Thanks for reading VPT.  I hope this helps you understand video cameras better.

Lorraine Grula