Camcorder dilema

[dennise]

I was already to go get a Sony DRC HC38 or 48 for our trip next months and can't find one. I am told that the Sony hard drive models are the best to get now. Any opinions? From info that I got on this board is what made me decide to get a mini-dv. Are they now becoming obsolete? Any info would be appreciated, I am very camera illiterate.

 

[texbob]

I did a lot of research on this and decided to just go cheap and get a low end Mini-DV camcorder. I saw a few articles talk about Mini-DV being at the end of its useful life but at the same time, those mentions said it should still be around for a while.

Heck, you can still buy VHS-C and analog 8mm tape. I am sure most of those old camcorders are long dead and gone.

 

[blackjackdelta]

I did a lot of research on this and decided to just go cheap and get a low end Mini-DV camcorder. I saw a few articles talk about Mini-DV being at the end of its useful life but at the same time, those mentions said it should still be around for a while.

Heck, you can still buy VHS-C and analog 8mm tape. I am sure most of those old camcorders are long dead and gone.

You may want to go to camcorderinfo.com and see what they have to say.
Mini-Dv(tape) still has life, from what I understand it still offers the highest quality over HD/Disc/Flash memory.

Good luck,

Jack

 

[TinksDH]

Mini-DV is generally considered a better format than HDD/Flash, as HDD/flash records in mpeg-2 format, while Mini-DV records in DVI-AV format. The mpeg-2 format has a fair amount of artifacts if you look close to the image when it is played back. Having said that however, I just bought my first camcorder in 6+ years, and got a Sony DCR-SR200, which is a HDD unit. Why you might ask, considering I just said that Mini-Dv has better video quality?

1. - No tapes to mess with
2. - Can just drag and drop to my PC in a matter of minutes in order to edit; I don't need to play the tape through a converter to get it into the PC
3. - 1 touch DVD burning; it takes all of the content on the camera hard drive and creates a DVD with chapters organized by date
4. - very small form factor

I considered going to a high-def HDD camcorder, but the format it records in is not the friendliest to work with on a PC (ACVHD I believe it is), and my PC currently lacks the computing power.

 

[Groucho]

One thing I'd be concerned about if what happens when (not if) the hard drive fails in the camcorder. Can you replace it yourself and if so, can you use any hard drive? Do you have to trash the camcorder? (I'd assume that the answer is somewhere between those.)

MiniDV will give you quality, HDD will give you convenience, DVD will give you ready-to-view movies without having to process them on your PC at all. It's up to you which is most important.

 

[TinksDH]

MiniDV will give you quality, HDD will give you convenience, DVD will give you ready-to-view movies without having to process them on your PC at all. It's up to you which is most important.

Good summary. One nice feature that the Sony Handycam HDD camcorders have is "1-touch" burning. Even though it uses the PC DVD burner, you don't have to move the movies to your PC at all, nor do you need to process them. You can just burn all of the video clips that reside on your camcorder HDD directly onto a DVD by putting the camcorder in a cradle (included) and push a button. In addition, you can create playlists on the camcorder and burn just those clips to the DVD, thereby giving you some flexibility without having to do any editing on the PC.

I took my 40 gB HDD camcorder on a recent 5 day WDW / 7 night DCL cruise and only consumed about 30% - 40% of the HDD while recording on "best" quality. I think that translated to about 4 hours of net video footage. Just like with my DLSR, I would "chimp" and remove the video clips that I didn't want to keep after reviewing them. So I probably shot about 6-7 hours of video footage and culled out what I didn't want to keep.

Regarding if the HDD is replacable if it dies, I believe that I read that it is, but not by the user as something needs to be done by the service center in order for it to work. I believe that it uses the same type/size of HDD that the iPod classic uses.

With the camera costing $500, I would imagine that if your hard drive died outside of warranty, you're probably looking at at least half of that cost in parts and labor to replace the HDD. At that price, it's probably not worth repairing it the way that technology moves these days. Kinda like if the shutter or sensor died on my D50, I'd probably just replace the whole camera.

 

[cmwade77]

I would strongly advise against a Mini-DV camcorder, I have had three now and they all broke within 3-months of use (To be fair the middle one was covered by a manufacturer recall). We then opted to purchase one that writes to mini-DVDs, we have now had it for about a year and no problems to date, despite abusing it a lot (the Mini-DV ones I was extremely careful with, but we got the extended warranty on the new one, so I am a little less cautious with it, for better or worse). Getting the video into the computer takes about 10 minutes from a DVD on our Mac Mini, I would imagine a more powerfull computer would do even better, the Mac Mini is the first edition that came out, I did upgrade the RAM though. With the Mini-DV camera it would take as long as the film would take to play to get the video into the computer and then time to convert it into a format that the computer can play, with the DVD it simply rips it from the DVD and saves it, so this method is actually much faster, despite what a lot of people may say.

 

[DisneySuiteFreak]

I did a lot of research on this and decided to just go cheap and get a low end Mini-DV camcorder. I saw a few articles talk about Mini-DV being at the end of its useful life but at the same time, those mentions said it should still be around for a while.

Heck, you can still buy VHS-C and analog 8mm tape. I am sure most of those old camcorders are long dead and gone.

No way! I still have an 8mm analog camcorder that I just picked up about a year and a half ago from WalMart -- for about $130. The original one just like it that I had bought in the '90's sold for over $1000 (it had really good features, but I bought mine used for $300) died, so I bought this one to be able to duplicate my videos to DVD. It still works and it's cheap. I looked a few months ago and they still had it at my local WalMart. The video quality is not as nice as my Panasonic 3 CCD MiniDV camcorder that I got last year. That one takes nice video.
I highly doubt that MiniDV is going anywhere soon. A lot of really high end,$3000+ professional cameras still utilize the format. It's the closest thing you can get to using film, without using film. It's the highest thing to HD quality video without investing in HD. Which leads me to another question: What's going to happen to all those HD format camcorders now that HD is dead in the water?
My suggestion: look for a Panasonic 3 CCD Mini Dv camcorder. They are about $400. They are cheap and good and light. Just make sure you stock up on Mini DVs. My local Sam's Club still carries them in bulk. If you transfer over to DVD, you can reuse your old tapes. And stick with one brand of tape, don't keep switching because something about the stuff they use to lubricate the tapes will cause problems if you switch brands as they are all different lubricants.
Sometimes when you go too cheap with the Mini Dv format, the video resolution sucks rocks and looks really digitized and out of focus. Between my old 8mm and my 3CCD, I bought a cheaper Panasonic 1 ccd camcorder, and it really sucked. There were backlighting issues and things I never thought could go wrong did. (Of course the salesman at Circuit City who sold it to me lied and said I didn't have to worry about backlighting issues etc, because this was MiniDV and the video quality was going to be much better than anything else out there. Wrong!) I was spoiled with all the features my old higher end 8mm cam had. I looked at Sony's in a similar price range as the cheap Pana that I bought, and they were all the same way -- made cheap with cheap features. They don't seem to make camcorders with as good features as they used to. To get the so called high end features now, you'd have to look into the prosumer models that cost $3000+. The biggest difference in picture quality between the cheap camcorder and the 3CCD camcorder was the 3CCDs. Now I don't have backlighting issues anymore, the video is great and not digitized looking in low light, etc.
Man, when I look back at all the $$$$ I've spent on finding the right camera and camcorder, it makes me really sad. Now I know, sometimes you have to spend a little more to get what you want because things are being made cheaper and cheaper with less and less features that we were used to getting in the past. It's like we've dumbed down somehow and just accepted that we either have to spend big bucks or get junk for cheap. Sad...
Check out this forum:
http://www.pana3ccduser.com/forumdisplay.php?f=6

 

[DisneySuiteFreak]

One thing I'd be concerned about if what happens when (not if) the hard drive fails in the camcorder. Can you replace it yourself and if so, can you use any hard drive? Do you have to trash the camcorder? (I'd assume that the answer is somewhere between those.)

MiniDV will give you quality, HDD will give you convenience, DVD will give you ready-to-view movies without having to process them on your PC at all. It's up to you which is most important.

Yeah, and don't ever drop your HDD camcorder because that happened to my friend and all his video footage was gone in a heartbeat. No way to recover unless he wanted to spend BIG bucks, and even then no guarantees. Another friend dropped his MiniDv and it was smashed to smithereens. But he was able to get the video out of the transport and play it back on another MiniDV camcorder.
In these cases, it also came down to quality vs. convenience but it was in reverse. MiniDv=higher quality and convenience when something happens to the camera. HDD=less quality and not too convenient when trying to extract video if the HDD or camera fails. And as we all know, it's a matter of when, not if, a hard drive will fail.

 

[DisneySuiteFreak]

I would strongly advise against a Mini-DV camcorder, I have had three now and they all broke within 3-months of use (To be fair the middle one was covered by a manufacturer recall). We then opted to purchase one that writes to mini-DVDs, we have now had it for about a year and no problems to date, despite abusing it a lot (the Mini-DV ones I was extremely careful with, but we got the extended warranty on the new one, so I am a little less cautious with it, for better or worse).

You know, I think the problem of your MiniDv's failing is a symptom of the times we live in. I never used to buy the extended warrantees on anything. Now I do.They don't make things to last like they used to.
My DH and I still have Beta VCRs and VHS VCRs from the 80's that STILL WORK. All of the newer ones we've bought in recent years fail within a year of buying. We even bought 3 (count 'em, 3!) VCR-DVD recorder/players (name brand ones, not the so called cheap stuff) and they all failed within days of the 90 day manufacturer warrantee expiring. The reason for failure? The DVD player/recorder died. VCR still played, but I wanted it to enable easy transer of video from camcorders to DVD without having to go into my 'puter and tie that up. I didn't buy it for the VCR because the ones I have from the early 80s still work! The more computerized parts go into making things, the easier it is for it to break down, it seems.
The manufacturers do not build things to last anymore, they build them with a certain amount of predetermined life expectancy so that we consumers are forced to go out and buy another one, thereby enabling them to line their pockets off of stupid fools who go back out and buy another one because we didn't learn our lesson the last 2 times we bought something and it broke. Nowadays, they don't even fix things that break. They'll tell you, it's cheaper to just buy a new one. Yeah, cheaper for who? Or you should have bought the extended warrantee. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Umm, if I knew it would break on the 95th day of ownership, I would have bought the extended warrantee. Duh!
What's sad is, one day we may need to have things repaired by an old shool techie kind of guy, and he won't exist anymore. Our local Panasonic doesn't even sell parts anymore and our local Sony is downsizing the department and may be phasing it out as well. Remember back when Consumer Reports used to advise us against buying the extended warrantees on products because it was just a way for companies to make extra money off of us and only ill informed consumers bought them? If it costs me several hundred dollars or more now for a product, I buy the extended warrantee. I learned my lesson the hard way.