New Hard Drive Camcorders???

[Kitts21]

I was looking in to buying one of these but would like to hear your points of views on them. That is if you own one or know someone who does. I currently have a Samsung camcorder and it's a POS, that I really have not had good luck with. Any info would be great. Thanks

 

[Groucho]

Farmington, eh? Not far from here...

There's a couple problems with hard drive camcorders...

1) Quality is worse (due to higher compression) than a miniDV camcorder, and
2) hard drives are not reliable, so at some point, the drive in the camcorder will fail, and probably take all your video with it.

The latter point might not be such a huge deal as it's the same problem anything with a hard drive in it, but it's worth noting... this is an issue you likely won't have with a miniDV or miniDVD camcorder. As for quality, miniDVD will have the similar lower quality, and both will probably be somewhat more difficult to edit, whereas nearly every video editing application will support miniDV format.

Of course, you do gain in convenience with a hard drive. Only you can decide what's the best choice for your needs.

 

[cryssi]

DH's cousin's husband got one. I haven't seen the video yet, but when I do, I'll give you my opinion...

 

[0bli0]

fwiw - we picked one up for our trip to china/tibet and for vids of the kids. we have both an 8mm digital and a mini-dv but we wanted something really small. we are far less critical of video than we are of photographs, since they're generally looked at a fraction of the time that our photos are.

i was surprised at the video quality - it's straight mpeg2 so it's easy to edit in fcp/ulead (albeit one generation of compression from dv). also we can record directly to sd card, so it's easy to put the card in the card reader and view immediately on pc or mac. the 3 year replacement warranty was only $40 bucks so we figured it's piece of mind over the drive (or anything else). we offload all of the video so drive failure won't be a major lost.

dw is the one who normally uses it and she's been happy so it's been worth it.

 

[AZ JazzyJ]

Farmington, eh? Not far from here...

There's a couple problems with hard drive camcorders...

1) Quality is worse (due to higher compression) than a miniDV camcorder, and
2) hard drives are not reliable, so at some point, the drive in the camcorder will fail, and probably take all your video with it.

The latter point might not be such a huge deal as it's the same problem anything with a hard drive in it, but it's worth noting... this is an issue you likely won't have with a miniDV or miniDVD camcorder. As for quality, miniDVD will have the similar lower quality, and both will probably be somewhat more difficult to edit, whereas nearly every video editing application will support miniDV format.

Of course, you do gain in convenience with a hard drive. Only you can decide what's the best choice for your needs.

I am not sure I totally agree with your points. With today's technology I believe tape to be much more fragile than a solid state drive. The analog nature of tape when recording high definition can introduce artifacts which are just as painful to manage as compression. Many of the HD camera manufacturers are moving away from tape and recommending drives for their reliability. Depending on the camera, most of the higher end video cameras I have looked into allows recording of raw HD footage without compression and most of the NLE (Non-linear editing) systems read this high definition content directly so there is no conversion to get it into post production. It has been my experience that transferring footage from a drive to an editing workstation is substantially faster than importing from tape. Drives also allow you to randomly seek for footage versus the linear retrieval that is required by tape.

My experiences have been limited to the higher end HD cameras so perhaps this is not the case with the consumer cameras but I don't think you can totally discount drives as a storage medium for video.

Jeff

 

[webshark3]

I am not sure I totally agree with your points. With today's technology I believe tape to be much more fragile than a solid state drive. Jeff

Tape is archival. Tape has a long history. My Microdrives heat up lock up, you name it. I agree on solid state, but the HDD camcorders with internal drives aren't solid. I do like the SD feature on many of them.

The analog nature of tape when recording high definition can introduce artifacts which are just as painful to manage as compression. Jeff

Digital bits are recorded onto to the tape. Pretty much the same as digital bits being recorded onto a platter. Neither one is analog. I've seen plenty of artifacts in HDD recordings. Probably due to the manufacturer more than anything (even with tape).

Many of the HD camera manufacturers are moving away from tape and recommending drives for their reliability.
Jeff

Of course they are. If I was Panasonic and introducing new media solutions, I'd be touting it's reliability. I take it they have 15-30 year performance statistics on those?

Depending on the camera, most of the higher end video cameras I have looked into allows recording of raw HD footage without compression Jeff

Ever try to bring Professional HD cameras into Disney. All Consumer and Prosumer models (that I know of to date) Compress.

Drives also allow you to randomly seek for footage versus the linear retrieval that is required by tape. Jeff

Very true. A big reason why the companies push the new tapeless medias.

My experiences have been limited to the higher end HD cameras so perhaps this is not the case with the consumer cameras but I don't think you can totally discount drives as a storage medium for video. Jeff

True, cannot discount. But many people jump on newer without understanding if it's better (i.e. megapixel wars).



Jeff[/QUOTE]

 

[Groucho]

I am not sure I totally agree with your points. With today's technology I believe tape to be much more fragile than a solid state drive.

The hard drives used in these devices are not solid state. Solid state is pretty reliable (it's just memory, like in your PC or flash drive, but probably a different speed or bus size), but regular mechanical hard drives simply are not reliable, and probably never will be. Any mechanical improvements are often counterbalanced by cramming more and more data into smaller and smaller places.

Heck, just today, my coworker sent back his 6-month-old SATA 300g hard drive after it failed...

And tape is still the medium of choice for long-term archival storage. This is unlikely to change any time soon.

I'm not discounting the appeal of drives - I think I did say that they're a lot more convenient, and you're a lot less likely to accidentally overwrite video with a hard drive camcorder, but that doesn't change the fact that the hard drive will fail sooner or later, and the consumer-grade ones are going to use more compression to squeeze a longer runtime onto the drive.

Consumers consistently choose runtime over quality... remember Beta and VHS?

 

[dpuck1998]

Great points, I have nothing too add on the tech side. If I bought a new Camcorder today it would be MiniDV. I've used all 3 (DVD, HD, DV) and by far prefer MiniDV. It has it quirks, but its road tested and IMHO much better.