Camcorder - not sure what is the best format to go for?

Question

Mini card or DVD, or hard drive etc.. I really only want to guy for budget option , that can be played easiiy on DVD, Ipod and PC..

Does anyone know which format is best/most user friendly? And any recomnefdations on a model too?

Answer 1

go for dvd version, easier to use on home player, good quality etc..

Answer 2

Go for Hard drive, No tapes, no discs no fuss. and the quality is excellent.

Answer 3

You are going to get loads of opinions so here is mine

do you want OK quality films OR the best you can get even at budget prices you can get some great results

I would use mini dv reason:

hard drive and memory card type have to compress the data (reduce its size) otherwise how could you get 8 hours plus on to a 40GB hdd or memory card, the DVD type needs to be converted to a format that a video editing package can use normally MPEG. compression=loss of quality  

A DV tape does not compress unless you ask it too and when you put it onto your computer (sure the files are big) 10 Min's just over 2GB but the quality is as good as you are going to get.  I would look at maybe a Sony DCR-HC62 What ever your choice Good luck take your time looking around and visit some shops and talk to the sales people tell them you are not going to buy now, that will get them off the selling patter Again Just my opinion

Answer 4

They all have pros and cons and it really depends what you are after:

Mini DV is by far the best quality but requires you to connect the camcorder to the computer with video editing software to convert it to DVD.

The hardrive camcorders are faster to copy the files from but the quality of these camcorders is not as good as mini DV.

The same is true for camcorders which use solid state media (SD etc.). You are also limited to the size of the card which means prolonged video filming is not possible.

The mini DVD recordables are easily played back with standard DVD drives but are prone to skipping if you are moving the camcorder around all the time. The other disadvantage is people forget to finalise the disk and it becomes unreadable in standard DVD drives until it is finalised by the camcorder.