Hard Drive Camcorder question....?

Question

I'm considering buying a Canon HG10 hard drive camcorder but am trying to find out if they are simple to copy onto a DVD? I've read that some people have a lot of trouble transferring data onto their computer. Can anyone help me with this?

Answer 1

HDD (hard drive) cams are not great for transferring to DVD. They compress the video too much, and a lot of quality is lost in the conversion to DVD.

If you simply want to shoot the footage and view it in a DVD player (no editing), then buy a mini-DVD camcorder. These are not easy to edit on a computer, and the quality will be much lower if you do. The same goes for hard drive cameras.

If you want to edit on a computer and/or want the best quality, then buy a mini-dv camcorder. You can store the tapes for future use (helpful if important footage gets lost in the editing process...this happened to me recently on a paying job, so thankfully I had my archived copy).

Regardless, you will also need some form of video editing/DVD authoring software (unless you choose to shoot direct onto mini-DVD). There are several affordable software options, usually around $100 for basic packages.