I'm in the market for a new video camera. But I have a question about something. Can you help?

Question

Since I do video editing on my computer, I've been told to stay away from cameras with hard drive storage and just consider ones with tape. Any truth to that? Why? Any suggestions on cameras?

Answer 1

I agree with the previous two answers, and would add that I've heard people complain about the video format on hard-drive camcorders is non-standard and proprietary.

Also, with a hard drive, there's limited space...you reach a point when it's full and you need to either offload the footage, or record over it.

With tape, recording time is practically unlimited...as long as you have power, you can just keep putting in one blank tape after another to record as long as you need/want to.

Answer 2

I think digital tape would be best but never considered hard drive. Seems like it would be ok.

I think you need to look at the file formats. What you can edit without expensive editing software and what doesn't s***w you over with artificial copy barriers in the name of DRM.

My wife bought a Sony DVD camera. With my Sony VAIO media center PC you'd think I ought to be able to just take the DVD out of the camera and load it to edit on my PC but noooo.... they treat it like you're trying to copy a DVD movie and make it dang near impossible. The 3" DVDs will not work on ANY other drive unless you finalize them. Then you are dealing with VOB files and AC3 audio........ughhhhh. You can't download from the camera with anything but the dreadfull Pixela software it comes with and you might as well use that anyway at least to pull the video in through the USB. It'll take ages but at least you'll have clean mpeg2 video. I purchased Ulead and had to buy a $30 add on to deal with the audio.

Answer 3

Some people say that, because digital editing is a little tricky.  Hard-Drive storage camcorders are notoriously difficult to import from.  I have both and I prefer digital.  Another thing is that the hard drive is limited to the amount of space originally purchased.    Some models do not have expansion slots and even with that memory cards are way more expensive than tapes.  It all just matters of what your willing to pay.  Remember that any hard drive camcorder will cost about $100 more than its tape counter part.