On your Hard Drive Camcorder, how many minutes/hours do you get for how many GB?

Question

I mean, if a camcorder ( Hard Drive) has 30 GB, how many minutes or hours is that? Or how many GB do you have and how many minutes or hours goes with that? (And if it is only an estimation, I am asking because I have no idea if that means 30 minutes or if it means some amount of hours)

Answer 1

Camcorders can shoot at different quality levels. On a 30-gigabyte camcorder, you can shoot 7 hours of High quality footage, 15 hours at standard quality & 37 hours at economy quality.  Some hard drive cameras can also shoot on High Definition as well. These cameras are knows as “AVCHD” which is yet another compressed version of High Definition that uses “MPEG 4” which is a lower quality type of compression than the previously mentioned “HDV”. Hope this helps!

Answer 2

It depends on what format you set your drive up to capture in.  Standard def DV gives you about 4:20 per gig.  So, 30 GB should give you about 40 minutes of video.  But DON'T max out your hard drive when shooting!  You'll run into all sorts of problems with your files, and you may not be able to recover some files at all.  So, unless you're shooting with a tape backup, your video will go the way of that other sock in the drier.

If you have a Firestore external hard drive, completely clean and format it regularly (every 20 - 40 hours of shooting if possible) for good maintenance.

-- But video recorded on an external hard drive can save you HOURS of editing time.

Answer 3

If you think you have selected a particular hard drive camcorder, go to that manufacturer's web site and download the manual for that particular camcorder. There is typically a table in the back that shows how much time the camcorder will record in high quality, not so high quality, etc... Do yourself a favor and always shoot in best/highest quality.

Most hard drive camcorders (the exception is from JVC) record standard definition video using a lot of compression into an MPEG2 format. High definition is compressed into an AVCHD format. When video is compressed, video quality is lost - forever.

MiniDV tape camcorders records to DV (digital Video) and HDV (High Definition digital Video) formats. Thes do not compress as much as the hard drive camcorders do.

Best video quality comes from miniDV tape camcorders.

Next best comes from hard drive based camcorders.

Worst quality video comes from DVD based camcorders. DO NOT BUY A DVD BASED CAMCORDER.

A single miniDV tape can hold 60 minutes of standard definition video in SP mode (recommended) or 90 minutes of standard definition video in LP mode (not recommended... or 63 minutes of high definition video.

When you fill a tape, pop it out, lock it, label it, put in a new one and keep shooting. If you fill the hard drive... um... you have no more room for video unless you dump some off to a computer or delete video you cannot recover.