What are the pros and cons of HDD versus DVD ?

Question

I am trying to decide which would be better for me ??

Answer 1

they both sail about the same from the roof, and unfortunately hit the ground to fast for me to chamber a round in the old mosburgh

o, yer talkin' about a camcorder...dvd seems a bit simpler in my mind...but that's just for me i need to keep things very simple.

Answer 2

If you have any expectation of ever editing the video you get, you will stay very far away from DVD based camcorders. The video is compressed a LOT - and when video is compressed, video information is discarded - you will never get it back. When this video is decompressed in your computer for editing, the quality is terrible. The single sided discs last only about 20 minutes in best quality mode and if you scratch a disc, you may never get to that video.

Hard drive and flash memory (the high end ones like those from Sony and Canon) are next best. They compress a lot too - but not as much as DVD based camcorders.

Since we do not know what you want to do with the video, and we don't know what you want to edit with and we don't know if you want to keep video for a long time, it is difficult to make a recommendation.

If video quality is important to you, then you will consider miniDV tape. It continues to provide the best available video quality of all the consumer camcorder formats. The cost per hour or gig of video is cheapest and digital video tape has a long and proven archive shelf life... and this is the media of choice for the professionals - I'm no pro, but if tape and storing DV and HDV is good enough for them, then it is good enough for me.

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Answer 3

if you want speed and simplicity DVD camcorder

if you want to edit - avoid DVD camcorder

Answer 4

Both are fairly similar in terms of quality (both are compressed). What differenciates them the most is the storage media: a flash drive versus a DVD. You have to decide what suits you best:

DVDs can be taken out of the camera and put in a DVD player and viewed. However, their storage capacity it limited to about 32 minutes of filming.

HDDs, however, tend to rely on flash cards or built in hard drives. You can choose what size you need; they generally allow for a couple of hours of footage.

I find it easier to get footage off a camera and onto a computer from an HDD camera. However, your main focus should be whether you want to be able to use the practicality of a DVD to show your films or not have to carry around several DVDs.