What has he better video quality: hard drive or flash memory camcorders?

Question

also, i hear minidv is good too. So what should I choose?

Answer 1

if you're looking for quality, then choose the one with the least compession..mini dv... it records with minimum compression, 5 to 1... hdv is also pretty good.  you can get camcorders that record this format to a hard drive.  

Answer 2

For the absolute best quality at the moment, Mini-DV is the best standard definition format, sort of higher end pro formats, and HDV is the best high definition format.

Non-tape based camcorders are catching up, however. There's no absolute difference between flash or HDD (hard disc drive)... most non-tape standard def camcorders record in MPEG-2 (a small number use various sorts of MPEG-4), while most non-tape high-def camcorders record in MPEG-4/AVC (Advanced Video Coding), based on the emerging AVCHD standard.

Between individual camcorders, you can have some idea of the quality based on the top data rate. All HDV and DV camcorders record at 25Mb/s. AVCHD camcorders record at up to 17Mb/s so far, though some don't got that high (and the standard does allow for higher rates).

The other issue is that, compression-wise, DV is easier to do and more mature than MPEG-2, while MPEG-2 is easier to do and more mature than AVCHD.

The technical advantage of any tapeless format is that the data rates are variable. So while you might have a maximum rate of 15 or 17Mb/s, there are probably some options that trade off capacity for quality. You don't care if you always plan to shoot at full quality, but if you're shooting web video or something, there's not much point in shooting full high-def.

Tapeless high-def camcorders also support some variable formats, including a full 1920x1080 mode and options for 24p and 30p (progressive) rather than 60i (interlaced). Some tape-based camcorders also support 24p and/or 30p, but max out at 1440x1080 pixels to tape. As AVCHD quality improves, the tapeless models may surpass the quality of tape based models. Some of the much higher-end pro camcorders have also gone tapeless, for similar concerns (XCCAM using Blu-Ray discs, P2 and SxS memory cards, etc).