What is the difference between flash, hard drive, high definition, Hi8, mini DV Camcorders? What is good?

Question

I am looking to buy a camcorder that I can use on my macbook when I am in Korea. What is the difference between these and are they compatible with mac?

Answer 1

high definition is to do with the amount of detail the camera resolves.  This can be on various formats.

If your apple mac runs the Leopard OS then you should be compatible with just about everything, certainly iMovie8 should work with AVCHD (the HDD HD format) but if you want the best quality you should look at a tape based format, such as HDV (if you want hidef) or miniDV if you want standard def.

If you have tiger or earlier then avoid AVCHD like you would avoid syphilis.  

Digital formats compress footage before storing it, of the consumer formats, tape compresses it the least.

Your apple macs built in hard drive will not be fast enough to handle running the OS the video software and the actual video content, you will need an external harddrive, at least 7200rpm, with at least 8MB cache.

If you go down the tape route then you will need the firewire port for the camera (some external hard drives let you daisy chain firewire devices, the iomega 500GB firewire drieve does, as do the Lacie D2 triple interfaces) otheriwse USB 2.0 is fine so long as you keep the capture clips fairly short.

IMovie will le t you do the basics, Final Cut Express will give you a lot more scope for not an awful lot more money, considering what you get.

So in short, buy tape for quality.  Pansonic for standard def DV, Sony for tape HDV.

Rodger K: Sonys Z1, A1, FX1 and HC1 are all Hi-Def camcorders and all can record onto miniDV tape in HDV mode.  miniDV tape is capable of recording either SD DV video or HDV video as they both use the same data rate.

Answer 2

flash - storage media on memory cards like SD CF or xD

hdd - similar to you computer HDD but internal in camera

hd - unlike the media type hi def is classified as anything greater than a resolution of 1440 x 1080 (standard def ntsc is 720 x 480 i think)

hi8 is a dead format. don't touch it!

mini DV again is a media format and in my opinion the best for several reasons including archival storage, value for money and abilaity to store HD images on stand mini DV tape.

all units (except hi8) will work flawlessly on your mac. it's a matter of budget the, i would go with HD if i can afford it as it is the wave of the future.

Answer 3

Flash drives are for storage,  hi 8, and mini DV, are standard  definition, but  high definition gives a greater resolution than traditional television systems.