What type of digital camcorder would be best?

Question

My friend and I have gotten into movie/video making, and are looking to upgrade to a newer camera. What type of camera (flash, DVD, MiniDV) would be best for shooting YouTube/amateur films?

Answer 1

If you want to use what the pros use, you will get a camcorder that records to DV or HDV format. These standard definition and high definition digital video formats, respectively, apply a lot less compression to the digital video stored - this results in providing the best available video quality. For the most part, in the consumer-grade camcorder environment, this means miniDV tape. The other things to look for are:

Mic-in jack: the least expensive camcorders are the Canon ZR900 and ZR930. They do not have manual audio control. This is important only if you will be capturing vieo in REALLY loud or really soft audio environments.

Manual Audio Control: The lease expensive camcorders with a mic jack and manuall audio control are the Canon HV20, HV30, Sony HDR-HC7 and HDR-HC9.

Manual zoom, exposure/iris, focus: most camcorders have some or all of these - the more expensive camcorders have them easier to use.

With miniDV, your computer used for editing will require a firewire 400 port. Using a firewire cable, connect the DV port on the camcorder to the firewire port on the computer and import.

If you cannot handle miniDV tape, then flash memory. The quality of video from the better flash memory consumer cams is similar to hard drive (HDD) based camcorders because the video file format stored on them is the same (very highly compressed MPEG2 for standard definition and even more compression used for AVCHD high definition video) - but the flash memory camcorder would be better than the HDD cams because they do not suffer from the vibration and altitude issues that HDD cameras have.