Will a nice digital still camera's movie mode look anywhere as good as a digital camcorder?

Question

How will a nice digital still camera's movie-mode movies compare to a nice digital camcorder? Will it be even close? How about compared to a HD camcorder?

Is there a website that lets you actually download clips recorded on camcorders or digital still cameras?

Answer 1

most still camera video mode produces a quarter-size video, that is 240 x 320 pixel known as mpeg1. DV video is 480 x 720 pixel.  DV quality video will take 3 MB of memory per second. many still cameras cannot write to storage that fast, so they limit video to 6 seconds at a time which is stored in an internal temporary flash memory and then loaded back onto the regular storage when finished. Some still cameras do not offer stereo mics or audio at all. HD is a speciallized area and the best results come from using made for purpose camcorders.

Answer 2

Unfortunately no, a movie taken on a digital camera will not be anywhere near the quality of a camcorder.  It has something to do with the speed at which it is capable of recording the action going on.  I sold cameras at a large retailer for a while and the digital camera movie mode is good for very short shots that don't need to me high quality.  And they fill up your card very quickly.

I am not clear why you want a website to download your movies too. If you want to burn them to DVD you have to have the right software to convert the format from AVI to the proper format for DVD burning.  I use the software that came with the camera to download movies off the digital camera.  They will play on your computer if you have Windows Media Player or a similar program.