witty banter   

I was having a drink with some family friends yesterday and one of them asked me this question. “I am looking to buy a video camera for [my son] as a baby welcoming gift (new kid on the way this summer). What kind do you recommend? I was going to go with one of those miniDVD based cameras, but I’m not sure. The hard drive ones are more expensive, and the tape based ones are old but cheaper.” Probably because of my tech experience over the years, people I know come to rely on my advice for questions such as these. As I started to formulate an answer for him, it made me think about my current situation…

I have an aging MiniDV based camera, the Panasonic PVDV400D-K camera. It’s a normal small tape (MiniDV) based camcorder that has served me well over the years. I bought it in the era when MiniDV was fairly new and you could still commonly buy the analog tape based cameras, making MiniDV the new kid on the block. I loved it because also being a computer geek, I knew the camera recorded in digital, not analog so I didn’t really have to worry about signal degradation over repeated footage transfers like with analog (long term storage and magnetic fields still can be and are a concern…). I also loved the firewire output to my computer and that it didn’t involve using a VCR transfer to get the video out of the camera. Fast forward several years and I am faced with providing input on this question. To answer him, I will analyze the pros and cons of all formats and then come up with my personal favorite if I was to go out and buy a camera today.

MiniDV:
MiniDV is easily the cheapest of the lot, as well as being the old man of the current camcorders. The MiniDV tape has a shelf life of roughly 10-15 years, slightly longer than the average DVD, but demands the same storage conditions as DVD’s. The tapes themselves are very cheap, and they hold a ton of very high quality video when compared to standard definition camcorders that utilize compression to record to a hard drive or DVD media. MiniDV tapes will hold hours more footage compared to either flash based or DVD media. As I stated, typically the MiniDV based camcorders are the cheapest to buy and usually by a significant margin, but one of the two big negatives that I see in this format are that because the tape is linear, you don’t have instant referencing to the clips you record. The other negative is the fact that you can’t simply copy off the content like a file, you have to play back the video in real time to copy it to a computer. This can be painfully slow. Regarding future-proofing your investment, the MiniDV camcorder is still viable as well because hardware and software manufacturers will continue support it due to the new HDV (High Definition on a MiniDV tape) camcorders that are just picking up steam. The HDV camcorders will continue to use MiniDV tape, which ensures continued format support as we move forward.

DVD Based:
These types of camcorders are newer and very trendy to buy. In this format, the camera compresses the video on the fly and records it directly to a writeable or rewriteable mini DVD. Some of the positive aspects of these devices are that you have instant access to the files that are stored on the disc. There is no need to play back your video in real time to get it to your computer. Quick, direct access to your clips is a definite convenience - unfortunately, like when I owned a traditional still camera, I probably wouldn’t be taking very much footage with this type of camera because I know I would be chewing up a lot of media very quickly. Sure, I could use rewriteable media, but that is typically even more expensive than the write once discs.

My friend that wanted to buy this type of camcorder had the argument that his son could just take the raw footage that he filmed and show it on his (or someone else’s) DVD player directly and store it that way without having to interact with a computer (neither he nor his son would be considered very computer literate). My counter argument to him was basically how much do you edit your own footage before wanting others to see it? What are the odds his son will want to show all that raw footage to others with no editing? Pretty low. We take so much extra footage that really should be edited before displaying for people. Using this argument, and the relative cost of the media, I cannot be convinced that this option is an economically or creatively viable option - at least for me. I am also not convinced that the content on the disc is as permanent or safe as on a MiniDV tape. One scratch could render my content irretrievable. It used to be believed that good DVDs kept under ideal (cool, dry, and dark) conditions would last for up to 100 years. This claim has been largely debunked, and the common belief is that the shelf life is roughly 5-15 years. One other irritating aspect of using DVD’s directly is that almost all camcorders require the user to “finalize” rewritable discs in order to play them back on a DVD player, a process that can take anywhere from several seconds to several minutes. If you want to write more content to the discs, you must then “un-finalize” them.

Hard drive or flash storage based media:
These are the newest format of camcorder on the market now. These camcorders contain a hard drive built into the camera that is not removable. Sometimes the drive may be solid state removable flash based media, but the storage space will be several orders of magnitude smaller than a non-removable hard drive. This necessitates even more video compression to store the footage, or a smaller record time. This type of camera is definitely the flashiest and most expensive consumer camera type on the market. Many of them are also High Definition as well - which is not really part of the comparison factors that I am considering. Having said that, hard drive or flash based solutions obviously provide fast and convenient retrieval of data files (video footage) from the camera along with fast random access to any clip from the camera itself.

One of the problems that exists with hard drive based cameras is that unless you back up your raw footage from the computer, you stand a chance of losing your footage to a computer hard drive failure. This is because you cannot archive the raw footage on a camcorder hard drive like you can with both the DVD and tape solutions. When the hard drive is full, you must copy the footage off and overwrite the old footage with new footage. With DVD or tape, when the media is full, you can remove the media and put in a new one. The filled one can be stored in a safety deposit box or elsewhere. In addition, with tape or DVD you can switch out media on the fly if you are recording different topics and don’t want to mix content on the same media. For example: On one tape I record footage of my child, and on another tape I record my new house construction. I can film both interchangeably and still keep the raw footage separate.

Conclusion:
The gadget freak in me really prefers the new fangled hard drive based devices - particularly the High Definition versions. But after really thinking about what is the best solution for my friend who is not a computer geek, I had to recommend the above devices in the following order:

1. MiniDV tape based camcorder. Cheapest to buy, cheapest media, best quality stock footage (when comparing standard definition video camera encoding techniques).
2. Hard drive based camcorder. Most expensive, but quickest, simplest data transfer to computer. More convenient than buying DVD’s, but still get random access on the camera.
3. DVD based camcorder. A mix of replaceable media convenience with random access but I can’t justify the cost for the media vs. how much footage can be stored per disc.

But in the end, this is a personal decision that pits compression vs portability vs price vs size vs ease of use. Only the end user will really know what they will want. I just hope this information helps someone make a decision on which type of camcorder suits them best. If it did, please leave a message and let me know how it helped and which camera you went with and why.

Cheers!

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