Camcorder Selection Tips

When choosing a new camcorder, one of the most important decisions to make is the type of recording medium that you will use to record your movies. Deciding on a recording medium first will greatly reduce the total number of camcorders you need to consider, so decisions made afterwards will be easier. Let's review the types of recording media available as well the types of user/usage each media is best suited for.

Tape Camcorders

Despite being the oldest form of recording medium for camcorders, tape provides the highest quality recordings for consumer camcorders. When recording to tape, the image goes through the least amount of compression so the video recording maintains the highest possible image quality. In addition to providing high quality images, tape-based camcorders also tend to be cheaper than camcorders that make use of other recording mediums.

One downside to tape-based camcorders is that the tapes are limited in how much can be recorded on them to between 60 - 90 minutes. However the tapes themselves are cheap to buy, so carrying backups is usually not much of an issue. Another issue with tape-based camcorders is that to get your movies onto a format you can share with others (a DVD for example) requires that you download your movie to a computer first, and the downloading process takes place in real time. So if you need to download a 90-minute tape to your computer, it'll actually take 90 minutes. You also cannot perform any type of editing (other that backing over the tape and recording anew) on a tape-based camcorder; all of the editing needs to take place on your computer.

Tape-based camcorders are best suited for two types of users: the person on a budget, and people who want higher quality recordings.

Hard-Drive Camcorders

Camcorders that use hard disk drives (HDDs) usually offer the longest possible recording lengths. With typical amounts of compression, you can often get up to 10 hours of recording time on a camcorder that uses a hard drive as its storage medium. With an HDD camcorder, there is never anything new to buy. Depending on the specific model, you can edit your video footage directly on your camcorder. And when it comes time to transfer your footage to your computer, the transfer rate will be substantially higher than when transferring video from a tape-based camcorder.

The main downside with HDD camcorders is that the recorded images are usually highly compressed and this can lead to reduced image quality. HDDs are also relatively power hungry and can be damaged from environmental extremes or drops (as can any camcorder itself). But if you drop your tape-based camcorder, while the camera may be dead, you still have the tape. In the case of an HDD-based camcorder, if it gets damaged, you will probably not be able to get your recordings off the camcorder.

HDD camcorders are very versatile and primarily intended for the home user.

DVD camcorders

Camcorders that record directly to DVD as their recording media are a good option for people who want a format that is universally playable and for those without a computer. There's nothing easier than recording a movie on your camcorder and popping the results directly into the DVD player at Grandma's house.

The downside to DVD camcorders is the length of recording and the image quality. The amount of recording time available will depend on the compression used, but at the highest quality settings, you typically only get 20 - 30 minutes per DVD. If you reduce the quality of the compression you can get longer recording times, but then your image quality is reduced.

DVD camcorders are a good option for people without computers since you never need to transfer the video off of the camera; it comes of directly on the DVD. If you have a computer, and it's an older model that you don't think can handle the higher demands of video transfer and editing, this may also be a good option for you.

Flash Camcorders

As improvements continue to be made in the flash memory arena, flash-based camcorders are becoming more prevalent. Solid-state flash is small and not power intensive, so the camcorders that use it as a recording medium tend to be smaller and lighter than other camcorder models. They are also usually more durable and able to absorb abuse such as drops. Flash-based camcorders need to have their video transferred to a computer before the video can be put onto DVDs, but the transfer is usually quite fast since for most models.

As with other non-tape based camcorders, there may be issues around image quality. Also, depending on the size of the flash memory available, there may issues around the amount of recording time available.

If you are looking for the smallest and lightest camcorder available, a flash-based camcorder is probably your best option.