HD Camcorders with MiniDV storage

[her209]

What's your take on this "old" storage technology compared to the "newer" storage technology of internal flash storage or removable flash cards or even SSDs?

 

[tdawg]

I had a non-HD minidv camcorder prior to the HDD/SDHC based HD camcorder I have now and I would never go back. The ease of use and transferring recordings to a PC for editing are so superior compared to tape. With tape, transferring to a PC occurred in real-time. In my opinion it's much better to just be able to transfer recorded files from cam to pc over usb, just like any other digital file.

It's also nice never having to buy, manage, and carry tapes. And with the prices of a quality HD camcorder with SDHC/HDD storage, I couldn't possibly recommend minidv over digital.

 

[GoSharks]

I had a non-HD minidv camcorder prior to the HDD/SDHC based HD camcorder I have now and I would never go back. The ease of use and transferring recordings to a PC for editing are so superior compared to tape. With tape, transferring to a PC occurred in real-time. In my opinion it's much better to just be able to transfer recorded files from cam to pc over usb, just like any other digital file.

It's also nice never having to buy, manage, and carry tapes. And with the prices of a quality HD camcorder with SDHC/HDD storage, I couldn't possibly recommend minidv over digital.

DV is digital.

 

[Kaido]

What's your take on this "old" storage technology compared to the "newer" storage technology of internal flash storage or removable flash cards or even SSDs?

I liked MiniDV tapes for 2 reasons:

1. Your tape is your (raw) archive

2. You get to preview the footage while importing in realtime (VERY useful for editing purposes - you screen it during import and get an idea of what you have)

OTOH, I HATE tapes because of the realtime import. That drove me absolutely bananas! On the flip side, digital files meant instant gratification Although with Flash/HDD storage, sometimes you have to transcode before using the footage. I'm especially glad that a lot of modern editors offer real-time editing of footage without transcoding, or the ability to edit via proxies.

Fortunately, RAID boxes are getting cheap, NAS is inexpensive (FreeNAS etc.), 3TB hard drives are $130, 2TB hard drives are below $80 - so digital archiving is getting pretty cheap to do these days.

 

[her209]

Is it true that DV streams are higher quality because they are use a less lossy encoding stream compared to MPEG-2, MPEG-3, and H.264?

 

[ShreddedWheat]

The drive mechanism for the tape is a pain in the arse! I had a medium grade JVC that I bought in 2005 for around 500 bucks (nowadays I could have gotten 3 flash camcorders). The tape mechanism broke and would have cost nearly $ 300! I hate JVC and tape mechanisms!