Beware the tapeless camcorder

Tapeless camcorders have arrived, but be aware of price, capacity and picture quality.
The New York Times

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[dominicsotirescu]

300 gig hard disks!

High definition movies and high resolution photos can also be stored on these large hard drives. Entire lybraries can be stored on one hard disk. This must be better than obsolete tapes!

[egarc--2008]

Backup

I'd feel uncomfortable with all my video on one large hard drive.
Digital data is extremely fragile.

I keep multiple backups of my digital photos and have many home
movies I've burned to DVD but I rely on my mini DV tapes as my
video backup.

[barbose]

a $1099 MacBook == "big honkin' slab"?

I don't get why you think a machine with 1gb of RAM and a Core 2
Duo is considered a big honkin' slab of computer. For Apple, it's
an entry-level laptop.

[Mr. Bentor]

HDTV video cameras using chips (SD Cards)

I have found the tapeless video camera (Samsung Xacti using SD card) video camera very useful for certain applications. First is that it is very rugged, light, and small. I can easily helmet-mount the camera with velcro and not even notice it?s presence. The camera I takes pretty good 720p HDTV video as well as 5.1 mp stills. I would have to admit however that it sucks in low light. Few other devices work as nicely as a helmet mounted HDTV camera only because of small it?s size and weight. The 4gb card is only 55 minutes of MPEG4, I can turn up the compression and get 90 minutes. It is not as good as a real HDTV tape or disk camera but I can be very rough with this device, and it fits in my pants pocket. Up to 32 GB SD cards will be out in Q1 ?08. It was only $400.00 plus (ouch $85.00 for the SDhd card).

[Video Edit]

tapeless camcorder

As someone who is sent a lot of "Home" Videos 'to make into VD i have to point out that the direct onto disk (mini Dvds)camcorders do require two/three minutes 'finalizing' in the camcorder as soon as possible after the disk is full, as if anything happens to the 'corder' dropped, lost, stolen, you have to find the very same model if you want to see your pictures ever again. (or at least at a reasonable cost) But remember to HAVE fun and shoot a classic.

[Phillep_H]

Uh-oh

That means a gap in the visual record of something, like a cop or politician doing what he shouldn't ought to.

[harshness]

MPEG2 is an obscure format???

Guess what format those mini DVDs are recorded in?

I challenge anyone to find a personal computer based video editing package that doesn't support MPEG2.

Linear is dead!

[dr-willow]

Natural progression

First, I do enjoy David's writing and video reporting very much. I think he has missed the boat with this article, however. There are negatives with tapeless, but over all, I think it's a natural progression.

My family video camera use over the years has evolved as follows:
Video8 tape -> Digital8 tape -> MiniDV tape ->
JVC HDD (tapeless)

MiniDV quality is excellent (and I have some great archives, which I cherish but hate to use because winding tape to viewing points is pure drugery).

I'm MUCH happier with the convenience my JVC camcorder provides. The 30X optical zoom is amazing, and quick access to clips is great. I don't agree that all my movies will end up on DVD. I use multiple external hard drives (which are getting amazingly cost effective now) to move my footage around for editing and showing purposes.

The editing software JVC provides with the camera is terrible, so I simply use USB to mount the JVC HDD on my MacBook, then copy the entire drive contents to a folder. I convert the .MOD files and edit them without problem. I also (very simply) can bring my camcorder HDD back to any point in time (for quick hookup to a TV for playback. The camcorder's format function very quickly readies it for a new recording session.

I agree that it is difficult to find time to edit everything, so these hard drive snapshots work well for me.

[disco-legend-zeke]

Once its on three hard drives, in three cities...

I just can't bring myself to erase the original HDV-mini tapes after i shoot and transfer them to hard drive.

The major problem with tape based camcorders is the fragility of the recording heads, we have had two very nice camcorders bight the dust, and replacing the head drum has become too costly.

We are in the process of transferring our older DV-tapes and VHS onto hard drive.

As to playability, the VHS tapes heve been the worst so far, i don't even bother putting the screws back on the deck, it needs manual cleaning so frequently. DV tapes require the cleaning tape after every few hours. HDV tape (which is identical to DV at first glance, but has a higher lubricant content) has been very reliable, but then my oldest HDV tape is only 3 yrs old.

Hard drive failures have happened a couple times, in the long term, the solution is to have footage (bittage?) on three hard drives in three cities, so that just in case our cat becomes president, the priceless kitten video archives will be around.

So far three 500 G hard drives are filled, and each hour tape gets a DVD backup. We still do not have redundancy for the original scenes.

[alegr]

Author, is it year 2007 or 2001?

"Core 2 Duo 2.4-gigahertz chip" is not too expensive. 2 GB RAM costs peanuts. And recordable HD DVD (or BR) drives are in the stores, though not cheap yet.

But it sucks that the format changed. Why not use DV encoding and simply store it on HDD. 11 GB/hour, very good quality.