MiniDV or DVD camcorder?
 

My wife is looking around to purchase a camcorder for little things. Not shooting porn movies or anything like that lol.

Should we look at a MiniDV or DVD model? The midrange sony models decent?

How long can I record to a DVD compared to MiniDV?

personally I like the DVD models or the Hard Drive drive cams.

From what I heard DVD is only 30 minutes. So you may be better of with MiniDV cause they are one hour.

And say we want to show these miniDV recordings on a tv. Should I be able to use RCA cables for that or do I need a specific miniDV player that connects to the tv etc?

Any certain models that you know of that you can plug a small microphone into?

Most mid-range and up Sony models have an external mic plug. Search for one that has either RCA out or a cable adapter that will allow you to do this.

30 minutes is a long time for a home movie, I think the dvd's will be watched more then having to connect the cam everytime you want to watch it.

Mini DV for sure! DVD camcorders suck

Mini DV, way easier to edit.

Mini DV better i use to buy dvd camera and not good they day you have 30 minute per dvd but they remove 9 minutes for the memory and you have only 21 minutes to record ! Mini DV :) Better choice honey !

i used to think for small personal shit that minidvd as it was the "new" thing but minidvds take forever to rip onto the computer
only 30 minutes

then i bought a hard disk camera
<3

only thing is - permanent storage became an issue and now i have 2 500gb externals filled and working on a 3rd

the files are insanely large ut compress nicely :)

Mini-DV. If it's important enough to record, do it right. VERY easy to hook a DVcamera up to a TV, and then you've got the footage done correctly if you ever want to edit some home movies together. DVD is MPEG2 which is a pain to edit with, and which will be MUCH higher compressed as it's recorded.

Mini-DV.

A Sony miniDv is what you want... I have owned one for a couple years, it has held up great and does the job better then needed. It doubles as a webcam, you can use sd cards with some, they have firewire support, you can plug them in the tv, they have remotes... The list goes on!

Buy the way, jvc, panasonic and most other brands suck... SOny is the way to go, I have not tried a Canon or Nik...

MiniDV. I've got a Panasonic although the controls are a little odd (Sonys are almost always user friendly) but I got a deal on it. Too much compression on harddrive camcorders unfortunately (but they sure are small).

I recently got a Sony hard disk camcorder and love it. Yes the files are compressed but for outputting to web video only it doesn't make a difference as it'll all get compressed anyway.

neither, get the hard disk camcorder....can't believe they haven't been doing that since the beginning

we will just be recording a computer most of the time with this. Sitting there recording actions on a computer screen. You still think this is the best option and resonably priced? Have a link to a model that you like?

I prefer DVD over miniDV, I even have a Sony DCR-DVD405 and it's working great ! A mini-DVD can last approx. (in HQ mode, which is recommended), around 20 min., but if you buy 3-4 -RW or +RW , you re-record your mini-DVDs, so no need for others ... And those you can record in one big standard DVD. If you wanna get it from a reputable store, here you have one:
Sony DCR-DVD 405
If you get one, you can ask me for more info and tips about it, on icq 30160426 :)

Both DVD and hard drive camcorders compress the stream a lot more aggressively in order to cram it into a relatively limited space. MiniDV will have higher overall quality, particularly when the camera or objects are moving fast.

A quick web search suggests that an 8cm DVD can store 1.4Gb, which for 30 mins recording time means a raw stream speed of about 6Mbit/sec. MiniDV uses the DV codec, which outputs data at about 25Mbit/sec.

A hard drive camcorder that supports DV would be near perfect - the least amount of compression but more than 80 mins recording time (assuming the HD is bigger than 17Gb)