Camcorder help. HDD or DVDR/RW/RAM?

[Roasted]

I'm looking to buy a Camcorder. My price range is about 300 dollars. With that being said, I am relatively limited as to what options I have.

The biggest thing I question is some use DVDR/RW/RAM and some use HDD's built into the unit. The ones with hard drives are pretty expensive. Cheapest one I found was like 405 bucks. Ehh, a stretch from 300, but whatever. It has a 30gb hard drive.

The ones with DVDs seem to be cheaper, with a decent one running at 300-320, which is a lot more suitable for me. On top of that, the media seems to be really cheap. On ebay, three discs of 9.2GB discs are 12 bucks. Not bad...


But from a quality and ease of use standpoint, what would you folks recommend? I really want something that is very easy to upload to a computer, whether it's my XP laptop or my Ubuntu desktop. I just don't want to go through a ton of converters to get my videos to upload properly.

thoughts?

[Wobedraggled]

I have one that takes mini-dvd just pop em out and into the pc.

[Roasted]

That's cool. But that's just for watching them... how easy is it to bring the video files on the DVD to the computer?

The objective is to import segments of the video on DVD into slideshows and whatnot. I'd like to begin creating a family slideshow, that way I could have still pictures flip through and at the end I'd have sections of video too... so me getting these files on the computer easily is insanely crucial.

[retrow]

My mom recently got a JVC camcorder with 30GB HDD. But to be frank, she never uses the HDD, instead she records everything on a Class6, 16GB SDHC card which is also accepted by the camera. So even if you go for a DVD cam, check if it accepts SDHC cards. These cards make like far more easier than a DVD, plus the battery life of the cam increases substantially when you are using the SDHC card as your primary media.

[Roasted]

This is true. But an 8gb SDHC card is significantly more expensive than a single 9.2gb DVD.

Plus, how would it be any easier to transfer from card/disc to computer when using the card?

They should both read the same way, I would think. It's still media, whether it's a dvd or card... :confused:

[retrow]

The DVD disk may be cheaper, but its read/write cycles are far lesser compared to that of a SDHC card. You can use SDHC cards not only on laptops but also on several cell phones, PDAs and handheld media players. You can't do that with a DVD.

Most computers these days come equipped with a built in card reader, and if yours doesn't, a card reader can be bought for as little as $5. You can transfer the files at blazing rates since read speeds of cards are quite fast even though their write speeds are lower. Erasing the contents of a card are as easy as removing files from flash drive. That process can be a bit more involved with a DVD.

And like I said, the battery life is quite low when recording or editing on DVD. With SDHC, since there are no moving parts, the life is much longer.

[mips]

I would stay away from JVC, see my ramblings here in another camcorder post, http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=710892

I would go for a hd based camera.

[aaaantoine]

A HDD based camcorder allows you to delete unwanted footage from the drive while on the field. It can also store more video than a single DVD. The disadvantage is, unless you connect it directly to a TV, you cannot watch the video on TV until you burn it to a DVD.

My JVC camcorder (here's hoping I don't have the same misfortune as mips) came with video editing software for Windows, which allows you to cut out bad footage and add effects such as captions, scene transitions, and background music via MP3s before burning the video to a disc.

[herbster]

I have an Hitachi that uses DVD-RW, it's a decent cam, we got it for about ~$250 or so IIRC a couple years ago. Each little disc holds 30min of footage, and with RW you can erase scenes before you finalize the disc.