I'm interested in making home movies.  I had a MiniDV camcorder that I
loved but it broke after 6 years and I never got around to fixing it.
I recently tested some $400 - $600 miniDV camcorders.  Although I
loved the small size, I was turned off by a noticeable buzz in the
audio (regardless of brand); I'm assuming the buzz came from the on-
board mic being so close to the tape gears.  I don't see myself
attaching a lavalier microphone to my baby, so the onboard mic is
about as good as it is going to get.  Then I saw the Hard Drive
cameras - more expensive, but without the buzz (and some even have
have wireless mics).  I understand from reading some past posts that
miniDV gives better image quality than the mpeg2 compression used in
HD camcorders.  I am planning on doing some video editing, but nothing
serious - mostly to post to YouTube for the grandparents.  My
questions is, for my amateur purposes, which would be better - a
miniDV or a HD camcorder?  Thanks in advance.

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There's no way to answer that.  It all depends on what you want.  The
quality difference between miniDV and a hard disk machine would be quite
noticeable, particularly between comparable cameras at the upper end of your
price range.  Standard definition mpeg2 is harder to edit (and will take
more computer processing power), particularly if you want to do much beyond
simple cuts-only edits.  MiniDV camcorders should not pick up tape noise.
I've had two -- a prosumer and consumer model, both made by Sony.  Neither
picked up mike noise.

If your target distribution medium is youtube, it doesn't matter what you
get, as youtube's video quality is horrible -- get the cheapest camera you
can.  If you have any concern about video quality, however, you'll have to
evaluate the hard disk machine and see if it's adequate for your purposes
(it wouldn't be for mine).   Bear in mind that cheap camcorders produce
lousy video, regardless of format.

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Jonathan <jonathan.b.sin***@gmail.com> wrote in
which would be better - a
You found a buzz in cameras other than Canon?  I know Canon has the
problem--even the zoom motor bleeds into the video stream I'm told.  I
don't like many Sony products but I've got several video analog and DV
cameras by Sony.  They don't have the buzz.

Have you tried the cameras in another store?  You know, our ears aren't
as keen as a camera mic/amp in the high frequency ranges.  Could be that
the cameras you tried were amplifying a buzz in the store that would only
be noticeable by a human when amplified electronically--as through the
camera sound track.

As far as Hard Drive cameras, there's one problem that keeps me from
buying one and that is:  I'm busy with other things besides shooting,
cataloging, and archiving my home video in an attempt to offload the
stuff to something else before the hard drive breaks.

At the very least, it means that periodically I've got to hook the camera
to a DVD Recorder and put that video on discs for long term storage.  If
you put it off too long and the hard drive dies in the camera, you may
never get back those precious non-replaceable videos.  Recovery of data
from a hard drive platter is really expensive.  The cost would surely
make me wish I had offloaded to something else.

As long as DV is available, I prefer DV cameras for reasons that probably
don't really matter in the long run.  However, if I were going to choose
a MPEG camera today, I might consider one of those Samsung cameras that
record MPEG4 to a memory card.  I've seen videos from those cameras
displayed on a televison.  Looks pretty good.

I know lots of things get missed around here because a DV camera--even
the small ones--are too big to carry to all events.  Those little memory
card cameras practically fit in a shirt pocket.  I might carry them more
places and that means I'd shoot more video.

Memory card cameras compress the video more than MPEG2 and much more than
DV.  However, unless you edit and insert special effects in your videos a
lot, the compression level probably won't bother you.  Viewed on a
television from a casual distance, it's practically impossible for most
people to tell the difference between DV, MPEG2, MPEG4, H264, etc.

Memory cards are cheap and could be stashed like a DV tape--wouldn't
require off-loading like a hard drive.

Memory cards wouldn't require that you keep extra cameras around to play
them over the next 20 to 50 years.  As long as a card reader would
connect to a computer of the future, the video file would be useable, I
would think.  You could always convert to other formats if need be some
day.  Until that time came, your video files could easily be transferred
from memory cards to holographic crystal storage media or whatever
becomes "cheap memory" in the future.

Magnetic media degrades over time, they say.  I'm sure that's true.  But
.... so does data on DVD and CD recordables because the data is stored in
organic dyes.  So, just like a hamburger rots over time, so will the data
on our recordable CD's and DVD's.  Even factory pressed discs degrade
because they chose corrosive aluminum and silver for manufacturing them.

However, they say DVD's will last about 100 years.  We know that magnetic
tapes will last about 100 years or more.  I presume memory cards will do
the same.

Hard drives?  I don't know if we can rely upon their mechanical
components to last over long periods of time.  I have had computer hard
drives work fine until I put them on the shelf for a couple of years.
When I take them down and try to read them, I have found a couple that
have totally failed.  The data is still good on the platters but the
mechanics of the drive "freeze up."  It's like an old car ... works fine
as long as you start it up once in a while.  Let it sit, and it will
develop terminal leaks or "frozen" parts.  Hard drives are somewhat
similar, it seems.  Long term storage on a hard drive?  Might be risky
unless you have the hundreds or thousands of dollars it would take to pay
someone in a "white room" to disassemble the hard drive and transfer data
from the platters to something else.

I dunno.  No matter what we choose, we will never get to rest.  They'll
always change things so we have to buy something else.  That's progre$$,
I guess.

//rus\\

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