Help With Digital Camcorder Purchase

[blase_faire]

Hi,

I need a digital camcorder for family events, vacations, and multi-media "movies" I make for work/home that incorporate music, stills, and interviews.

As such, which style of camcorder would be best for someone on a budget? I can spend about $300, or less, on this camcorder, but could be convinced to go a little higher if my needs don't match my budget:

1. miniDV
2. Hard Drive
3. DVD
4. VHS-C

I setup my video projects in Vegas Video 7, and render them as high quality AVIs (Video for Windows, NTSC DV format.) Then I use TMPGenc to render the AVIs into mpg and to author the DVD.

Therefore, I need a file format that is already pretty good quality, because it will be re-rendered. (I don't know how to make my finished product without "re-rendering, because the timeline has still photos, etc., as well...")

I've read that mini DVD/or Hard Drive based models are convenient for "drag and drop" movement, but the quality might be lacking. Also, hard drives are often unpredictable...

MiniDV requires real time recording of the movie onto the hard drive, but it might be better picture quality, I've read? What about the future?

I mentioned VHS-C just to see what people thought about that old, but still somewhat available, format...

Thanks in advance...! :)

[Bahax]

I say go with miniDV.

If you're editing and rendering AVIs and DVDs etc, you do not want the straight to DVD camera because you'd be going from the compressed DVD format, converting to another format for editing, then back to DVD again. Yuck.

Cameras that record straight to hard drive I'm not familiar with, but could be good, too, if they record in the DV format (as an AVI or quicktime file, the same format as the miniDV camera, just not on tape).

my 2 cents

[ffracer]

miniDV is the way to go.

FYI, buy a brand of tape and stick with it. Sony and TDK use different lubrication that the other brands and they are incompatible. If you use the above, and then use other brands, the heads will likely clog.

Panasonic makes tapes
Maxells are made by Panasonic for them
Fuji makes tapes
JVC-Victor tapes are made by Fuji
The above four are all compatible with each other.