Hello all,

I am in the market for a compact digital camcorder. I have been looking to buy one for ages as i want to have footage of my son at chritmas's, birthdays etc.

Over the past week i have been looking at a few from JVC and Samsung. The differences being some record there footage onto HDD and the other records onto SDHC cards.

Now, i am not looking to spend a fortune on one, infact the two i have looked at are under £200.

I would be very grateful if any one could shed there experiences on using the two various types of camcorder. In particular, how easy it is to transfer footage to PC and then archive to DVD.

I look forward to your comments and thanks again for your help.

SDHC models are good as they are lighter, have great battery life and are generally cheaper. The thing to bear in mind though is that you would either need a lot of cards or to have your laptop with you if you were on holiday or filming a lot. Not a major factor as the cards go upto 32gb these days and are dirt cheap. I would go for SDHC over HDD as i would go for HDD over DVD. You can go into many many factors in comparison, but i imagine with your budget that SD would be preferable.

I have a JVC, not sure which model but it was around £250, it stores about 37 hours onto the HDD and it's widescreen so looks great on tv, the image and sound quality is spot on, the only down side is the poor battery life. it only lasts about an hour, which is cr@p if you give it to a freind to film your wedding and it runs out in the middle of the speeches! However, if you can get a camera with an eyepiece, you can turn the large screen off and save loads of battery power!

We have a sony 30Gb HDD camcorder. Great thing. I'd never recommend DVD camcorders after this.

Buy SONY DCR-SR35 | 30gb hard drive camcorder - Specification | Comet

We only paid £200 and that was 4 months ago, it may be an older version. My mate has bought the same one.

JVC have had some cash back offers on theirs. They would be good also.

Battery life is poor on the Sony. The supplied battery is good for maybe 1 1/2 hrs. I'd get a battery and a charger if you are planning on using it a lot.

It's very easy to transfer videos with the sony. The computer recognises the camcorder as a disk device so you can just drag and drop. The supplied software for importing and recording works very well and even creates quite a nice DVD chapter selection divided by each file. It starts a new file each time you start and stop recording.

For Sony camcorders, and may be the case for others, the battery you get supplied with the camcorder has a pretty low capacity. This is probably because a high capacity, high quality battery LiIon battery costs a fair wack and particularly at the budget end, you can't do it because it would make the camcorder appear expensive.

You can always get higher capacity batteries

As others have said, you chose between HDD and removable memory, and both have their pros and cons.

If it were me, I'd probably go for a HDD one, just because I always find myself fumbling around at the last minute looking for where I've put all my memory cards. With a HDD camcorder, you only need to worry about a USB cable to transfer footage.

But then again, a HDD camcorder is probably heavier and more fragile than a flash RAM based recorder... Hohumm

Edit: Just checked, and the Sony camcorders are hybrid and do both. There's no "memorystick only" camcorder. All of the HDD ones have a memory stick slot so you can save your video onto that if you chose. Best of both worlds

Regarding ease of transferring to PC and archiving to DVD, it will depend on the software used. All camcorders should come with basic software allowing you to do that. I know all Sony standard definition camcorders record clips as MPEG2 program stream which is the same encoding format as DVD so you wouldn't need to "convert" anything. It's just a matter of chopping it up and putting the scenes you want into a DVD. Windows movie maker should be able to do it too. Or you can use other programs like Nero which have the ability to basic edit, stitch together and produce a DVD for you

Edited 7 November, 200817 yr by tfboy

Thanks all for your input so far. The camcorders i were looking at in particulkar are the JVC MG330 and the Samsung MX10 & MX20.

Anyone have or used any of these models that could advise on there performance.

Cheers.

Nobody got either of these three models that could advise on there general use?

Thanks all for your input so far. The camcorders i were looking at in particulkar are the JVC MG330 and the Samsung MX10 & MX20.

Anyone have or used any of these models that could advise on there performance.

Cheers.

I havent used any of these above camcorders but as an Avid Online editor I do have quite a bit of industry experience. Looking at the above models out of the three, I would plumb for the JVCMG330 - put simply its more of a 'proper' camcorder than the other 2 and offers better functions, I know its an extra £100 but more than likely worth the money. If youre not wanting to do any editing and simply make DVDs of your footage then it should be a pretty straight forward job as will more than likely record in mpeg2 (programme stream) and most mickey mouse programmes i.e. Nero / Roxio will allow you to drag these files in and it will do the transcoding for you.

I would definately stay away from DVD camcorders, my wife pushed me to buy one just to film little bits like holiday etc and its nothing but a hastle to get the footage into an editing app, especially Avid.

Personally I'd plumb for tape camcorders everytime! Being from the old skool I like to capture the footage into an edit suite and take it from there. In todays market you can afford a high spec home mini DV camcorder with awesome functions and quality for the same price some of the lower end tapeless formats cost - dont allow yourslef to get caught up in HD cameras as well, the majority of home Camcorders do not shoot 'true' HD - quite frankly its a mine field!

On the subject of battery life, its always the same problem with the ones which are shipped with the cameras, you can buy bigger ones but they are costly.

Anyway if you want to fire any questions at me feel free!

All the best, John

geordie 21, John

Thank you very much for your input.

I have had a lone of a Panasonic MiniDV camcorder. I used it for a good couple of months and found it very easy to use. The only reason i was looking at the ones i mentioned is because they are not that dearer than a good miniDV. The JVC MG330 could be picked up for around £190 which i feel is pretty reasonable for what it is. I was in my younger years a bit of a gadget freak and wanted the best. But after growing up i now realise its not worth spending a fortune to get something that can be done with something worth a quarter of the price.

TBH i have lost my way recently with all the different recording/audio formats, especially now that HD is here. I shall maybe have to just bite the bullet and get one.

I am sure i read somewhere that the JVC records in a propriety format which has to be decoded/encoded for transfer onto DVD. That puts me off because i generally do not bother installing the software which comes with cameras, camcorders etc. I prefer to use one program that i like.

Cheers again.

geordie 21, John

I am sure i read somewhere that the JVC records in a propriety format which has to be decoded/encoded for transfer onto DVD. That puts me off because i generally do not bother installing the software which comes with cameras, camcorders etc. I prefer to use one program that i like.

The JVC should record in mpeg 2 if its a hard disk camera, Nero or something similar should allow you to drag the footage straight onto a disc! You are also probably correct in saying you can change the recording format, possibly to AVI or something but this would need encoding to a MPEG2 Elementary stream - meaning the audio and video tracks are seperate, you would then have to use an actual DVD Authoring programme such as Adobe Encore or Apple DVD Studio and build the disc properly - this gives you much more flexibilty but probably not what you are after. As you said theres no need to spend alot of money to get a decent quality camera to shoot a few minutes of the kids or something. I work with broadcast stuff all day long but still use a £200 camera for shooting little home movies of my family holidays and stuff, just wish I had'nt bought a DVD one as its a ball ache to get the footage a) off the camera and in a useable format!

Have fun with whatever you choose though. all the best, John

Bought a Sony DCR SR32E about 15 months ago, 30gb hard drive, 40 times zoom. Never bothered with camcorders before because of all the different formats for storing the film. The downloading is easy for film and stills. The quality is good, but wind noise on the mic is annoying, so I am going to cover the mic with some filter foam. The battery is good and the charger unit runs from 110 -240 volt, which is good if you go to the states with an adaptor plug. It was about £290 then, I guess it is cheaper now