I'm considering the purchase a new camcorder to take video's of my grandchildren's baseball and soccer games.

I'm looking at two basic types: the Samsung miniDVD type and the SD memory card type.

I'm assuming the SD memory card type would be better because it should be able to hold more video depending on what size SD card I have in the camera...am I thinking correctly?

The miniDVD is only 1.4G so each minidvd will only hold 30 minutes of video. That's not much video is it?

Am I looking at this in the right way? Better yet, what advantages and disadvantages do both types offer?

Price is a big factor for me.....have to keep my cost down....and both types are on sale now (or was) for $200.

Would another type be better?

The only advantage of miniDVD is being able to take the disk from the camera and pop it into a DVD player (we are talking about SD, not HD, right?) No more benefits.

And there are a few disavantages:
1. Much slower than flash-based camcorders. It can take over 10 seconds from full off to recording on some models.
2. Media isn't cheap and shouldn't be reused.
3. Lots of mechanical parts that can emit noise and can break more easily.
4. Generally much larger than the flash-based ones.
5. As you pointed out, 30 minutes per media is limiting. You now can get much more length out of a large flash card. Now, image the case where you're halfway done on a disk (got 15 minutes left) and you're about to record a long shot. Do you swap your disk at the start, possibly wasting 15 minutes of it? Or do you force yourself to swap in the middle of the shot? I sure don't want to have to take those decisions.
6. Hard to delete unwanted clips when compared to flash-based ones.
7. Typically, uses much more power than flash-based ones.

IMHO, unless you get a major quality performance gain with the DVD-based one, I would go with the flash-based camcorder in a heartbeat.

I too would only get a DVD based one if it were a last option. They're slow to record to in my experience. A friend of mine had one that he ended up selling because at times you would have to press the record button a full 6-8 seconds before you wanted to just to get it to record correctly. Unless you want to fully record the games or want to end up just catching a goal celebration, I would stay away.

I would go Flash -> Hard Drive -> MiniDV -> MiniDVD. The first two are close, I went the hard drive route just for space capacity sake but you can make a very compelling argument for going the flash route, especially with the prices of flash media being what they are now and continuing to drop.

My wife's cousin was showing off her DVD based camcorder a while back, and ask me if she could shorten one of the shots in a disc she had made some time back. I suppose the camera might have a way to do that BEFORE the disc is finalized. DVD is NOT on my list of preferred camera formats.

I know they're popular, but a hard drive isn't on that list either. I had an expensive repair on an HDV camera to fix the firewire in order to recover tapes I had already shot. REMOVEABLE flash memory cards need only a cheap card reader, and don't even need the camera.

If you sky dive or climb mountains, don't even THINK of an HDD camera. Above 10,000 feet your drive is toast if you try to use it.

Dave

The only advantage of miniDVD is being able to take the disk from the camera and pop it into a DVD player (we are talking about SD, not HD, right?) No more benefits.

Yes, SD vs miniDVD

Flash memory is a godsend. An hour of high-quality video on a postage stamp-sized card? It's unreal.

No moving parts! Unaffected by magnetic fields! Random access! Easy in-camera deletes! And you can read/write to it in a $5 flash reader.

Hello,

I went through what you are going through and so here is my thoughts and reasonings. I hope they can help you.

About a year ago I decided I wanted my first camcorder. I knew to start that I would want to edit the video. So after doing my research I went with MiniDV tapes. The reason was simple very little compression meaning higher quality video for editing and outputting. I bought a MiniDV standard definition camcorder, a Sony. At that time I had no interest of any kind in high definition. After buying the camera I came to a couple of realizations.

1. The camera was large, heavy and hard to carry around with my dSLR. By and large I still like still images better than video. But, I do like to combine them in projects. I could deal with this, but after about 10 or 15 minutes of shooting my hands would crap and I would have problems keeping the camera steady.

2. Tapes are cheap so you can use them as backup. Basically, just record you footage, transfer to the computer and then hold on to the tape as a backup. This works great, but can quickly take up a lot of room. Besides the room issue finding the footage you want provided you don't want everything on the tape is slow and painful.

3. The transfer of the video from miniDV is a 1 to 1 process. Meaning 60 minutes of video takes 60 minutes to get in to your computer. For one project I had 8 tapes. I nearly offed myself from frustration. This quickly became an issue I wouldn't tolerate for much longer.

4. Yes, the quality of the video (remember this was standard definition) and was easy to edit once you got passed the nightmare of the transfer to the computer. However, the footage doesn't look hot on a high definition tv, which I bought about 4 months after getting the camcorder.

In the end the MiniDV camcorder just didn't cut it. Besides the quality issue on high definition TV and the massive amount of time to transfer the video to the computer I sold the camcorder.

It was until April that I decided that I really liked being able to combine my dSLR still images with video. So I started looking for a new camcorder. This time MiniDV was out. I also knew that I wanted high definition, standard definition is all but dead might as well plan for it now.

So I looked at hard drive based camcorders, miniDVD based camcorders and flash memory camcorders. I read reviews, read user opinions on Amazon.com, CircuitCity.com, etc. I narrowed my choices down to three from each format, three hard drive, three miniDVD and three flash memory. I then spent nearly two weeks tracking down local stores that had these available for hands on demos.

I am not going to go in to brands or models. However, here is my opinion on the formats...

Hard Drive Based

Pros: None that I can see. There is nothing that in my opinion is a pro when it comes to this form of storage.

Cons: Lots of moving parts. A storage technology that doesn't like to be moved around a lot. Shakes, bumps, bangs, etc. are all things bad when it comes to a hard drive. This may not be as big a problem as it was 10 years ago, but you jar a hard drive hard enough and you will have issues.

Finite storage. Once that hard drive is full that is all she or it wrote. You can't pull it out and pop in a new one and keep on recording. If you have no way to off load the hard drive you are just out of luck until you can clear the drive. That is not something I want to have to worry about.

Failure rate. Hard drives with all of the moving and spinning parts only last so long. Sooner rather than later that drive will fail. If that happens the chances are good you aren't going to be able to replace the hard drive. Another issue I didn't want to worry about.

MiniDVD

Pros: Media is cheap. You can use as many as you need. Automatic backup. Just keep the disc after transferring the video to your computer and you have a backup. Easy to store discs, they take up very little space. Once the disc has been finalized by the camcorder it is playable on many TV connected DVD players as well as on most computers. Though not all. If your player or computer DVD drive is old it may not work.

Cons: Consumer burned discs are not good for long term storage. Unlike commercially burned discs which not only use a different medium to record the data (consumer discs use dye which is light and heat sensitive) the commercial discs also have an extra layer of plastic protecting the data layer. MiniDVD's don't hold much, you have to swap discs quite often. MiniDVD discs have to be prepared by the camcorder before they can be used and they have to be finalized by the camcorder after you are done before they can be played or read by another device. These two processes are slow. These are not processes you can do when you need to change media quickly or risk missing important moments. The preparation time can be as much as 5 minutes, the finalizing time can be the same. It is slow and both have to be done. While for backup MiniDVD's take up little space, carrying blanks around with your while your shooting they take up a lot more space and are in my opinion much more troublesome to deal with. The little jewel cases and having to hold them by the sides and popping the in and out just isn't convenient when your out and about. At least in my opinion. MiniDVD's are record once. If you choose to use the more expensive MiniDVD-RW that you can format and reuse keep in mind that most manufacturer's state that these discs can be written to about 200 times before the recording material breaks down. Once a disc has a bad spot it is pretty much trash. The problem is that at least as far as I know no MiniDVD camcorder I know of checks the condition of the media before it records to it. You aren't going to know if your disc is trash until your video footage is trashed. Also, that 200 times is 200 times in any one spot, not 200 times filling the disc. So if you use a disc and record 1 minute 200 times the area where that 1 minutes was recorded to is now trashed and so is the rest of the disc. This is not cost effective or safe in my opinion. I don't want to risk recording something only to find out later the video is corrupt because the disc was bad. Record once discs are not cost effective. Now the initialization process you have to do before you can use a disc should catch a bad disc. However, this is not 100% I have had bad discs initialize and format fine, record fine only to end up with corrupted data. The only hard test I did with a MiniDVD camcorder was with a MiniDVD disc that I scratched. This disc would not initialize. However, this doesn't mean that a rewritable disc with bad spots due to lots of usage will be caught. I would want written confirmation from the camcorder maker that it will detect bad media no matter what makes it bad (scratched, over use, etc.) otherwise I wouldn't go MiniDVD. I wouldn't go MiniDVD because of the other cons any ways.

Flash Memory

Pros: If you have a digital still camera you may have SD cards you can use in the flash memory camcorder. I have always bought the fastest and largest cards I could and so all of my cards (45 of them) for my still cameras can be used in the camcorder at full recording resolution. All of my cards are 4GB or larger. No moving parts, means a lot less to break or go wrong. The cards are small and easy to carry and change in the field. With a 8, 16 or 32GB card you can record more at full resolution than you can with a MiniDVD. SD cards can be wiped and reused. Camcorders are smaller and lighter in weight. Flash memory lasts longer than MiniDVDs (the rewritable ones). The video is recorded as files on the memory card, simply copy them to your computer. 1 hour of video can be copied to your computer in less than 5 minutes (depends on computer speed.)

Cons: Flash memory doesn't last forever. Top brand cards are rated at a couple of thousand read/write cycles. Unlike MiniDVD if a card is bad you can't record to it, you don't have to worry about corrupted video. Flash cards are more expensive.

Now I maybe missing some pros or cons for the various formats. My concerns may not be your concerns. In the end I went with flash memory because it is as far as I am concerned the best option currently available especially if you want to edit your video.

The only thing I didn't cover was compression. All hard drive, MiniDVD and flash memory camcorders heavily compress the video. While this means the quality of your video is not as good as with a MiniDV tape camcorder I have had no complaints with the video from my Canon HF-100. From bring in, editing and then outputting the video I see very few issues that bother me.

The area where compression is a problem is the type of compression. AVCHD which is one of the types of compression is computer intensive when editing and software for editing video compressed with this type of compression is only just starting to become main stream. HDV is a little easier. I have no issues with the AVCHD my Canon HF-100 uses. I did however, upgrade my computer. I put in a quad core processor (upgraded from a duo core processor) and I added an extra 2GB of RAM (up from 2GB). I also had 8TB of hard drive space so that wasn't an issue. Especially thanks to the compression.

So there you have my process and what I ended up with. I hope you find it useful. Please however do not use this as your sole source of information. Read reviews, talk to people, find the camcorders you are interested in locally and try them out. Even if you have to buy an SD card or some blank MiniDVD's do it and test out before you buy. Most stores like Circuit City and Best Buy if you ask will allow you to try them out. If not then look else where. I would not buy a camcorder that I can't see video footage from.

Good luck,

Robert