This is probably covered here elsewhere, but I hope I can get a defintive all-in-one answer by asking the question in a new thread. Here is my situation:

I have an old bulky Digital 8 camcorder and I want to get an HD camcorder. I have an HD TV but I do not have an HD DVD player or Blu Ray and will get neither until the format war ends (I do have an xbox 360, but feel the $180 is wasted money until a format winner is declared - I digress). My Computer is a 3.2ghz pentium IV w/ a 160gb hd.

In any event, I'm intrigued by teh hd HD camcorders, but fear that I won't be able to view hd on my tv once I export the files to a backup dvd. In which case, it seems that an hd dvd camcorder would be best, but in that event it seems like I will spending a lot of money on mini dvds. - or dv tapes for that matter.

Any thoughts? I see the pro and cons of each player and I guess the big difference is going to be whether I want to have the convenience of a camcorder that doesn't require media in exchange for no way to view the recorded content in HD after its removed from the camcorder vs. being able to immediately acces the content, but having to buy several discs.

How is the quality of dvd recorders vs hard drive ones?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Phil

Camcorders that record to DVD are a royal PITA for editing. Roxio Easy Media Creator finally made it braindead simple to rip the DVDs in their latest version, but the DVD camcorders were never designed for editing - they are targeted at all those thousands of people who shoot video and just want to watch it shoe gazing shots and all.

Hard Disk camcorders are far easier to work with in terms of moving media around, although your mileage may vary across brands. Same goes for the camcorders that record to SD cards, although your concern about buying extra media won't go away with those formats.

I personally still use tape with a Canon HV20 for things I care about and several different hard disk/SD card camcorders for stuff that I want to turn around quickly. The HV20 looks amazing.

Keep in mind that your processor will likely not be the limiting factor in your high def editing experience. Video card, memory, and even disk write speed (read multiple striped drives) will all play factors in how much work it takes to edit.

Any thoughts? I see the pro and cons of each player and I guess the big difference is going to be whether I want to have the convenience of a camcorder that doesn't require media in exchange for no way to view the recorded content in HD after its removed from the camcorder vs. being able to immediately acces the content, but having to buy several discs.

there is no way to view your recorded content in HD once it is off the camcorder with any solution, be it tape, disc or hdd, if you don't have an hd/bluray player (or I suppose you could stream it from a pc). this is not a situation limited to just the hdd cams. You sound like you want the convenience factor and an hdd cam will give it to you. You can archive the hd files and downconvert/burn to standard dvd with any of the formats and watch it that way, until you eventually do get a hd/bluray player. Until then, if you want to watch in hd, you'll need to either play it from your cam or watch via pc.

there is no way to view your recorded content in HD once it is off the camcorder with any solution, be it tape, disc or hdd, if you don't have an hd/bluray player

This is simply not ture - you can lay your footage back to tape, if you have a tape-based recorder. If you have an Xbox 360 or PS3 you can play HD files. There are ways to trick Hard Disk camcorders into playing back files by authoring them and copying them back to the camcorder, although they are inconsistent.

right, to clarify I meant without using the camcorder itself, there's no way to do it. xbox/ps3 use hddvd/bluray. Putting files back on a hdd cam is just playing them off the hdd cam, of course you can do that stuff. I guess you could also have a stand-alone tape player that outputs hd, but that seems unlikely.

Some of the tape cameras have a slightly better picture, but the HDD models are much easier to deal with. I play back edited video using a HTPC and it works great. You can also copy about an hour of edited HD on a regular DD DVD. That will play back on any computer or laptop that's fast enough.

right, to clarify I meant without using the camcorder itself, there's no way to do it. xbox/ps3 use hddvd/bluray.

You can put files on a USB drive or memory stick and play them back on either the Xbox 360 or PS3. No HD-DVD drive or Blu-ray disk required.

In some cases you can use a DivX certified device to playback DivX HD on your HD screen as well.

Quality of DVD and HDD ought to be the same - they both use AVCHD encoding. Quality on tape is a little better. It's amazing to me that one little miniDV tape holds 13GB worth of data. Moreover, the tapes are relatively cheap (I get reliable Panasonic tapes for about $2.50/piece). So, in addition to better quality and significantly more storage space (a hour of HD footage on a tape vs. maybe 20 minutes on a DVD), the tapes are of course much cheaper than the mini DVDs. Basically, I can't see any benefit to the DVD format cams and would eliminate those from consideration right off the bat.

The HDD cams transfer the data onto your computer faster than the tape-based cams, so from that perspective they're easier to use. This "advantage" kind of disappears, however, when you consider that it will take longer to edit the AVCHD-encoded footage and factor in time you spend backing up the files off of your HDD (I wouldn't trust a home-burned data DVD or external HDD alone, so backing up to multiple sources before deleting the files on your cam's HDD is going to be a pain, while the tapes make a cheap and easy master backup). And then finally, there's the slight compromise in quality you'll have to make if you purchase one of the current generation of HDD cams.

In case you couldn't tell, after thoroughly researching all the pros and cons, I opted for a tape-based camcorder.

Whichever format you chose, if you want to watch HD on your HDTV and aren't ready to invest in BD or HD-DVD, you'll be using your camcorder as the player.

.

Whichever format you chose, if you want to watch HD on your HDTV and aren't ready to invest in BD or HD-DVD, you'll be using your camcorder as the player.


I have the Canon HV20 and never use it as a player. For US$ .20 you can store 22 minutes of HD on a regular DVD media or US$ 1.50 for a DL and 44 minutes. So far that has been enough for all my home videos, since even shooting for longer times after editing they end up much shorter. I use Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus and HD-DVDs on regular media look amazing on my 73" Mitsubishi. PS3 can play the native M2T files as a data disk (no menus) and HD-DVD players will play a hd-DVD published on a standard DVD media.

Sergio

I have the Canon HV20 and never use it as a player. For US$ .20 you can store 22 minutes of HD on a regular DVD media or US$ 1.50 for a DL and 44 minutes. So far that has been enough for all my home videos, since even shooting for longer times after editing they end up much shorter. I use Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus and HD-DVDs on regular media look amazing on my 73" Mitsubishi. PS3 can play the native M2T files as a data disk (no menus) and HD-DVD players will play a hd-DVD published on a standard DVD media.

Sergio

Sergio - Yes, you can get HD footage on a regular DVD but you can't play that back in HD unless you have a HD-DVD player or a BD player (including PS3). In other words, you can't put that DVD in a DVD player and output HD. For people that haven't invested in HD-DVD or BD yet, playback using the cam is a perfectly reasonable solution for viewing their HD footage.

You can put files on a USB drive or memory stick and play them back on either the Xbox 360 or PS3. No HD-DVD drive or Blu-ray disk required.

In some cases you can use a DivX certified device to playback DivX HD on your HD screen as well.

or I suppose you could stream it from a pc

besides, that wasn't my point, I was just saying that there is no special limitation on the way files coming from an hdd cam can be played, like the op had suggested.