I'm in the market for a camcorder, largely to record the 1st decade or so of our (expected in November) twins.
I know that I should definitely get one that records in high def, and I'm thinking that probably I should go for a hard drive as the recording medium.

My 2 questions are:
1. What do you think of the hard drive as the recording medium, especially compared to flash memory?
2. Do you have any experience with or recommendations on which HD/HDD camcorder to actually buy?

 

HD drive camcorders are great.......but remember you need to be able to get the movie off of the camera and onto something you can archive. And blu-ray burners and media is still way expensive.

Do they have available a DVD HD camcorder out?

 

The mini-dvds are very pricey for the media ($3 a disk that holds about 15-20 mins of HD).
Blue-ray burners aren't that bad already, but I can buy an external terrabyte hard drive for under $200. That should give me plenty of storage for these videos of the birth and 1st steps.

 

That would be the way I would go if you can stream the video to the tv.

 

First off, congratulations Agro!

Having just played the "get a new camcorder game" 2 months ago, here's what I learned.

• Never saw a single positive review of the straight to DVD models; most reviewers seemed to indicate they'd rather have the avian bird flu than a DVD based camcorder.
• If you want the best HD image quality, you'll have to get one of the models that use the MiniDV tapes. The compression is significantly less than what's used for the hard drive and flash models.
• Editing HD video is much more time consuming and resource intensive than editing SD video. If you end goal is to send DVDs to relatives, an SD camcorder will save you money and is all you need.
• Flash based models can transfer the video to your PC/Mac much faster than the hard drive models. Pop out the SD card into your camera's card reader and be amazed at how fast your video is ready for editing (at least when you're used to editing MiniDV tapes ).
• Hard drives will fail, it's just a matter of when. If you frequently backup, this is will not be an issue. If the last time you backed up your PC and tested your backup was >3 months ago, tread carefully. Do not leave every single video you've ever recorded on the hard drive forever like some consumers do.

Figure out what you want your work-flow to be. I personally record my baby doing some cute/funny/potential future blackmail/etc stuff, then do a lot of cutting/editing as it's no longer cute and funny if it drags on for 15 minutes, and finally export edited video to DVD to send off to relatives (who only have DVD players, no BluRay). I got a Canon FS100 because I'm tired of MiniDV models breaking, cheap $30 8GB SD memory card that can record 110 minutes of video at best quality setting, 3 hour battery, very wide to long zoom, small and light package, external mic input, Canon's top notch video picture quality, and simple to edit SD video for DVD distribution. YMMV.

If I wanted to record HD, I'd have to go back to MiniDV to get the good quality video I'd expect since the AVCHD compression is pretty high and not ready for prime time in most video editing software.

You could also just keep all of the HD video on a hard drive based camcorder (backup to that external drive you were talking about) and wait until video editing software improves, you have the latest fastest computer hardware, and your relatives all have BluRay players with HiDef TVs.

I hope somewhere in this long post that I've mentioned something useful.

 

Thanks for the input Speednut. That's exactly the kind of input I was looking for.
I was planing to avoid the tape based recorders due to the linear nature of the medium, and they seem kinda clunky these days. However, everyone I talk to in a store seems to be pointing me at the hard drive models (maybe coz they're more expensive?).
Before I talked to the sales guys, I was going back and forth between HDD and flash memory as my medium of choice. If I go with an SD chip camera, I already have multiple multi-gigabyte sd chips I got for my 1 year old camera. Also, today's Fry's ad has a 16gb SD chip for $60.
As for the work flow question, I guess I'm hoping to not have to do too much editing. Twins plus a full time job, plus the other stuff that still happens, I'm not going to want to spend too much time in front of the computer editing footage. So maybe the standard def is the way to go after all?

 

I just had my old Canon MiniDV tape model break on me and reached the same conclusion as you did.
The hard drive ones seemed to be geared for folks who want to store days and days worth of video on a single point of failure hard drive. I'm in the same lack-of-free-time boat as you and I'm lucky just to capture 20 minutes of video (which will edit down to ~2 minutes of the cute stuff). I don't know how someone other than a film student could need the ability to capture 30 hours of video at a time.

I did a bunch of video editing from my MiniDV camcorder and iMovie 06 (mac only) which took quite a long time before I had a DVD as output. Once I switched to the Canon standard def camcorder and iMovie 08, the capture and editing time was easily 3x faster. DVD generation with chapters was still a time consuming PITA, but I think I've got a better hang of it for next time. Just like you, getting time in front of the computer is a premium. However, nobody is going to want to watch looooooong unedited videos no matter how cute the mini Agro twins are. Your timing is perfect however because now is the time to learn all this stuff before the babies arrive. This way you'll already know how to crank out edited videos quickly. Also gives you an excuse to record some in-car video footage... "But Honey, I'm learning how to record and edit video for the babies!"

Thanks for the heads-up about Frys; I'll be checking their local ad later.

 

I think you've sold me on reverting back to standard def and flash memory.
So, you like the Canon FS100?

 

Yes, very much. Ms. Speednut likes it a lot too as it's very small and light (as opposed to my D3 w/ f/2.8 glass mounted that she hates ) It will take up about the same room in a camera bag as a small tele zoom lens.

Indoors I also use one of these video lights. Comments on Amazon match my experience with it; but I've done a strobist mod on mine with a sheet of velium to diffuse/soften it further. Look for better prices than amazon's current one.

One more thing: none of the consumer camcorders do a great job filming in the house with dim lights in the evening and my cheap LED light suggestion above is far from perfect. The >$3k pro video recorder models would probably work better. Just want to set your expectations correctly for low light recording.

 

Ok. Many thanks. I bought an FS100 yesterday afternoon at Best Buy. I'm going out of town with my nephew and niece tomorrow and wanted to practice with the cam during the trip, so I needed one available locally. Best Buy matched the Circuit City sale price of $370, CC didn't have any in town. Picked up a 16gb SD chip at Frys and took it to Fremont Street (downtown Vegas) last night. Haven't looked at the output yet, but I'll let you know.
I put the camcorder in a point and shoot camera case that's been sitting in the closet for several years. The bag is actually slightly too big for the camcorder.

 

I recently got an HD camcorder a Panasonic HDC-SD5. Its pretty small, 3CCD and records to SDHC cards. It'll record 80min on an 8GB card.

I was looking for a camcorder which recorded to a solid state medium (eg memory card) because I wanted to mount it in the back of the Tristan when I took him on the track. (The track day was annoyingly cancelled.) It also has manual exposure and focus controls which, is unusual, and I think its going to be useful for getting in car video. The camera also worked pretty well when I took it to the F1 grand prix in Montreal.

 

There are nice external hard drive enclosures out there... I saw a 1 TB raid 1 drive set for $219.00 For you non computer types, a RAID 1 with 1 terabyte means there are two 1 TB drives in there, and they are mirrored so when one fails you get a warning and the data is still preserved on the other... For family photos and video I'd have a pair of these, and rotate one off site. My cousin has lost all family photos TWICE in two house fires 9 years apart.

Also Extreme Geek catalog has a small fire proof hard drive enclosure... You put a USB powered drive inside and it has a pass through...