In this part we’re going to talk about camcorder media which is what the camcorders shoot on. Some camcorders have built in, internal memory or it may need an SD card. Digital cameras use them too. How much video can be recorded depends on the either the size of the internal memory on the camcorder or the size of the SD card. Most camcorders with built in memory hold about thirty to sixty minutes of video on up. SD cards can hold from thirty minutes to several hours of video. If you are going to video a short school award ceremony usually thirty minutes would be plenty. For longer activities like a musical concert or play at least an hour is needed, plan on having enough SD cards on hand.

media- mini dv tape / dvd / sd cards

The video is recorded to these are on file formats called MPEG-2, MPEG-4, .MOV, .MOD, and for high definition AVCHD and H.264. Some of the file formats work with PC’s better than others. You may need additional programs to help with the process of downloading and editing.

Some store the video on a hard drive like your computer has. These built in hard drives can be quite large and hold a lot of video. Some of the newer models have hard drives that will hold as much as eight hours of video. That can be good or bad. It’s good that you can shoot video for almost eight hours without having to stop and change tapes or SD cards. You can record football or soccer games with ease.

But bad if you damage the camcorder by dropping it or even if an internal malfunction happens you could lose all the video. These use the same video file formats as the flash memory / solid state camcorders.

Others shoot on small DVD’s. These are not as popular as the other media. They don’t hold more than about twenty minutes or so of video and once done you have to render the DVD in the camcorder before you can take it out and play it in a DVD player.  Also the DVD’s get scratched quite easy. They are pretty much fading out and not many companies still make them.

Some camcorders shoot on digital videotape called Mini DV tape. These tapes store an hour of digital information on them and run just like the VCR’s of old. To record long events you have to make sure to have enough tapes on hand and be able to change them quickly.

Mini DV tape offers great video quality of all the media. Quite a few pro camcorders use Mini DV tape. You can erase the tapes and use them again but I think most users download the video to PC’s and make DVD copies and keep the tapes as master tapes.  These videos are recorded as .AVI and HDV files and are widely compatible with computers and editing software. They are the best media to use for video quality and ease of editing. Tapes are inexpensive and easy to find in most stores.

There are considerations for each. Will you do any editing? Are the movies mainly for viewing on TV? Will they be uploaded and viewed on websites? If you are shooting video to view on TV & you will just hook up the camcorder to the TV, any of the camcorders will do fine. If you plan to mostly upload movies to websites, the flash memory, SD card & hard drive camcorders are designed to upload to websites easily. If you plan on editing movies in your computer, tape is a good way to go as most computers and editing software work easily with it.

Any of the camcorder media will work just fine for getting good school videos, fun family videos and vacation / travel videos and what you do with the finished product may help decide which is best for you.

Have Fun.