What is the difference?

By Marcia on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 - 10:06 am:

I've been doing some researching and shopping lately, and have found that there are 3 types of digital camcorders. (unless there are more that I didn't see) You can get the kind that uses mini tapes, the kind that uses half hour dvd's, or those with hard drives. I opted for one with a hard drive. I can tape for 7 hours at the best setting, which is more than enough. If you buy the one with tapes, you need a firewire to transfer it. (not 100% sure what that is, but it was extra) The one with mini dvd's took small dvd's that lasted only half an hour, and they weren't terribly cheap to buy. You could also get RW's for that one, but they were something like $20 each.
I ended up buying a Sony DCR-SR40 3 days ago, and so far I love it!

By Paulas on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 - 02:47 pm:

Thanks for the help Marcia. So the one that you got requires some kind of transferring.

We have an older one that we never used b/c it took the 8mm tapes then you had to transfer them to VHS to view (unless you hooked the camera up to the TV). We thought the ones that took the mini DVD would be good b/c you can play them in your DVD player. Figured this would be good for mailing off to the grandparents.

Is it a big pain transferring stuff from the hard drive? Remember, you're talking to someone who can't figure out how to transfer a CD to her son's MP3 player.

By Mommmie on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 - 12:21 am:

I got a little digital camera that saves using an SD card. Then you use a USB cord to transfer it to the computer. I looked at a MiniDV camera and almost bought one, but it's considered older technology and it transfers to the computer (using a cord called a Firewire) in real time. This camera I got was more expensive than the MiniDV I was looking at, but there are no moving parts in my camera and I really bought it for my 12 year old for Christmas.

By Mommmie on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 - 12:23 am:

Also, once the video is on your computer you can copy it to a DVD or you can upload it to the internet to youtube or something like that. I also emailed a small video clip to a relative today.

By Marcia on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 - 12:26 am:

The one with the hard drive just transfers with a USB cable. The Merry Christmas youtube I sent the other day was done on the new camera, and just took me a few minutes to get from the camera to youtube. Very simple!! Now I can play around and burn whatever I want to DVD, and trash the rest.