Expert Guide to DVD Camcorders

Thinking about a mini DVD camcorder? You’re not alone, it’s a rapidly growing sector of the camcorder market, with Hitachi, Sony and Panasonic all making more than one mini dvd camcorder.

These camcorders differ from regular digital video cameras in one important way – they record video onto mini DVD discs, rather than DV tape. DVD discs are more robust than tape and won’t get chewed up in the camera. Although this is thankfully a rare occurance, it scares me every time I hear a strange noise coming from my camcorder, so it’s with bearing in mind.

Sony-DCR-DVD92-vanity

The second advantage is that DVD discs are random access, compared to tape on which everything is recorded sequentially. Some cameras even allow you to perform basic editing functions on-camera.

An additional side-benefit is that a mini DVD camcorder doesn’t have tape heads to get worn or dirty as happens in regular mini DVD cameras.

And thirdly, you can easily watch your home movies by removing the DVD from the
camera and playing it in practically any DVD player.

The most siginificant one is that video is encoded as MPEG-2 on a mini DVD camcorder, as opposed to DV format. This means that it needs specialist software to edit – you can’t just use your regular video editing program (unless it specifically supports MPEG-2). And if a Mac user you’re out of luck, as there are no MPEG-2 editing applications for the Mac.

Also, mini DVD camcorders tend to cost more than similarly specified mini DV cameras.

Executive Summary about DVD Camcorders by Kenny Hemphill

What You Should Know About DVD Camcorders

DVD camcorder allows you to record home movies directly to DVD and play them back on your home DVD player. Nothing compares to the convenience of recording directly to the high-resolution DVD format. Instant access to any scene eliminates wasted time fast-forwarding and rewinding and the durable DVD format saves memories securely in high-resolution.

The benefit of recording with a DVD camcorder is its flexibility. Unlike videotapes, DVD’s need no rewinding or fast-forwarding to search for specific scenes. The DVD camcorder’s LCD displays a list of the recorded scenes for quick, easy searching.

Images recorded onto DVD-RAM or DVD-R discs can also be played on a DVD recorder or DVD player, so you don’t have to hook the camcorder up to a TV to watch your recordings.

Anyone who has yet to buy a digital camcorder might be thinking it’s a good idea to skip the Mini DV tape format now dominating the space, and jump right to recordable-DVD camcorder.

DVD camcorders come in two versions, one that uses rewritable DVD-RAM/R discs requiring a DVD player with RAM playback or a PC with a DVD-RAM drive, and the other that uses the more popular DVD-R/RW discs that work with most ordinary DVD players.

Executive Summary about DVD Camcorders by Roger King

Related posts:

1. HD Camcorders
2. Canon Camcorders
3. Mini DV Camcorder