So what kind of video equipment do you use for recording? I'm trying to weigh the pros/cons of using a camcorder equipped with flash memory, internal HD or some sort of DVR media.

If I go away on vacation for a week, will a 40GB HD be enough capacity if I shoot a few hours of video per day? or would recording directly to a dvd be more efficient?

I think on the 40gb HDD with a pretty good quality, you'll be around 10-15hrs of recording. But depending on our quality, that number goes up or down.


I myself prefer HDD because I am lazy. No tapes to fumble with, no heads to clean and I can delete what I don't want.

Personally, I think the hard drive idea is pretty awesome. A person doesn't have to worry about buying HI8s, miniDVs, or whatnot. That being said, I have no clue what I'm talking about, and have no clue about what format is better when it comes down to video quality. I do think the hard drive would come in handy, especially if you have a larger one and access to a PC at the end of the day.

I wouldn't go with Flash, unless you have a camera that can use flash for still pictures and something else for video (like some of the Sonys). Solid state memory just doesn't have the capacity I would want.

Does anybody make a camera that uses full size DVDs? That wouldn't be a bad route to go either, since they are so cheap now.

Just my $.02.

Well after owning just about all of them The HDD is the way I went for my last camera. I got the New Sony High Definition camera with a 40GB hard drive. It works great and I LOVE IT! It is nice that it is already in digital formats so it makes it easy to mess with on the computer. Watching it is also a lot better.

You get right around 10 hours on the 40GB drive which is more than you think. But don’t EVER use anything but the highest resolution on ANY digital camera be it picture or video. The compression they use is MUCH worse than you can get in just about any editing progrom.

I really like this camera: http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/...0151&langId=-1

It's a bit pricey though.

That is the same one i got only with a 60GB drive instead of a 40GB. I highly recomend it, it works great!

I agree. Very nice, but I don't own any HD TVs or DVD players. I think that would kind of defeat the purpose of the HD camera. maybe someday when it all gets really cheap.

But typically the color reproduction of HD camcorders and high end cameras is far superior than the "basic" models. My digital camera does video in the same "quality" as my buddies $2000 camcorder, but the colors on his camcorder are near life like. Not to mention the audio reception and the overall tweakability of his camcorder is great.

Ditto that ^^^

I don't have an HD tv either but the video on the HD camera is FAR better than any other video camera i have had. and when you watch it on a computer moniter it looks even better.

If you can swing it get the HD.

Ok. I think I'm sold on the HD video. But what about capacity. My current laptop is only 100GB. I have about 80 of that tied up in music. So i guess the question is...If i want to get the 60GB camera, what can I do about the extra storage? When you plug in the camera, does it act as any other external drive?

You know, that is something I've been wondering about as well. The specs on the Sony says it has a USB 2.0 port. Does anybody know if it is possible to hook up a regular external hard drive to the camera for video transfer? It would be sweet if you could, especially with the huge hard drives that are out there.

Hook up an external HD directly to the camera? No. You can connect it to your computer and just copy the file from the camera to the HD though which is easy. And you can get 500GB drives for about $200 now days so running out of space is not a problem.

And when you think about it, it is actually cheaper than buying videos to buy a HD.

$5 a vid for 2HR = $2.50 an hour

500GB HD for $200 and you get aprox 170 hours on it = $0.85 an hour

Not a bad deal

Are you talking about the HDR-SR5? i believe this is the sameone I'll end up with.

And if you get a external hard drive for just video storage I would do a couple of things.

1) Buy a firewire enabled HDD, you won't regret it.
2) If the budget supports it buy another one for backup (Once the HDD is fried, it'd be a few grand to recover the data, if it were possible).
And even better than that, buy one with two drives in it that supports mirroring of the two drives, that way you don't have to do any extra work.
3) Save the most memorable video to DVD.

Time to show my ignorance, what is firewire?

Yeah, saving on an external HD through a PC seems like a pretty straight forward way to do things. It would be cool if there was a way to copy to a HD from the camera, or even record directly to an external HD.

It's a different type of interface, similar to USB but a lot faster at moving large amounts of data. Although it's not as common as USB, FW is still present on just baout every newer computer.

This is almost as bad as continuosly dumping $$$ into my 4Runner mods. but that's OK, well worth it.

haha, the technology game is the same as the truck game. You buy one thing, but need another to make it fit or work properly. But once you figure out what oyu need, you wind up buying the best of the bunch instead of just what you need.

Yeah, that is my model. Works great!

Totally ditto that^^!!

Firewire is aprox 800mbs where USB 2.0 is aprox 400mbs (although in real life you won?t get even close to that fast!)

And getting 2 drives is a very good idea. Put one in a fire safe so that you always have the videos.