If You Have a Digital Camcorder

[crokett]

and have a choice between recording to DVD or memory card, use the memory card. We upgraded our camera after Christmas - took advantage of the sales and I opted for mini-DVDs. Dumb mistake. Each one only holds 1/2 hr of video, you have to close them to read on the PC and at least Adobe Premiere can't read the DVD directly. I have to rip it to HDD then use some third party stuff to get it to a format that Premiere will import. Then I have to resynch the audio with the video because they get encoded as separate tracks as part of the conversion.

I installed a memory card a few weeks ago and was playing with it tonight. I can read directly from the card on the PC and AFIK can probably write to it too. It is already in an AVI format so no messy imports. I also think the battery will last longer since it doesn't have to spin the DVD or power the laser.

[dbhost]

Mine does Hard drive AND SD card. 30GB HDD I think...

Might just have to do a video shop tour once it is all done... Just finished putting together the lathe... As soon as I get the chisels I am gonna spin SOMETHING up on this thing... Or at least make some hampster bedding...

[Kristofor]

It is already in an AVI format so no messy imports.

AVI is a container rather than a format per se so depending on how the data is encoded there still may be some hoops to jump through, but often times it is easier.

Lots of camcorders play a little loose with the various specs. The Vobs on the mini DVDs are sometimes out of spec, and the various HD camcorders do that a lot too with slightly mangled flavors of AVC, etc.

All of the digital flavors I've needed to play with are quicker/easier than analog conversion or captures and manipulation of the raw uncompressed DV data.

[drumpriest]

Kristofor is certainly correct, AVI is a container file that will hold any numbers of compression algorithms, including mpeg. If you are recording straight to DVDs (or mini DVDs) you are recording to mpeg 2, which is a highly compressed format and isn't the best for editing. I personally have an HDV camera, which will do DV at 480p and mpeg 2 at 1080i, still not a great solution. Ideally you'd be able to capture as some format that isn't compressed for editing. DV is also compressed, but in a pretty light fashion, no interframe work being done to an extent that messes you up when editing, unlike MPEG 2. And if you edit MPEG, you still have to re encode unless you are doing something like cutting and pasting along I frame boundaries.

btw, Kristofor, DV is indeed compressed, it's a luminance compressor I believe, but doesn't interframe compress, which leaves it nice for editing.

Recording straight to the DVD is really supposed to eliminate steps, so if you don't care about editing, it's a great option! If you want to edit though, it's not ideal.