With advances in digital technology, video cameras have come a long way from the big and bulky analog video cameras of yesterday, which used to record to VHS videotapes, and were heavy, large and not practical for everyone or for everyday use and toting them around. Todays digital camcorders are small, compact and very user-friendly and enable anyone and everyone to easily shoot and edit movies.
Today most everyone has a camcorder and is able to capture life’s moments on demand. The key to choosing the right type of camcorder is finding a happy medium between usability and price. Digital camcorders can be pricey and finding discounts online for video cameras, as well as cheap digital cameras is a great way to get more features for a much lower price than retail.
The types of digital camcorders mainly centers on the media they utilize for recording capability and the storage device where the video is written to. There are several types of digital camcorders that are popular today, each with specific media formats, benefits and price ranges.
7 Types of Digital Camcorders
1. MiniDV Camcorder
With the MiniDV types of digital camcorders video records to a mini cassette and is then transferred to a computer via fire-wire port, downloaded and edited with the use of video editing software. The advanced compression technology allows for very small recording cassettes making this camcorder very small and compact. This is one of the original types of camcorder and remains very popular today because of the low price and very good video and sound quality.
2. MicroMV Camcorder
The MicroMV type of camcorder uses tapes that are even smaller that the MiniDV cassettes with increased compression technology. The Micro MV records super high quality video and has full digital editing capability. It is also very compact, lightweight and ultra small.
3. DVD
The DVD type of camcorder is probably the most popular model today. This type records directly to DVD disks, both DVD-R and DVD-RW.
DVD-R is a recordable DVD format with a write-once only capability and DVD-RW is a recordable DVD but it allows rewrites and provides unlimited recording to same disk.
A great feature of this recording format is the ability to edit in-camera and the fact that the disk does not degrade with repeated playbacks. Sony makes several great DVD models at affordable prices.
4. HDV
The most expensive of all camcorders that provide superb high definition video recording. They allow for high definition video recording in a full 1920×1080 resolution. They come in the MiniDV and Hard Disk Drive storage types and provide the highest quality and clarity for the best video picture quality that looks fantastic on a high definition television. The high-def model requires a good computer with a high end processor and lots of memory, at least 512MB RAM, and at least 5GB free hard disk space to meet requirements of video editing software.
5. HDD
HDD stands for Hard Disk Drive and these types of camcorders record in the compact MPEG-2 video that is saved to an internal hard disk drive within the camcorder.
The biggest benefit of this type of camcorder is the ability to store huge amounts of video data via the use of compression technology. The vide is saved to an interanl disk with the camocrder itself and then dowloaded to a computer for editing and burning and viewing.,. This type is also long lasting as there are no moving parts and less chance of mechanical breaks.
6. Flash Camcorders
This type records and stores via an internal flash drive and flash memory cards. The memory cards include, Compact Flash, Memory Stick, SD and Memory Stick Duo.
7. Digital 8 Camcorders
This type utilizes Hi-8 tapes for recording. Introduced in 1999 by Sony, Digital 8 is a consumer digital videotape format. While Digital 8 camcorders use the same cassettes as Hi8 equipment the audio/video signal is encoded digitally. The picture quality is good and you can playback on analong videotapes.
