Feature: Page (2) of 3 - 04/13/07

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Recording Formats and Media
As video has changed and evolved so to has the types of media and formats video signals can be recorded to. Not so long ago there was no choice beyond digital tape; now there are three main popular forms of camera types recording HD ? Tape, DVD and Hard Drive.

HDV TAPE
Tape cameras still make up the majority of both consumer and professional video cameras, but this is changing rapidly. Whilst tape is still the preferred choice for more professional cameras (and still has some significant advantages over non-tape formats), consumer cameras are very quickly leaving tape behind in favor of non-linear DVD and hard drive-based offerings.

HDV digital master

HDV uses only tape-based cameras utilising the small MiniDV cassette tapes - the same as used for Standard Definition DV. Footage is captured in real-time to your computer system via FireWire, same as DV.

HDV tape has a number of advantages, most notably the robustness of the format. HDV tape has the longest shelf life and is the most resistant to damage. If you chew or damage part of a tape you can simply spool past it and still retain the rest of the footage. If you scratch a DVD you can lose everything..!! HDV is also the least compressed of the popular compressed HD formats and so is technically the highest quality.

The main disadvantage of tape is that it is a linear format and so capture happens in real-time (1 hour of footage takes 1 hour to capture). This can make it a more time and process intensive format to work with than non-linear formats.

Recordable DVD
DVD camcorders have been around for some time for Standard Definition recording and AVCHD makes them viable for HD recording as well. Standard Definition DVD cameras, whilst very efficient, were very much inferior in quality to MiniDV and were primarily designed specifically for those users who did not want to edit or post-produce their footage but simply to shoot and watch straight away in a DVD player. AVCHD produces a much better image with higher quality compression and so, once software support for the format arrives sometime in 2007, AVCHD DVD camcorders such as the Sony UX1 will be a much more viable HD format for shooting and editing.

DVD camcorders are currently limited to about 30 minutes per disc recording.

The big advantage of DVD is that it is non-linear, meaning that individual shots can be viewed and accessed in the camera before transferring to computer and, similarly the files can be shifted from the DVD to the computer selectively rather than having to capture all in real-time. DVD camcorders transfer footage via USB cable and so long as the USB port on your computer is USB 2.0 the files will move very quickly.

The main disadvantages of DVD is that recording times are restricted to between about 15-25 minutes per disc depending on the quality setting chosen in the camera. These cameras can generally also accept dual-layer discs which can double the recording time.

The other main disadvantage is that DVD was never designed as a long-term storage medium or to be very robust. DVD?s are effectively dissolving and degrading from the moment they are made and a simple scratch can render a disc unusable. You should never leave your only copy of important video on DVD.

Hard drive
The last of the three popular camera types is the Hard Disc Drive camera. These work by writing video data directly to a small internal hard disc mounted inside the camera. This offers all the non-linear advantages of DVD but Hard Drive cameras tend to be faster to read and write data because hard drives spin faster than DVD discs. Hard Drives can also hold a much greater amount of data ? up to 30GB on some models meaning hours and hours of footage can be captured before needing to transfer to computer.

Sony's HDR SR1 records to a hard disk drive.

The disadvantage of hard drive cameras is that they too are quite fragile, one drop and you may well lose all the footage on the hard drive in one go. There is also no removable media to take out of the camera and store so you need a computer wherever you go if you plan to shoot a lot ? you can?t just swap hard drives like you can swap tapes or DVD discs.

Hard drive cameras, like DVD, connect via USB and the computer will simply see your camera as an external hard drive whereby you can copy over your footage shot by shot or all at once.  

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