The Working File

Here are a few useful links for research into digital camcorders:

Camcorder Info

Buying Guide

Here is a NY Times article that argues tape is still the way to go:

Here is the camera my friend Chris has, the Canon HV10. He also liked the HV20, which has some added features, but also is unfortunately bigger and heavier.

I think at the end of the day I’ll stick with tape, and probably select the HV20, but tapeless holds much appeal. One concern I have is long term storage issues. My miniDVs from 5 years ago (when I started using them) look great, but the standard advice is to transfer to new tapes every 10 years. Transferring a 1 hour tape takes 2 hours (1 hour tape to computer plus 1 hour computer to new tape). I’ve already got about 30 hours of material, and I’m shooting about 5 hours every year, sometimes more. Hard drives can fail or degrade also, but transferring movies from one hard drive to another is much less cumbersome.

Plus I just discovered a new issue. About 3 years ago my Sony digital video camera was acting weird, and shutting itself off in the middle of shooting. I ended up buying the Panasonic GS400. Well, 2 months ago we discovered another problem with the old Sony. The last 2 tapes it recorded were apparently junk. We tried playing them through the Panasonic and there was nothing but digital noise. This was all of YD’s infancy including her baptism. Fortunately I kept the old Sony, and it turned out that it could play those tapes. I infer that its tape head is misaligned somehow so it and only it can play the last tapes it recorded. I have transferred those tapes to new ones recorded on the Panasonic, but the incident spooked me. 20 years from now, will there even be machines to play the miniDv tapes on? Will the ones we have still work?

On the positive side, I’ve gotten motivated to start doing something with the old tapes. Starting with older VHS recordings, I’ve finally put 2000 (when ED was born) and 2001 onto DVD, and now I’m in the middle of transferring our wedding video, which is also on VHS that is starting to show its age, although it is still in decent shape. I have one more hour of VHS to process covering part of 2002, then I’ll start catching up on the miniDV stuff. With the material on DVD, we might actually watch some of it more often as we won’t have to hook up a camera to do so.