When I was shopping for a new camcorder, I was torn between the choice of MiniDV and DVD camcorder. The DVD camcorder seemed so neat and convenient, just pop a DVD in and record to it, then straight to the set top player. The MiniDV seemed a bit awkward, record, transfer to a PC then to DVD.

The reason I went with the MiniDV was tape transports have been around for years and optical is fairly new, when the recording/playback part fails you have an expensive security camera, so I went with the tape transport. I am sooo… glad I did!

I have discovered that editing the footage is a blast on the PC. A friend has a Hitachi DVD cam, he asked me to help him make a demo for his band, just a 5 – 10 minute mix of videos and the band members. Most of what he has is on DVD ROM, after much work I did get the video in a format that my editing package would recognize. I did some basic cutting, transitions and added a jpeg of the bands logo to the beginning of the video. The edited video then needed to be re-encoded, so it ends up we are working with Mpeg 2 encoded files and then encoding them again. The end result is something that looks like it was recorded on an old VHS camcorder of years past.

I’m going to trash using the DVD ROM’s from the Hitachi and film the band with my Canon Elua 65, not the best in low light, but otherwise it suits me just fine. In my 45 years I have made some decisions that I have regretted, purchasing a MiniDV over a DVD camcorder is not one of them.