This is not entirely true if you buy a DVD recorder that has an internal hard drive like I did. My Panasonic DMR-E100 can do very nice editing. It is good enough for most peoples purpose and certainly good enough for me. I transfer analog or firewire DV to the HDD in real time (1 hour for 1 hour of video). While this transfer is taking place, real time Mpeg2, VBR encoding is also taking place. Also AC3 Digital Dolby audio encoding is taking place in real time. So after the capture, the video on the HDD is Mpeg2 video with AC3 audio, exactly like it will be after it is burned on the DVD-R. You can preview the quality before burning a disk. I can also do all of the cuts-only editing that I want to do (cut out all the bad stuff) before it gets burned to the DVD. The transitions are very nice cuts while doing a quick fade-out of the audio from the end of the previous keeper clip and a quick fade-up from zero at the beginning of the audio of the following keeper clip. The result is a very nice "cut" transition of both video and audio. When you watch a professionally edited movie or video, these are the types of transition's you will see 95% of the time.

I can also add chapter points (at least 100 but I have never added more than 35 on a 4.7GB DVD). If I get one wrong, I can delete it and add a new one in the right place. All of this editing and authoring while the video is on the HDD. Set back and watch the whole thing from the HDD if you want or fast forward or just skip forward through it. If everything is the way I want it I just click on DUB and burn a DVD-R at 4X speed. A 2 hour high quality DVD will burn in 15 minutes. I can make 4 copies an hour. With my computer I had to let it encode to Mpeg2 over night and hope when I got up in the morning it didn't error out somewhere?

What I can't do is add titles superimposed over the video. I can't do fancy page-turn, fly-in, fly-out, window in window transitions. But I don't need them. People are mostly showing off when they do those things. It would be nice to have an opening title and give a few credits to people in the video but I can do that on the jewel case insert. I could probably do it with stills because my E100 can read any memory card devised by man and make a slide show if I wanted. I haven't even tried that yet. I still haven't gotten bored with burning plain DVD's from video tape yet. I have 1000's of hours of Church celebrations and concerts on VHS, S-VHS & Hi8 tape starting in 1980. Just made 50 copies of some 25 year old footage that people are raving over. Seeing their grown kids in Christmas programs when they were toddlers. I was taking video at least 5 years before the first camcorder was invented. Parents and kids used to stare at me with my portable VCR strapped to my body and holding this big ugly video camera. Nobody had ever seen such a thing back then. Now they really appreciate the 1000's of hours of video I have but I could never get it on to DVD with a computer. I just can't live that long. So I am in somewhat of a hurry before my heirs send all my video tape to the land fill.

Dave

Read my DVD tutorial for some more info: http://patmedia.net/dennisvogel.

Good luck.

Dennis

First of all. I do not have and have never used a DVD camcorder. I don't plan on buying one in the foreseeable future. I use MiniDv.

For me it is a matter of preference and have an established procedure which works for me. I tend to agree with all the comments posted here so far. There can be unforeseen hardships in any path you take, but here is one thread you might want to read through: "DVD Vs MiniDV" http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/t107310.html


The discussion that DVD would be more "permanent" than MinDV will probably exist for a long time. I have seen articles that DVD's will last 10 years to 100 years. Of course only time will tell. I have analog Hi8 tapes that are 14 years old that seem to be holding up so far as I go through them converting them to DVD and MiniDV.


Rich

To me the bigger question is will the devices to play the media last long enough. Technology advances so fast that without attention you may well have the DVD but no player in, what, 10 years? Factor that into the equation, too.

I fully expect to transfer my DVDs to a new medium long before they decay. This happened with cassette tapes and CDs and I see no reason why it won't continue.

Good luck.

Dennis

I'll quibble a bit with one of Kerr's points here. It doesn't take a "powerful" computer to create DVDs. I do all my video work on a 3 year-old Dell 900 MHz laptop that until recently had only 256 MB of memory. This is barely entry level for PCs now but was pretty "fast" 3 years ago for a laptop. Things simply take longer on a slower PC but it doesn't prevent you from creating DVDs.

Otherwise Kerr explained the tradeoffs perfectly.

Good luck.

Dennis

True, but VCR's are in fact still around after about 25 years? And my $39 VCR works better than my first VCR which was $999 in 1980 dollars.

I would be more afraid of jumping on new formats like "SparQ" optical media (done that) and a few others I can't even recall.

Since I archive on MiniDV and burn two copies of DVD for myself anyway, I will not be on the first bandwagon that comes by.


Rich

This can be confusing, because people are discussing their preferences - and there are at least 5 ways to go about "recording family moments, and distribute them via DVD".

1. Record video to tape, via MiniDV or Digital8 camcorder - and transfer to DVD via a PC with a DVD-burner. This requires a Firewire connection on the PC, movie editing and DVD-authoring software, and a DVD-burner.

2. Record video to tape, via MiniDV or Digital8 camcorder - and transfer to DVD using a standalone DVD-recorder. This requires a standalone DVD-recorder with firewire input - preferably with an internal hard drive, so you can transfer the video once, and then make multiple copies of the DVD from the hard drive. You also need to verify the "editing" abilities of the DVD-recorder meet your needs.

3. Record video directly to DVD-R, via a DVD-camcorder - and then make copies using a PC with a DVD-burner, or a standalone DVD-recorder with an internal hard drive. Note: This is the "fastest" method, but does not meet your requirement of editing before distribution. But, it also doesn't require any cables or software.

4. Record video to a DVD-RAM disc (Hitachi, Panasonic, not Sony) DVD-camcorders - and transfer the video to a PC via USB for "editing" and then burning to a DVD. Note: This is similar to how you would use the new JVC camcorders - which record video in MPEG2-format to a Microdrive. You would transfer the video to your PC via USB, or remove the Microdrive and connect it to your PC with a CompactFlash reader.

5. Record video to a DVD-RAM disc (as in #4) - and then use a Panasonic DVD-recorder (which can read/write to DVD-RAM) to "edit" your video and make copies onto a DVD.

Clear as mud?

Some thoughts.

A. DV may be better quality, but you can only see that quality - if you can notice the difference - when you are editing it on a PC, or when you hook your camcorder directly to your TV. Any advantage to archiving in DV, for quality reasons, is also dubious to me. The only reason I archive in DV - vice the compressed MPEG2 used on DVD - is to allow later editing.

B. I use quotes around "edit" and "editing" - in my comments above - when discussing DVD-camcorders. That is because there is no easy way to add titles, transitions, music, etc to DVD-camcorder footage. The video and audio have been compressed into a MPEG2-format "stream" of data by the DVD-camcorder, so all you can do is "cut and paste" editing - deleting footage you don't want, and re-arranging the sequence of your shots. For "real" editing - you will need to record to tape, and edit on a PC. Note: It is possible - on a PC - to convert the MPEG2-format into DV - do your editing - and then compress to MPEG2 a 2nd time, for burning to a DVD. But why would you want to, if you can avoid it?

C. Realize that transferring video on tape to a PC or DVD-recorder is only done in "real time". If you have 15-minutes of video - it will take 15-minutes to transfer. If you have two-hours of video from a vacation - it will take you two-hours to transfer. And then you can start editing!

D. If you are editing on a PC, you will then have to compress the finished footage to MPEG2-format - which takes time.

I hope thats enough food for thought, for one post.

Mike

Not so dubious. You describe perfectly the reason to archive DV. If you wish to reuse a scene in another production you'll want to have the original DV as your source.

Great list of choices. One to add is direct-to-disk DV recording. This is a new option (and an expensive one ) that might be appropriate for pros and really serious amateurs. Let's hope the price comes down so the rest of us can afford it someday and do away with tapes.

Good luck.

Dennis

I don't mean to quibble here but just to clarify. It doesn't require a DVD recorder with a firewire port. My E100 has a firewire port but in my limited tests, the analog input to the S-Video port looks better than the firewire port input. It also has a composite input that looks identical to the S-Video input using my eyes and my Sony 32" TV set. So we are talking teeny, tiny differences here. Sometimes favoring pure digital and sometimes favoring analog inputs going through the DVD recorders time base corrector (TBC). I like to test it both ways to see which way looks best.

Dave

True, I didn't make that as clear as I could have. I said "for later editing" - by which I really meant use in other projects, or a different edit of the same project.

By "dubious" I meant the visual-quality difference between DV and DVD - as the main reason to archive to DV. I've never done "A-B" comparisons between my camcorder footage and the same footage on DVD - to see if I can tell the difference - because the DVD picture quality has been fine for my needs.

But, I have read forum posts of people who only kept the DVD copy of their movies - and then find out how painfully time-consuming it is to do the DVD-to-DV-to-DVD process. Let alone the loss in quality from the 2nd MPEG2 compression cycle.

I just wasn't sure it was a good point in the conversation to get that in-depth.

Mike

Which is why I tried to leave myself an "out", by saying there were "at least" 5-ways of doing it.

You make a good point, which I hadn't thought of - not having a DVD-recorder.

I had thought about mentioning the analog route of capture - using an analog camcorder - until I re-read his original post, and saw he mentioned wanting to get a digital camcorder. I intentionally skipped analog capture because of that - but hadn't even considered analog capture from a digital camcorder!

It is interesting that you sometimes get a better-quality picture using analog. Who'da thunk?

Mike

I'll add my two cents in here, more like $.0001 cent. As to the question about the lifespan of DVD vs MiniDV, I don't think there has been any sort of conclusion or scientific evidence to say that one will last longer than another. True, in theory, a DVD has no physicial points of contact, so it can theoretically last an almost infinite amount of time. But, I think usually when people are talking about the lifespan of a DVD, they are talking about factory produced DVD, not the recordable kind. Because there is a big difference in they way they are made. A DVD-R or DVD-RW will have a shorter lifespan than a normal stamped DVD. How much shorter I don't know, but it will be shorter just because of factors such as chemical breakdown and such. Same thing with CD's vs CD-R. But there are a few instances of CD-R having problems over time, and they're really only been out for less than a decade. In theory, a mini-dv should last a long time also, althoght the magnetic signal might start to fade. But if you're worried about the friction from the heads wearing out the tape, I read somewhere that they did a test on the Mini-DV medium, and after something like 30,000 hours of play there was no noticable wear on the tape. Can't remember where i saw this at. So the point of this rambling post is, it doesn't really matter which medium last longer, if you're worried about it, just make copies on both and transfer them every decade or so.

I was surprised about this very issue, a few months ago. I was starting to buy RW-discs to backup my computer's hard drive, because I had read how the RW-discs use a phase-change reaction on a metallic-layer to record the information. I assumed this metal layer would last longer than the dye-based format of R-discs.

Then, I read how the life of RW-discs may be a little shorter than R-discs, because the metal-layer in RW-discs will probably oxidize before the dye in R-discs fades.

Just shows to go ya!

If it is important, back it up. If it is really important - make more than one copy. And don't forget to migrate your backups to newer formats, as they become stable.

Mike

It's been a few weeks and I've played with my camcorder alot, so I think I'm ready for a update. My earlier comments are unchanged with the addition of my disgust over Hitachi (and I think Panasonic's claim of variable bit recording). BS is all I can say. Maybe a few minutes more recording time... but thats it, no matter if I point the camcorder at a gray wall, or a speeding sports car. Figure your choices are EP. SP and Ultra Fine. Period, don't expect any difference with Variable Bit blah blah.

Other than that, I an pretty much thrilled with my choice. Picture quality is just fine, low light quality is excellent, ease of use, especially the ability to pop my DVD into a DVD player is just perfect.

I do have a major complaint of my inability of recording from RAM DVD to DVD R, but I bought a DVD RAM player and that solves that problem. Price of DVD RAM via the internet is no more than MiniDV at Best Buy, so price of media is not a problem.

To sum it up... I will not argue with those who prefer MiniDV over DVD. Maybe it is better, but not to me. All I want is better picture quality over my old VHS-C camcorder and the ease of editing and playing back that a DVD has to offer.

Good luck and have fun to everyone, I appreciate all that I've seen here.

O.K. Marcjacal so you went with a DVD, witch brand? Then you bought a dvd player, what kind was that.
So would you say the bottom line is, if I want to record and then just pop the dvd into a dvd player and watch my movie on my tv I just took of the kids the DVD camera would be my choice?? How many minutes do you get of recording time? I just want something simple and quick, would you say this is the way to go? What price are we talking about here? Thanks so much, I'm very new to this all.