hi, was tasked by my boss to check which is better media for a camcorder. did a search and realised that most the compasions/reviews are done in 2004. is there any updates on the compasion??

my findings so far:

MiniDV tapes

Pros
better quality;
longer recording time;
fast booting up.

cons
difficulty in converting to PC use (we would use it a lot on PC rather than DVD players);
troublesome in playback

MiniDVDs

Pros
ease of use in PC;

Cons
Lower quality;
short recording time (30 mins?);
slow bootup

is there anything else that i need to compare??

Many thanks

Cost?

The unit cost of miniDVs is cheaper than miniDVD.

Worley

I don't consider it more difficult. Perhaps not as quick.

But there are many opinions. Just a select few MiniDV vs DVD threads:

PLEASE HELP! DVD vs. Mini DV? (04-06-2006)
DVD403 with PE 2.0 problems with finished DVD(02-26-2006)
DVD Recorder / Player (02-21-2006)
DVD vs DV (02-19-2006)
DVD camcorder vs. MiniDV camcorder (06-26-2005)
DVD Recorder (05-08-2005)
DVD403 and HC90 Good MiniDVD comment (04-09-2005)
Please help, want to buy DVD Camcorder but so confused -even after reading reviews! (A Good MiniDVD comment) (12-15-2004)
MiniDV or DVD?? HELP please!!!! (10-30-2004)
DVD Vs MiniDV continued (10-10-2004)
MiniDV vs DVD cam - Another Option (10-10-2004)
mini dvd vs mini dv (10-08-2004)
MiniDV or DVD camcorder? ( 09-20-2004)
Need advice 1st camcorder - DVD? (09-18-2004)
DVD vs MiniDV 08-29-2004
Advantage vs mini dv? (04-04-2004)

Also these threads regarding hard drive and memory based camcorders:

Editing Your MPEG2 Files, Shooting in Mixed Formats 05-02-2006
Sony DCR-SR100 first impressions 04-26-2006
Hard drive vs. tape camcorders 04-03-2006
Comparison test of nine MPEG2 cameras 02-24-2006
HDD vs tape 01-19-2006
Panasonic AV100 - General ? 01-03-2006

Rich

__________________
FireWire Survey

I have never encountered the slightest difficulty in capturing the content of a MiniDV tape to a PC. MiniDV is trivial to convert to PC use. The subsequent video quality and ease of editing are superior to to those of DVD cameras. That is one of MiniDV's strengths.

You gotta be kidding. I've never had any trouble playing back a MiniDV tape. And once you've captured it to a PC, you archive the tape and never use it again.

If you have the money you can record straight to hard disk and avoid anything you consider a con about transferring miniDV video to a computer. You can use a laptop or one of the small, hard drive units designed just for this task. Your video will be in a file that can be copied anywhere you need it as soon as you are finished recording. It's faster than using a DVD cam.

If you plan to view your video on a PC rather than DVD as you say, miniDV offers you more options. It's far easier to convert DV to WMV, MOV or whatever format you want than it is to work with MPEG-2 on a DVD cam.

Good luck.

Dennis

The Unit cost for DVD is substantially less when you use rewriteable media.


There is plenty of trouble in playback with minidv, You have to use the same equipment to play back as you record with (to much wear and tear on the heads and or lots of cleaning). There is no menu and lots of searching (rewinding and fast forwarding) for that one clip you are looking for, with a dvd menu you can go right to it! There has been tons of posts on this site concerning problems capturing video from minidv (dropped frames, firewire issues, what settings to use). When your firewire port stops working your camera is useless. With the dvd there is no capture process reqiured, you can simply copy the data from the dvd to your hdd.

All the major players in video editing now support mpeg-2 as well as any other format. It is not easier with one format over another. The exception being recording straight to dvd which allows you to watch on your dvd player (stand alone or pc drive) without any conversion at all = way easier!

No that is a weekness inherint in the minidv cams, capturing is slow and tedious. It may not be difficult if everything works (again firewire issues -read all the posts on this forum) but realtime 1:1 capturing is very slow compared to the dvd cams simple drag and drop capabilities. In order to capture your video from your minidv cam you will have to buy software to capture your video and hopefully your hardware is up to the task or you will spend lots of money upgarding your equipment, the files are way bigger and take up tons of room on your hdd. So this means you cant easily keep all your files on your hdd without running out of space, so you will delete them and if you need them again at a later date you will have to go through the capture process all over again (doesnt sound to conveinent to me). Concerning quality it is no better in the end, after your video gets captured and converted and then rendered to dvd there is no advantage to minidv (especially when compared to the high end dvd cams).
You will not see a difference on your tv when watching the final product from either format other then at times the straight to dvd will actually look better because you dont have have all the conversion steps going on (less chance for problems) to get to the final product.
As far as boot up time it is mearly seconds from the time you hit the power button to the time you can start recording with a good dvd cam. With the minidv cams you have to double check where you are at on the tape before you can hit the record button for fear you may record over your previously recorded material. This will always be on your mind with the minidv cams. Especially after you have captured off the tape and put it away for a couple of weeks or months and then you need to get it out and record something quickly (did I rewind or fast forward to correct spot on the tape)? This is never a concern with a dvd cam, it will never record over previously recorded material. So essentially time to record from a cold cam is quicker and worry free with a dvd cam.

All of this bantering over a format to store your video on will soon be a mute point anyways. Hdd camera's are here and the next step may be high volume memory sticks. We will not be dealing with tape eaters or laser burners anymore, but in the mean time have fun with what you enjoy.

__________________
First I was a 403user than I was a 405user now I am a UX1user!!!! Plus a Popcorn Hour NMT and 42" 1080p LCD HDTV Life is Good!!!!!
Link to a few raw unedited SD dvd cam sample clips http://www.4shared.com/dir/1728796/25f562f9/sharing.html

Your not making a fair comparison. If you choose to reuse miniDV tapes, the cost will be less than DVD. Who uses rewritable DVD? DVD cams are designed to make DVDs to be shown in DVD players. They are not simply alternative recording media. In other words, they are not designed to be copied to a computer or elsewhere so the disc can be reused.You don't have to do this. You can buy a miniDV deck. Or buy a cheap, used DV cam to use as a deck. Yes it might cost a little more money but please don't give the impression there are no other alternatives.Some cams provide indexing functions to select scenes to view.Oh, c'mon. If your laser stops working in your DVD cam it is useless. Why do you single out the failure of a critical DV cam component but ignore a similar issue with DVD cams? Besides, as I said above, a DV cam without a Firewire port is not useless. It can record just fine. Use another cam with a working Firewire interface to transfer video to your computer. Or, better yet, just repair the cam.

There are many more people who capture DV to their computer via Firewire flawlessly. It's really not as hard as you are making it sound.Except that's not what the cam was designed for. I doubt most DVD cam users do that. The attraction of a DVD cam is the convenience of producing a playable DVD with no computer.

What do you do with the files when you copy them? You will need to preview each one of them to see which contains video and which contains menus or other information. The file names are no help. Yes, it takes less time to copy the files than capture DV but there's more to it than that.Well, that's a matter of opinion. But there's more to working with MPEG-2 video than editing it. You don't consider the quality loss when you re-encode compressed MPEG-2 to another format.Yes, easier if you just want to watch everything you shot in the order it was shot. Some of us don't do that.Tedious? There's no need to sit there and watch if you don't want to. But some of us find a way to use that time. When I capture, I log the video so I know what's in each file. I begin to make notes about which scenes should be discarded, which might make good title or credit backgrounds, etc.Most entry level computers these days are plenty fast enough to capture video. It doesn't take a very powerful computer to capture. Editing and encoding is another story. But you'd need to do that with MPEG-2 the way you intend to use a DVD cam. All you've saved is the capture. Your hardware will still need to be up to the task for editing and encoding.If you copy your DVD cam's contents to disk, you're going to have to back them up somewhere, too, when you run out of space. At least with tape, you already have the backup with no extra effort.Definitely not true! With a DVD cam you are limited to several, usually 3, predefined bit rate settings. And you can only do one pass constant bit rate encoding in real time. With MPEG-2 encoding software you have essentially unlimited bit rate settings which allow you to get the best quality while keeping your files small enough to fit on a DVD. Plus you get the superior encoding afforded by variable bit rate, two pass encoding. The computer is definitely more flexible than a DVD cam.What kind of problems do you think will be come from all (one, actually) conversion steps?

Depending on what bit rate setting you use for the DVD cam you could definitely see a difference; and the computer product could be much better.And on a not so good DVD cam? Some can take more than mere seconds to boot up.Not if you practice some good tape management techniques.This is never on my mind. Ever.It sounds to me like you just need to learn some good tape management techniques. Don't leave a tape in your cam for weeks or months to start with. When you finish shooting, just remove and label the tape. Next time you're ready, put in a new tape and you're ready.Sure, HDD cams are here but they all record in MPEG-2 format. Memory stick cams are worse; consumer models use even more compressed MPEG-4. Until they capture in DV format, they will not replace miniDV cams for their superior video quality, ease of editing and cost-efficient recording media.

Good luck.

Dennis

Well, you sold me on mini-dv Dennis!

In addition to indexing the clips, many camcorders also allow you to search the clips by date.
I have been using miniDV camcorders for years and never had a single problem with firewire. And I do not feel exceptionally lucky because of that.Have you ever tried to edit any video. The capturing part is by far the fastest and easiest compared to the rest of the process. Anyone who has done it will agree.The Windows Movie Maker (PC) or iMove (Mac) that come free with the operating system work just fine.This sounds kind of exaggerated, cause I was already able to edit miniDV 7 years ago on my not so top-of-the-line PC back then (something around 1 GHz processor and 124 MB RAM, as far as I remember).Most miniDV camcorders have a "tape end search" function which brings you right to the end of the last recording. Did you know that?Some people don't care much about HDD camcorders because they would need to get the footage off the hard drive when it fills up. The idea of having to travel with a laptop in order to use the camcorder does not seem appealing to them.
They also are not willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for memory cards to be able to store a reasonable amout of footage at a time.

Both would end up at cost of close to zero correct? Although dvd's are designed to be reused up to 1000 times, tapes maybe 10? Yes it is designed to be copied to a computer thats why all computers have dvd drives now days. When is the last time you saw a computer with a minidv drive? They even phased out tape backup drives for computers in favor of optical media beacuse of the reliability issues.


This does not seem very cost effective to me and is completely unnecessary with a dvd cam.

All Dvd's have menu's with thumb nail views whats your point?

I single it out because there are posts all over this forum of people with firewire or other connection problems even class action law suits concerning the issues with firewire. I dont remember 1 concerning burnt out lasers. There you go buying another camera again, how many do you need to make this tape thing work anyways?

If they cant handle dragging and dropping they wont be able to handle a capture problem now will they?

Yes you have to go through the video just like your tape. Its takes less time to copy than capture that is my point.

There is no re-encoding other than just the few frames at or around your cut, have you heard of smart encoding? That is the point you are not having to put it into another format like you do with minidv. Straight from mini dvd to large dvd = no re-encoding necessary, very simple. If avi was that great then thats what they would use for commercial dvd's and the new high def cam's on the market but they dont! Mpeg is used because it is efficient.

You just described how it is to watch from a tape. Dvd's have menu's so you can jump right to the part you want to watch.

That does not sound easier or more conveinent to me.

So not true, there is no such thing as unlimited bit rate. Commercial dvd players will only replay properly up to 9mps. Anything more will not work (you know that now dont you?). My 403 records direct to dvd in variable bitrate up to 9 mps with dolby digital 5.1 surround sound, your minidv cam cant do that. Any time you re-encode video from one format to another you will have a drop in quality, correct?

Thats my point I dont want to have to learn tape management techniques. I can leave my dvd in my cam for months with no harmful effects at all and be ready to shoot in mere seconds, you cannot do that with minidv cam's. By the time you get your tape loaded and fast forwarded or whatever to your indexed point (hopefully it is in the right spot) the shot will be gone and lost forever.

Superior image quality? The two best consumer high def cams on the market (hc1 -almost gone, hc3) both record in mpeg-2 format with beautiful video so what is your point? Again when you watch King Kong on your your high def tv you are watching mpeg-2 video not avi or DV format. Mpeg is far more efficient, a quote from sony's website.


My point is minidv already has 1 foot in grave, how much R&D did sony put into there minidv line this year? The answer is none (the handwriting is on the wall unless you refuse to aknowledge it) other then to add a docking station so they could get the firewire off the cam and into an accessory so they could hopefully cut down on connection (firewire) problems. You have to admit that it is a dying technology. There is no ease of editing with minidv because every second of it needs to be edited or re-encoded to mpeg-2 (which is where the loss in video quality occurs) to play in a dvd player. Any time you convert video from one format to another you lose quality (you know that as well) With mini dvd you just play it, there is no loss in quality, zero! It does not get any easier or better than that.
Minidv media is far more expensive in the end, you cannot use it as many times as you can a dvd before it will lose its lubericity and stick to the heads and be totally destroyed forever all the while being wrapped up inside your camera around every thing it can find to wrap around. I am old enough to have been down this tape road way to many times and I just refuse to have to put up with outdated technology anymore!

As Dennis Miller would say it is just my opinion, I could be wrong.
(My question is, could you be wrong?)

Take Care.

__________________
First I was a 403user than I was a 405user now I am a UX1user!!!! Plus a Popcorn Hour NMT and 42" 1080p LCD HDTV Life is Good!!!!!
Link to a few raw unedited SD dvd cam sample clips http://www.4shared.com/dir/1728796/25f562f9/sharing.html

But a miniDV tape will hold 10 times or more video than an 8cm DVD can. MiniDV tape is really 10 times more cost effective if you re-record miniDV tapes.Computers had DVD drives long before DVD cams were around. The presence of a DVD drive is not proof that video from DVD cams was meant to be copied to a computer. DVD cams are marketed to people who want to record a playable DVD that can be put into a DVD player and watched without needing a computer. I would guess that the vast majority of people use them this way. If it was intended to be just an alternative recording medium, they would simply record MPEG-2 files rather than the unique DVD file and folder structure with VOB, BUP and IFO files. They don't because they're designed to be played, not copied to a computer for further processing.Totally irrelevant.I said it costs more. I wanted to respond to your statement

There is plenty of trouble in playback with minidv, You have to use the same equipment to play back as you record with (to much wear and tear on the heads and or lots of cleaning).

Sure people have problems with Firewire from time to time. But I don't recall "tons" of posts concerning law suits.

I've also seen questions and problems using DVD cams. People ask why there's no Firewire port or why they can't play their DVD (because they forgot to finalize the disc) and on and on. Firewire simply isn't as big as deal as you are making it out to be.One was sufficient for me. Firewire ports are not as fragile as you make them out to be. Mistreat a DVD cam and the laser will get out of adjustment. Any abuse is likely to cause a problem no matter what type of cam.Sure, but as kolponik pointed out that's the least time consuming part of making a video. For any but the most trivial videos, you will spend many more hours editing, selecting and adding music, recording narration, previewing and rendering the video than you spend capturing. The advantage of your file copy is small compared to the entire project.It is easy to defeat smart rendering if you make certain changes to your video. Drop opacity or make color corrections and the entire thing may need to be re-encoded. It's not uncommon to modify significant portions of a video so re-encoding is needed. And, whichever portions are re-encoded will have a drop in video quality.No, but that's because the DVD cam is already putting it into that other format. It's just that you're not doing it manually. There's no magic.The reason AVI is not used on DVDs is not because its quality is no better than MPEG-2. It's not used on DVDs because a reasonable amount of DV won't fit on a DVD.

And it's not "high def" cams that use MPEG-2, it's HDV, a very specific technology. There are other high def formats that don't use MPEG-2 because it doesn't give the quality required for the application. HDV chose MPEG-2 so consumers could capture the video with the Firewire technology common to most home computers and similar disk space requirements as DV.

[Continued]

Good luck.

Dennis

[Continued from above.]
No, I think you missed the point. If you want to watch a DVD in a different order you must manually jump to the scenes you want in the order you want. Again, I doubt people who use DVD cams do this. They pop the DVD into a player and let it go. But, suppose you do jump from scene to scene to get the story in the order you want. What do you do the next time? Or what if you give it to someone else? Do you give them instructions for how to jump around to get the story you intended? And what about a music track? With DV, you capture and edit the video into the form you want. No one has to either watch all the scenes in the order they were shot or jump around to put things in the right order.Then don't do it. Again, with DV you have the option. You're going to preview the video sooner or later if you plan to edit it into a story (and why would you put it on a computer if you weren't). With a DVD cam, you must do it after you copy the files. With DV you can do it as it's captured or later.Your cam doesn't really record 5.1 surround either. Unless the on board mic has 6 elements you're not getting true 5.1. But that's irrelevant, too.

I didn't say unlimited bit rate, I said "essentially unlimited bit rate settings". With a good MPEG-2 encoder you can select, say 7,372 kbps if that gives the best quality MPEG-2 file that will fit on a DVD. Or 7,931 kbps. Your cam can do that but a lot of DVD cams can't. They have 3 settings. But it's a whole different mind set. You choose a bit rate setting based on how much video you want to put on an 8 cm DVD. Once you record it, you're stuck with that bit rate. With DV, you don't care about MPEG-2 bit rate until you are ready to put your video on a DVD. It's a much more efficient process.Yes, but the more quality you start with the less drop you will get when you encode. There will be more drop starting with a compressed, lossy format like MPEG-2 than if you start with DV.It's fine it you don't want to learn good tape management techniques. But don't claim one technology is better when it's your technique that's the cause of the problems you state. As I said, I don't do the things you describe. Those are not good techniques. But even if I did, some DVD cams take 10 seconds or more to boot up. You can just as easily miss a shot waiting for it.

But, you also need disc management techniques. You can leave a disc in your cam for weeks or months, but when you boot up do you know how much time is left on the disc? Won't it be "constantly in the back of your mind" that you'll run out of disc just when you get to that important shot? You just traded one set of problems for another. Again, there's no magic here.What is your point? We weren't talking high def. Of course high def looks great compared to DV even though it's MPEG-2. But how do you think it would compare to a non-MPEG-2 high def format? You're not making valid comparisons when you compare HDV to DV.Well, that's a nearly meaningless statement. Anything that is compressed is "more efficient". It doesn't mean it's better. HDV is subject to compression artifacts if you pan too quickly. Interlaced DV has the same limitation but it is more pronounced in HDV since the video is being encoded in real time. Unless shot properly, HDV can be more efficient but lower quality.

But, King Kong was not shot in HDV. You seem to think "high def" and "HDV" are the same thing. It may have been shot on film or a very high bit rate high def format, not MPEG-2. And it certainly wasn't encoded to MPEG-2 in real time. A multi-thousand dollar MPEG-2 encoder was probably used to get the absolute best picture quality possible.One foot in the grave? Maybe, but that doesn't mean it's dead. How much R&D is necessary if the technology has been perfected? That doesn't mean it's going away, just that the technology can not be improved.Yes, but it is not dead.I have no idea what this means or why it makes DV worse than MPEG-2.As I said above, the quality was lost when it was recorded. Please don't imply there's something magical about DVD cams because you don't see the encoding taking place. And once encoded, there's no going back. With a computer-based approach, if you encode and don't get the quality you want, you up the bit rate and encode again.You're repeating yourself. We simply disagree about the media cost. You're not making valid comparisons and I'm not going to keep pointing out how you're stacking the argument to make your choice look better.Oh, yes. On that we agree. No one know the future but I'm willing to bet miniDV cams will be around for a while. But only time will tell.

Good luck.

Dennis

So, another miniDV/DVD/HDD debate. The fact that these debates occur regularly on this and other camcorder forums shows that each medium has its pro and cons, and that people find that one or the other medium fits their particular needs. I am sure that the owners of these cams are not going to rush out and sell them to buy another medium on the strength of this debate because most of us have heard all the arguments before. We made a decision what features we wanted in our cams and went out and bought them. I must admit that it still makes for good reading as well as helping people who have not yet decided what each medium's strengths and weaknesses are.

As for myself, I have been using my Sony DVD203E for about a year now. I always shoot on the same three -RW discs, transfer the footage to my PC, do some simple editing such as cutting and pasting, adding transitions, titles, maybe some music soundtrack, using Womble. I then burn DVDs using NeroVision, keeping the file on hard drive as well. I have a dedicated 80G drive and it is about a third full. I find the advantage of having the files on hard drive is that I tend to watch the videos more often, because it is easier to do than to dig out a DVD from the pile. (I am not very organised). This means I enjoy my videos which is what it is all about. This cam was my first video cam and the DVD format fits my needs. I am more than happy with the results and I can live with/work around any shortcomings.

The manufacturers seem to recognise that no one format has clearcut advantages in the marketplace, which is why they are continuing making cams in all formats for the meantime. Time will tell which format is the way of the future (possibly none of the current batch) so meanwhile we can just carry on enjoying making and watching videos in our chosen format.

Happy shooting.

Mike