Samsung SC-D365 Camcorder Review

Compression (8.0)
The SC-D365 captures video in standard DV compression, which offers the highest video quality of any compression in the consumer video realm. The main competitor is DVD, which compresses in MPEG2, which has a much higher compression rate (9Mbps vs. MiniDV’s 25Mbps).

Media (8.0)
The SC-D365 uses 8.35mm MiniDV cassettes, which can be purchased almost anywhere that sells blank tapes and CDs. MiniDV tapes are inexpensive, abundant, and great for archival. The downside is that you must capture footage in realtime in order to edit it on a computer. DVD, flash memory, and internal hard drive camcorders offer the ability to transfer data at faster rates (though the video will almost always be of a lower quality).

Editing (8.0)
The Samsung SC-D365 uses MiniDV cassettes, which means near-universal compatibility with any editing software. This is a huge advantage over DVD, which can prove to be extremely finicky when importing. Different manufacturers use different file types, none of which are very easy to work with. This is improving over time, but for now, MiniDV has the advantage.

The camcorder ships with two discs full of software: DV Media Pro 1.0 and Ulead Video Suite SE DVD v9.0. The latter contains all of the video editing software, including two distinct programs: Movie Wizard for beginners and Video Studio Editor for more experienced users. Even the advanced program cannot compare to software like Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro, but people just looking to make a greatest hits compilation of their puppy’s Frisbee catches should be satisfied.