How To Choose The Best Video Camera: 3 Golden Rules & 2 Major Video Formats
There is a great number of camcorder appearing on the market and it’s rather hard to track the newest technological solutions. Get some ideas on picking the right camera and let your video memories stand the test of time.
In fact any camcorder will do if you are going to shoot clips of your house pets. But some moments are really worth good quality and time proof assurance, like the wedding or child’s first steps.
All today’s digital video formats will be changed for good ones, so it is reasonable to choose a future-proof video camera. Be sure that you follow three key guidelines:
- Purchase the best image quality that you can afford
- Use widely supported format while shooting
- Choose a long-term storage medium
In order to get the highest image quality, HD is what you need. There are two main HD (high definition) video formats: HDV, first appeared in 2004, uses Mini DV tape cassettes; and AVCHD or Advanced Video Codec High Definition, that appeared in 2006 with the ability to be recorded to DVD, flash memory or hard disk.
So let’s compare these two main formats.
AVCHD takes major advantages over HDV. It uses an efficient compression algorithm to occupy less space of video, drag-and-drop file that transmits from cam to PC ten times faster than with HDV, and convenient random-access media for fast forwarding and rewinding of tape. You can also play AVCHD format discs in Blu-ray players, as AVCHD uses MPEG-4 compression, the same as Blu-ray uses.
HDV is still a good choice for three reasons.
- The best consumer HDV cams still boast better image quality compared to the best AVCHD models, in spite of the fact that AVCHD is catching up fast. Professional AVCHD cams are just emerging, so HDV cams are widely used in TV production.
- MiniDV tape is really good long-term storage medium and a 60-minute tape costs only $3. AVCHD needs burning to optical disc or huge hard drive space for a long period. Even a 1-terabyte hard drive will house just about 125 hours of AVCHD video at 17 megabits per second, but in order to back it up you’ll need to double that. Tapes can be taken anywhere, especially where it is difficult to offload video from memory card or hard disc.
- Here is the most important reason. Most video software is just starting to manage AVCHD, and it won’t take a full advantage. For instance, a program resolves 1440×108060i (interlaced frames per second), but 1920×1080 variations won’t be handled properly.
What is more, AVCHD hasn’t reached its maximum quality power. No consumer AVCHD cams can offer 1080p support or 24 mbps.
So let’s hope that AVCHD camcorders will achieve their maximum possible bit and frame rates, and more software will support it, as well as prices should be reconsidered to lower one.
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Did you know that Crank2 is shooting with cheap HD cameras?
