What determines how clear a camcorder is?

What type of Camcorder is better Tape or digital?

• I am looking to buy another camcorder but I was wondering what is better tape or digital like a hard drive or memory card for a digital camcorder. I currently own a Sony Handycam DCR-SR47 and it can be grainy and a bit fuzzy sometimes. My Samsung Galaxy S 4G phone's camcorder is not grainy and is good quality when I use it but I can't attach a tripod to it. My old camcorder was a Sony Digital 8 which used tapes but that Camcorder died. I know the quality was good for the Digital 8 so my question is should I buy an old camcorder that uses tapes or a new digital camcorder that uses Hard Drives or memory sticks? By the way I bought my new Sony Camcorder in 2009 for $400 at the time I thought it was a good camera to film with but its too grainy. I film short movies and documentaries so I want the camera I use to be at least good quality for filming cause some of my stuff does get displayed at our local film festival. So my budget is around $300. I bought a new computer for editing and I am about to buy editing software. Also I am looking to see if there is better editing software. I have been using Pinnacle 12 for a long time and it crashes a lot sometimes for no reason so I am thinking of switching editing software. I own a PC and not a mac so no Final Cut Pro. I just need to get a good Camcorder that has good quality and also editing software my budget is: Camcorder: $300 Editing Software: $100

• Answer:

  There are not many analog camcorders out there - new. Generally, the flash memory hard disc drive consumer camcorders recrod very compressed AVCHD format video. A poor choice for very high quality or anything with fast action. Low compression AVCHD camcorders are available - they cost more and fast action is still an issue. Digital tape - miniDV and Digital8 - fell out of favor with manufacturers as they brought the AVCHD cams to the unknowing consumers. But let us be very clear... Digital tape (the "DV" in miniDV = Digital Video) is just as "digital" as flash memory or hard disc drive storage. The format is different, but the video information is zeros and ones. And, by the way, Digital8 tape is also digital. What you may have confusion with at this point is standard definition video (480 horizontal lines of video resolution) vs high definition video (720 or 1080 horizontal lines of video resolution). "Grainy" video is generally attributed to using the camcorder in an environment that does not have enough light. This is not a recording media issue. Many times, in low-light situations - the camcorder does not know what to focus on because it cannot "see" the object very well.... again, not a recording media issue, but a camcorder with a lens not large enough or imaging chips not large enough to deal with the lighting. Phones that record video will record to an extremely compressed format - and have little lenses and imaging chips, so expect poor quality. There are tripod mounting brackets available that are adjustable... do a search using "universal cell phone tripod mount" and check the hits. We don't know what computer hardware you have. The editor could be fantastic (Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere), but if the computer does not have enough RAM (minimum 4 gig) or not enough available hard drive space - and an external drive is not being used for the video files, and an unstable computer operating system environment, the editor won't fix "crashing a lot". For $300, you aren't going to get much... I'd be looking at the Canon HF M series - they are AVCHD, but also have a mic jack and manual audio control. The Canon HV40 is still around and more than you want to spend - but it is miniDV tape based. Same with the Sony HDR-FX7... unless you can stomach used like a Canon GL2 or Sony DCR-VX2000 series... Any video editor can work - assuming the video format can be used. If not, then converting - transcoding - is needed. HandBrake and MPEG Streamclip are both very capable. There are lots of others. Just remember to transcode to a low compression version. This will use lots of hard drive space but will not reduce video quality like more compression will. The minimum I would consider for "film festival entry" potential is more like a Sony HDR-FX1000 miniDV tape based cam with external mics (using a juicedLink or Beachtek XLR adapter) like those from Shure or Sennheiser (among others). As you know, use of miniDV tape assumes your computer has a working firewire port or the ability to add one as bursty USB will not be able to handle the streaming requirements that firewire provides.