Mini DV Cameras VS Consumer HD Camcorders?

There may be a few misconceptions in there, so just in case - MiniDV camcorders aren't especially suitable for music videos - they're simply generally better. The camcorders you've provided links to are still consumer level So what's the advantage of MiniDV over things like AVCHD? It's down to the way the video's compressed - MiniDV is only lightly compressed, so you can record lots of movement and lighting changes without any problems. It also means you can edit it with relatively low power equipment (though laptops are not great for any video editing) and the editing doesn't degrade the video quality. The HD formats are highly compressed and they do this by throwing away most of the video and replacing it with information about what's changed. That's a great system for recording paint drying, but it's not so good when you're dealing with the movement and lighting changes I mentioned earlier - you tend to get some ugly artefacts. Added to that the video quality degrades when you edit it and you need some seriously powerful kit to do the edits in the first place. Sadly, MiniDV has its drawbacks, and transferring the video to your PC is one of them - it's done in realtime (an hour of video takes an hour to transfer) and it has to be done via firewire. If your PC hasn't already got a firewire interface you'll need to add a card - they're cheap, readily available and easy to install. The realtime transfer isn't that much of a problem - you can always do something else while the video's transferring, and you don't have to transfer it all at the same time. You'll also need a lot of disk space. This is one area where laptops have a problem - ideally you need multiple, large and fast drives (you're moving a lot of data) but laptops tend to have a single relatively small and slow drive. If you haven't already bought Avid Studio I'd take the time to look at a few alternatives such as Vegas Movie Studio or Premiere Elements. Both of them give you an upgrade path to prosumer level editors if you need one and both (IMHO, of course) are much better editors than Avid Studio (unless it's improved a lot since I used its Pinnacle ancestors). If you fancy something a bit less mainstream but still very capable, have a look at Serif's MoviePlus.

One of the drawbacks of HD camcorder so seldom said on this site is the computer power they need to both watch and edit the footage they produce. As an example, I provide you with the Minimum requirements for a program that can work with HD footage, see below. Minimum System Requirements Windows® 7, Windows Vista® (SP2), or Windows XP (SP3) Intel® Pentium® or AMD Athlon™ 1.8 GHz (2.4 GHz or higher recommended) -Intel Core™ 2 Duo 2.4 GHz required for AVCHD* -Intel Core™ 2 Quad 2.66 GHz or Intel Core i7 required for AVCHD* 1920 1 GB system memory recommended, 2 GB required for AVCHD* DirectX® 9 or 10 compatible graphics card with 128 MB (256 MB or higher recommended) -1 GB required for HD and AVCHD* DirectX 9 (or higher) compatible sound card 3.8 GB of disk space DVD-ROM drive to install software As you can see, the specs for the computer for AVCHD videos is very high. Without this good of a computer, your going to have world of frustration trying to play and work with HD video. To get firewire into your computer, you will need one of these. Search 'laptop firewire cards' for more info. - http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/startech-startech-2-port-xpresscard-laptop-firewire-adapter-card-ec13942/10155712.aspx Most artists, musical ones, higher production companies to make, that includes shoot and edit their music videos.