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What is the best format for a camcorder?

What type of camcorder format is best for a school. Need recording speed, durability, cost efficiency.?

  • Do we go 8mm, HD, MiniDV.......???? What do you recommend?

  • Answer:

    you can do a lot of things with a camcorder at a school, so the "best" is determined by your use. If you are collecting evedence of bad schoolyard behavior then miniDVD. If you are shooting school plays and assemblies and need copies for parents, then vhs. Do you plan on archiving the results? Are you going to edit a highlights of the years events? These would be better with miniDV. HD in any form is hard to edit and HDD is impossible to archive. Also give consideration as to who will handle the camera, principal (go for expensive), teacher (go for simple), student (go for cheap) or AV/library technician (go for strong storage case).

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HD most definitely. You'll pay a bit more up front, but have no media to replace constantly. Also makes it a snap to edit on a computer, easy transfer of data. Most will come with useless software so be prepared to find something a bit better to edit with (I recommend DIVX for around $60, no not the free player, but the actual editing software they offer). Worry about optical zoom, not digital zoom(just makes it grainy). Don't bother with the minidvd's yet, can rack up a bundle of cost to replace, and are not nearly as good in quality as they need to be...yet. Christmas of '08 should have decent quality minidvd if you can wait that long. Zeiss lenses are also worth a bit more.

Why Not

I'm not sure where recording speed comes into it, but for durability and cost efficiency I'd go with MiniDV. They still give the best video quality, but the price is low because tape isn't as "sexy" as a hard disk.

Iridflare

Mini DV is my personal favorite, there is good quality and durability. But it is a type of take so seeking is a little annoying but just export it via fire wire and its all good.

Christopher H

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