Shud I go for miniDV or HDD
- Thread starter mitramac
- Start date
miniDV systems, even Hi-Def, record to tapes which must then be captured into editing software in real time. In other words, you hook your camera up to your computer, play the footage you want to use, and record it onto your computer's hard drive while it plays.
Hard Disk Drive cameras record to an internal hard drive. You can then just hook your camera up to your computer and drag and drop the footage you need without having to play it in real time.
Advantages of a miniDV camera are an automatic archiving of your footage (just file the tapes away in a cool and dry place) and the necessity of reviewing your footage...you can review it while you are capturing it. Disadvantages include a motor inside the camera to wind the tape, which eats battery and includes a (miniscule) amount of motor noise.
Advantages of an HDD (or memory card) camera are the ease of dragging and dropping an extended battery life. Disadvantages are the sometimes problematic archiving (eventually that hard drive fills up and you have to move your footage somewhere, or delete it. If its a 120g hard drive, it's going to be LOTS of footage. Do you remember what it all is?)
I use both and haven't declared a winner yet.
Hard Disk Drive cameras record to an internal hard drive. You can then just hook your camera up to your computer and drag and drop the footage you need without having to play it in real time.
Advantages of a miniDV camera are an automatic archiving of your footage (just file the tapes away in a cool and dry place) and the necessity of reviewing your footage...you can review it while you are capturing it. Disadvantages include a motor inside the camera to wind the tape, which eats battery and includes a (miniscule) amount of motor noise.
Advantages of an HDD (or memory card) camera are the ease of dragging and dropping an extended battery life. Disadvantages are the sometimes problematic archiving (eventually that hard drive fills up and you have to move your footage somewhere, or delete it. If its a 120g hard drive, it's going to be LOTS of footage. Do you remember what it all is?)
I use both and haven't declared a winner yet.
Card based. Either P2 (only thing I have used) or SD. When a card is full you hand off to your editor to dump it, put an empty one in, and keep rolling.
One other advantage of hard drive or card systems is the elimination of dropout artifacts. This is especially true when shooting Hi-Def, where a tape dropout error means a full 2 seconds of frozen picture and sound.
(Having said that, I personally use tape for the low cost and ease of archiving.)
(Having said that, I personally use tape for the low cost and ease of archiving.)
Pretty much.
Good summary (even though I clipped it for brevity) btw. I feel close to the same, except that if I were purchasing gear I would go with solid state (P2, SxS, SD, CF) or maybe Sony ProDisc. (As if I had that sort of money)
Nothing against tape specifically, but in terms of investing in new gear I'd skip models that are HDV/DV. Well, actually that's not true. I do have things against tape specifically. Well, against Canon HDV (XH-a1) tape specifically, but that's because of a bad experience trying to use it in Premiere.
You can always use a data tape backup for archival purposes (LTO, I think). Saw a couple systems that even do an excellent job of outputting metadata on the clips so you can actually find things quickly. Spendy, but if you have so much material building up that sorting it is becoming an issue...
Alot of it is personal and workflow preference. Given equivalent optics, sensor, processing power, and compression (or preferably, lack thereof) I can't think of a reason one format would result in a better image than the other.
I was debating over this for the longest time and I ended up going with a miniDV camera. I've never owned a HDD but I can tell you much about miniDV. I really love it. The archiving advantage of the DV tapes really help with keeping things organized. Also, I've always had problems with hard drives, with technology now, it just doesn't last as long as a DV tape. Even if it takes a substantially longer time to capture the footage and transfer it to the computer, I don't find that a problem at all because I can always find something else to do, and I can also review the footage anyway as I'm capturing it. My only two issues really is first, that for some reason I'm really having a hard time finding HDminiDV tapes. And second, I'm a part-time working, full-time student, so Buying DV tapes does take quite some money from me, especially HDDV.
At the end of the day, however, I would recommend going for miniDV.
But then again it would also depend on what kind of camera you get...
At the end of the day, however, I would recommend going for miniDV.
But then again it would also depend on what kind of camera you get...
Three words for you:
Sony.
Vegas.
Pro.
mpeg clips (canon HDV captures) that had broken sound sync issues in premiere edit in vegas like they were made for it. Still annoying though. Also, this stuff was 1080i with 1.33 pixel aspect ratio, which threw me for a loop for a little bit.
Hard Drive would be absolute bottom of the barrel last choice as far as I'm concerned. You're 10 hours into shooting and the hard drive is full... what do you do now, stop shooting for however long it takes to dump the drive? I have no personal experience with them, so maybe if they are a couple hundred GB it's not an issue, but at 1 GB per minute for HD footage it seems it sure wouldn't take long to fill a drive unless it was several hundred GBs. Alternate scenario, you drop the camera and destroy it, or the drive craps out, now, unless you have been stopping all day to dump footage (which you'd realistically have to do for safety if not because it was full), now not only have you lost your camera, but everything you shot for the day. So your real world choice is halt production periodically so you can dump, or risk complete disaster.
Little-known secret...
you don't need special tapes for HDV. Just use a regular Mini-DV tape. The quality is exactly the same. I have yet to run an HDV tape through my camera, and I just finished shooting an HD feature. The manufacturers want you to believe there's a huge difference so they can charge you 3 times as much for tapes. Only thing is, as with any Mini-DV camera, choose one brand of tape and stick with it. It's when you try to run different brands of tape through a camera that you run into problems due to the different lubricants used by the various tape manufacturers.
I'm not computer saavy, but how hard would be to make a "plug and play" HDD Camera? Hard drive full? Switch it out and put in an empty one. Hand it over to someone who transfers the files to a laptop, and you have the HDD ready to swap again.
I mean, same with USB, right? (Again, I'm not computer saavy
)I'm not computer saavy, but how hard would be to make a "plug and play" HDD Camera? Hard drive full? Switch it out and put in an empty one. Hand it over to someone who transfers the files to a laptop, and you have the HDD ready to swap again.
I mean, same with USB, right? (Again, I'm not computer saavy
Lots of ways to go about doing that, but you're basically replicating a camera with solid state cards in workflow - but using larger, heavier objects with moving parts that are more sensitive to shock and that generate more heat.
Oh, pish tosh, those Hard drives are durable, they don't need to be handled with care.....
Seriously, that makes a bit of sense. I did think about the cards, but thought the HDD would simply more information, but there might be issues, as you point out
my canon uses little SDHC cards. I have four 8gb cards. This works for me as I can get about an hour on each, can "organize" by cards.
If I just keep buying a new card every month Ill have plenty soon.. (reminds me, I need to hit ebay this pay day)
If I just keep buying a new card every month Ill have plenty soon.. (reminds me, I need to hit ebay this pay day)
I'm in love with "card" workflow. On an HVX200 though a 16 GB card only holds 15 minutes so you're swapping and dumping cards pretty regularly.
re
I suppose I went minidv because back then it seemed that format was best when working with editing software (may have changed by now though). It also seemed to be the most uncompressed format, giving the highest resolution. And also, I know this sounds pathetic, but it seemed at least closer than Iv'e ever been to working with film, and it is a lot closer than using a HDD.
But it seems now HDD are getting more positive reviews than before, so I think it's more preference. Either will get you something.
I suppose I went minidv because back then it seemed that format was best when working with editing software (may have changed by now though). It also seemed to be the most uncompressed format, giving the highest resolution. And also, I know this sounds pathetic, but it seemed at least closer than Iv'e ever been to working with film, and it is a lot closer than using a HDD.
But it seems now HDD are getting more positive reviews than before, so I think it's more preference. Either will get you something.
Thanx 4 ur quotes...but what really I wanna know is whether there is any picture quality compromise with HDD? I have heard that mini DV are best in terms of picture quality.
You're comparing apples and oranges - it is the camera sensor, glass and image compression that affect the picture quality, not the recording medium. That said, the data rate of MiniDV tapes is much more limiting than that of HDD or solid-state memory mediums. The best quality digital cameras on the market today tend to record on HDDs or flash memory, not MiniDV tapes (although there are obviously still many high-quality tape based cameras still in use).