MiniDV vs. DVD camcorders - a war of convenience?

With all the latest formats for digital cameras coming out, it’s hard to make a decision on which type is the best, but fortunately, one decision – if you face it – is easy to make.  We look at why the differences between Mini DV and a DVD camcorders, and why it’s basically a war of ease.

Mini DV

The mini DV format is basically a camcorder that records to tape. DV stands for digital video, and is of slightly higher quality and faster than the recording to DVD. The upsides other than speed and size (as Mini DV recorders are just slightly lighter and smaller) are that the video is taped uncompressed – in most cases to an .avi file that you can edit on your computer in almost every video editing software. It’s fine grain editing options down to 1/30^th of a second means that it’s one of the best choices if you’d like to edit your video files, without loss of quality. This convenience makes Mini DV cameras a great choice if you’re planning on shooting lots of editable video, and want it uncompressed so that you can compress it exactly the way you want it, after editing.

DVD camcorder

The DVD camcorder format shoots slightly lower quality, and is slightly slower, but other than that, the compression (and lower quality) creates an MPEG2 (in most cases) file, that you can then edit as usual on your system and in software. It is however, a great way to simply shoot and go – anything that you want to take straight from filming to playing on your computer or TV, then Mini DVD is the way to go – even though they are mini DVD discs, they should play in most DVD players without any intervention.

A war of convenience?

Basically, the choice between the two comes down to what you’d like to do with them – if you’d like a convenient, solid file type to edit, go with a mini DV system. If you’d like to play straight from shooting, without editing or complex production, go for a DVD camcorder.