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Feature: Choosing a Digital Camcorder

Home-movie cameras have been around for decades. My dad had a Super-8 camera that he used to make grainy, jerky, silent films when I was a little kid in the 60s. In the 80s, VHS and 8mm video cameras became popular, and I made quite a number of home videos myself. But while moviemaking has been around seemingly forever, it was often impractical--and the results are rarely much fun to watch.

The VHS video camera is fast becoming a relic. In its place you'll find the digital camcorder. Sure, it may look a lot like the old analog camcorder collecting dust in your basement, but a digital camcorder records a DVD-like high-resolution signal. These camcorders range in price from about $700 to $1500.

They work much like the VHS video cameras of old, except that a FireWire port makes it easy to transfer freshly shot video to any properly equipped PC for instant editing. Titles, transitions, and soundtracks can be added, then the entire project can be dumped to tape or DVD without losing a pixel of resolution. It's a whole new way of making movies, one that's incomparably better than the tape-to-tape dubbing systems (with their attendant generational loss) common just a few years ago. And believe it or not, the results can actually be fun to watch.

A Plethora of Choices

We have lots of choices when it came to choosing an analog camcorder, including VHS, VHS-C, SVHS-C, 8mm, Hi8--and those are just the most popular ones. Well, just as nature abhors a vacuum, the tech industry abhors a standard. And so we have three popular options for digital camcorders: DV (digital video), Digital8, and DVD.

DV camcorders use Mini-DV tapes to record essentially DVD-quality video (720-by-480-pixel resolution). There are probably more DV camcorders on the market than any other type, since just about every camcorder manufacturer sells at least one model. The biggest downside to DV is the maximum tape length: In standard play, you can record only one hour of video.

Digital8 was created by Sony as a sort of bridge to the future for old Hi8 camcorders. Digital8 camcorders read older 8mm and Hi8 tapes as well as new Digital8 tapes. In addition to better backward compatibility, you can get tapes in longer lengths than DV allows. But there's bad news: There are fewer Digital8 camcorders around, since only Sony and a few other companies sell them.

DVD camcorders record directly to miniature recordable DVDs. These camcorders let you do all sorts of cool stuff--rearranging clips, adding transitions, making complete movies--without a PC. There's no rewinding, and scenes can be randomly accessed from a menu of on-screen thumbnails. Unfortunately, it seems that DVD camcorders aren't quite ready for prime time. Although in theory the PC-free editing tricks sound great, in practice it's cumbersome to do much editing using camcorder controls, and you can't do the really fancy stuff, such as trimming away half of a scene. Worse, the video quality is noticeably inferior to DV or Digital8.

Making the Connection

Except for DVD models, all of today's camcorders use FireWire or IEEE-1394 (which Sony calls i.Link) to transfer video to a PC. Once you take some video, just connect the camcorder to your computer's FireWire connection and dump the data on the hard disk. You'll want a lot of storage space if you want to do serious video editing--plan on dedicating an 80GB hard disk, for instance--but once on the PC you can edit clips, rearrange video sequences, add titles, and create MTV-like special effects. And it's not hard to do: If you can cut and paste in a word processor, you can edit video on a computer. When you're done, you can dump the finished movie back on tape or copy it to a DVD. Computer-based recordable DVD drives have hit about $350, putting them in the realm of affordability. For more information on these drives, see "DVD Burners Hit Prime Time."

Taking Stills

Digital camcorders have come a long way in the last few years. When I got my first DV camcorder, its stills were only VGA quality, totally unsuitable for printing--or anything else, for that matter. We still haven't reached the point where you'll want to permanently ditch your digital camera, but many digital camcorders can now capture 1.3-megapixel stills (a resolution of 1280 by 960 pixels) to tape or to a removable memory card. For a short trip on which I'll be shooting a lot of video, I might consider leaving the camera at home and taking still shots with the camcorder.

Other Features

Camcorders come in all shapes and sizes, quite literally. The Panasonic PV-DC352, for instance, is compact and has a horizontal layout. I found it for around $900 using the PCWorld.com Product Finder. Another favorite, the Canon Optura 200MC, is built vertically and costs around $1000. For the latest prices, check our Product Finder. The Sharp ViewCam VL-MC500U is unique; it doesn't look like a camcorder at all. With a huge LCD viewer on its back, it looks like an oversized digital camera. For pricing, check out our Product Finder.

You'll want to think about how you'll use the camcorder. Do you plan to do a lot of still photography with your camcorder? If so, look for a model with a built-in flash. Like shooting video at night? Then get one with a video light or, even better, a Night mode that makes the CCD hypersensitive to ambient light. Some folks have a large collection of VHS tapes that they hope to someday convert to DVD. If that sounds like you, be sure your camcorder has analog video inputs.

And don't be taken in by a fancy zoom. Just like with a digital camera, a camcorder's digital zoom rating isn't very important: You'll rarely need more than 75X or perhaps 100X. After that, the video becomes a pixely mess.

Finally, be sure to try the different models in a camera store to see which shape is the most comfortable to use, and which control layout works best for you.

For more help choosing a digital camcorder, see "How to Buy a Digital Camcorder" and "Buyers' Guide to Digital Camcorders."