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"Well, the weather outside is frightful
But the light is so delightful
And since we've no place to go
Let's make a video, a video, a video...."

(With apologies to Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne.)

The holidays are coming--and so are holiday parties and family get-togethers. That means it's time to choose your camcorder for shooting the holiday fun, or for giving as a gift. But which camcorder should you choose? Our holiday gift guide for camcorders is a good place to start, but here are my picks for all the members of your family.

The Gadget Freak: The family gearhead will already have a huge HDTV and a Sony PlayStation 3 that they waited in line all night to buy, so the $1100 Sony HDR-UX1 is the perfect camcorder for them. It records high-def video to DVDs that they can play back on their PS3 in between games of Madden NFL 07, fulfilling all of their geek fantasies in one fell swoop.

The only downside right now is that you can't easily edit the video the UX1 shoots. None of the major editing programs support the AVCHD format that it uses. But they will at some point, and for now your resident gadget geek can shoot and play back their home movies in glorious high def. You can find more details on the new AVCHD format in one of my previous columns.

The Kids: Children deserve their own chance to make home movies. But you may not want to trust them with an expensive camcorder--especially if they are planning on attaching it to family dog and remaking Lassie from the dog's point of view. Instead, get a cheap, robust camera like the $130 Pure Digital Point and Shoot, which has no moving parts or videotapes to worry about. The quality isn't as good as a MiniDV camcorder's, but it's easy to use: The kids can shoot their latest epic, then plug the camcorder into a PC and upload it to Google Video for the world to enjoy.

The Family Archivist: Every family has one--the person who keeps the family photos and documents safe and organized. The one who catalogs your baby photos so they can be used to embarrass you laterin life. What the archivist needs is a camcorder that is easy to use and that makes it simple to store the videos for future use. A camcorder such as the $600 Sony DCR-DVD405 is ideal: It records video to DVDs that can be easily stored and played back in most set-top DVD players for simple and straightforward humiliation in the years to come.

The Party Animal: If your recipient walks on the wilder side of life, consider the $600 Sanyo VPC-HD1A. It's small enough to fit into a pocket or handbag, so it won't be too obvious when they get frisked by the bouncers on the way into the hottest party of the year. And it shoots 720p high-def video, so you can see all of the party action in detail. If the $600 price is too rich, Sanyo also makes a standard-def version: the $450 VPC-C6.

The Proud Parent: If there's a new addition to your family, the parents are going to want to capture all of the cute moments for posterity. The $1000 Canon HV10 is a good choice. It's small and easy to shoot with--so the parent can easily capture video of their offspring. It also records 1080i high-def video to MiniDV tapes, and the video can then be easily imported to a PC or Mac and then edited. The HV10 can also convert the high-def video it shoots to standard def, so you can shoot in high def, and then easily create a standard-def version for putting onto DVD or for posting online.

Those are my camcorder picks for different types of users for the holidays. If none of these models meet your needs, there's another camcorder that you might want to consider: the Canon Elura 100. It's a great pick if you need a simple, straightforward camcorder that shoots good-looking video. And it's cheap--you can pick it up for around $300.

Richard Baguley has been a very good boy this year, so he's hoping Santa will bring him a Canon XH-A1. E-mail him here any questions you have about camcorder shopping. He blogs about camcorders and video at CamcorderInfo.com