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Camcorder Buyer's Guide 2008

Back in the early 1980s, when Howard Cosell was wrapping up his hosting duties on Monday Night Football, MTV still showed videos and the internet was still confined to colleges and army bases, the first camcorders came in exactly two flavors. You could have any format you wanted, as long as it was Betamax or VHS-C. And the images those early camcorders generated were nothing to write home about. (Writing was essential, since you couldn't make out what was on the tape...) But these days, both the quality of camcorders and the sheer quantity of available features and prices have grown exponentially. So, before you whip out your credit card and go shopping online or at the local big box store, let's try to make sense of those options.

For years, the main consideration when shopping for a video camera involved tape compatibility. While a multitude of video cameras still use tape, newer formats - including hard drive, computer memory and recordable DVDs - are all combining to make the tapeless camcorder an increasingly appealing option.

So what are the primary format choices that are currently out there? First, there's good ol' DV and HDV tape, each of which remains an awfully useful recording medium. While these formats each use a small tape cassette, they produce high-quality video that you can port to a computer for editing via a FireWire cable. One drawback to this format is that you must input video into your computer in real time, which may seem increasingly slow in today's fast-paced webcentric world. In other words, an hour of footage shot on the camcorder means waiting an hour during the input process, while the PC crunches its ones and zeros.

But, once you've copied your footage onto tape, that original tape, if properly stored, provides a long-lasting backup of your original footage in the event of a catastrophic hard-drive failure. The rise of newer formats has helped to make HDV camcorders increasingly affordable, as dealers wish to move last year's stock. They may not be as sexy as newer technologies, but DV and HDV are still the basic building blocks of many video productions. However, it's becoming increasingly clear that video is heading into a brave new tapeless world. In May of 2006, Sony and Panasonic created a standard for tapeless cameras called AVCHD, short for Advanced Video Codec High Definition. AVCHD allows you to record data on recordable DVD, hard disk drives and memory cards.

as the hard disk of TiVo replaced the tape-based family VCR, hard disk-based camcorders are an increasingly popular option. These provide several benefits over tape. Unlike a DV tape, which typically holds an hour of footage, a hard drive-equipped camera can hold several hours of footage. And, since it eschews the linear format of tape, most disk-based camcorders allow for quick searching and playing of individual shots, much like scrolling through files on a computer.

Hard disk and memory card-equipped camcorders can also provide clearer slow-motion images. The nature of tape-based video recording means that it isn't possible to adjust the frame rate. This means that overcrank effects have to be simulated when you are using tape-based camcorders, either with an in-camera effect or with effects applied during post production. Since both methods involve duplicating frames to slow the action down, they can sometimes result in a slightly softer image quality. However, a camera that uses a hard drive or memory card doesn't have these mechanical limitations and can often provide a variable frame rate, allowing generation of slow-motion effects in-camera - up to 120 frames per second.

Of course, there's just the plain convenience of not needing to carry around (or run out and buy) spare tapes all of the time. For all of these reasons, tapeless cameras are becoming increasingly popular.

Tapeless cameras are particularly useful for internet news gathering. For example, one journalist used a Panasonic AVCHD camcorder with a memory card to capture the removal of a protestor from the 2008 GOP convention after she heckled John McCain's acceptance speech. It was on the front page of his paper's website immediately thereafter. "I shot both parties' conventions on this thing," James Lileks, who writes and produces multimedia content for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, told me. "I found it ideal, because it's portable, and its memory card allows you to swap footage out quickly. It was just a blast to use. And I was able to shoot everything in a quality that was archival. What we put up on the web was naturally crunched down to Flash, but I was able to get all of my convention memories in stunning 1080i."

A big difference between consumer and professional camcorders is in the sound department. Pro cameras typically have inputs for large XLR connectors, which allow for low-impedance audio cables and a variety of professional microphones. With this flexibility, you can use the camera in a multitude of situations. Low-impedance cables are safe to use in lengths of over 100 feet. You can clip a lavalier microphone smaller than a paperclip to an interviewee's lapel or shirt for a close but near-invisible mic. You can use a shotgun mic for location shooting. Conventional dynamic microphones can be handheld by an interviewer doing "man-in-the-street"-style interviews.

Some consumer and midline prosumer cameras have a jack which will accept a 1/8"-sized stereo miniplug. While this may be a step down from the big XLR-sized jacks, it provides more options than relying solely on the camcorder's built-in microphone. One choice is, of course, to use an aftermarket microphone that's equipped with a miniplug. In less critical situations, the onboard microphone or a low-cost external mic may be all that you need.

Some companies, such as BeachTek Inc., make XLR adaptor boxes designed to mount under selected camcorders using their tripod-mounting threads. (The bottom of the adaptor box duplicates the tripod mount.) You can then plug a pair of XLR mics into this box and adjust their volume levels via built-in volume knobs. The small added weight of the box underneath the camera also provides a bit of extra stabilization when you're shooting handheld, but, most importantly, it opens up a non-XLR-equipped camera to a seemingly endless range of pro microphone choices. The audio picked up by these adaptor boxes runs into the camera via a small cable, which attaches to the miniplug jack. If you're thinking about a midrange camcorder, and this option appeals to you, it might be wise to make sure there is a compatible XLR converter before buying the camera.

Watch out, though. Some otherwise very good quality consumer DV cameras have no mic jack at all, relying exclusively on their own internal mics. For a family-vacation and backup camera, the lack of mic jacks might be OK. It's also possible to end-around this deficiency by recording the audio to a separate device (say a portable digital recorder) and then syncing it up later and/or adding music and sound effects in post production. But you might save yourself a fair amount of frustration later by checking to see if the camcorder you're considering has a mic jack.