You need blank media. Your camcorder needs blank media. Without blank media, you simply cannot shoot. Blank media can also be used to transport your video from your camera to your computer or another compatible electronic device, such as an mp3 player or even your television set. It can be a way to get your video or other data from point A to point B. Here is a primer on what blank media is and where you'd use it.

If you are a videographer who is looking to stock up on blank media for your next shoot, deciding which kind of media to choose is important. Here, we will take a look at some of the more widely-used types of blank media on the market and try to answer the questions you need to ask yourself before you decide what kind of media you should buy and which is the right one for you.

Why You Need Blank Media

In order to record video and/or audio, you almost always need some type of blank media. It is in the media where your recording is stored. After you finish shooting your project, you can use the media to transfer your video someplace else, be it to another device or even to another person. Sometimes, depending on the form of media, you can even carry it around in your pocket, as in the case of Flash memory cards.

The scenario is this: you grab your camcorder and record some spectacular moment in time onto the blank media attached to the camera. Now, you want to share this spectacular moment with your friends. You detach the media from the camera and attach it to or insert it into another electronic device, usually a computer. Then you transfer or digitize the video that is on the media to the computer. Here you can edit, play or do whatever you want with your video. You do need to keep an eye on how much room you have left in your media storage. If you are planning to record another event in the near future, you need to make sure there is enough room for it in the media. If not, you will need to erase what is already on there in order to make room, or plan on purchasing more blank media.

What Kind of Blank Media Do You Need?

That depends on several factors: what are you going to do with your recording? What kind of camera are you using? What kind of format is your data?

As a video producer, you are probably going to shoot something with your camera that you will want to edit later on your computer. The type of blank media you will use will depend largely on the kind of camera you are using. Based on these factors, the following are a few of the most widely-used blank media.

Hard Drives

Some video cameras come with a built-in hard drive, so you don't even need to buy blank media. You simply grab your camera and start shooting. After the shoot, you plug the camera to your computer, then drag and drop your video straight to your PC or Mac hard drive. The whole process takes you less than 10 minutes. The only thing you will need to worry about is whether or not you have enough space in the camera's hard drive for your next video shoot. At $1,000, the Canon HG10 camcorder has a 40GB hard drive that can store between 5.5 hours of video at 15Mbps to as much as 15 hours of video at 5Mbps, depending on the resolution you shoot it in.