Camcorder - SD card or harddrive ?

[MasterBlaster]

Hi
I have been looking for a new camcorder and have done a fair bit of research but would like some advice to help with my decision. I set myself a budget of 400 pounds.
I do a lot of home editing so I have crossed off HD due to the incompatability issues with avchd format and some pc software, and the long editing time. I'm not too fussy about HD quality so I'm looking at SD quality.
I've narrowed my search down to Panasonic and Sony, but can't decide between SD card storage and harddrive storage. As I only need max 3 hours of video before I work with it then delete the source, a 60GB hardrive will be mostly unused.
What is the forums opinion on these 2 mediums, are there any differences in quality and useability? download time to pc? and can you recomend any products?



Thanks in advance

[Colin RedGriff]

I've just bought the Panasonic SDR-s26 which is SD card based. I went for SD over a hard drive because I wanted to use it in my car and hard drives just don't like being bumped around. I don't like the idea of having a hard drive failure which renders the whole camera useless.

Other plus points for me were
Small camera size and light weight makes mounting easy
SD card - 8gb cards are cheap as chips really and have more than enough space for what I need.
Uploading is a piece of cake, just stick in my card reader and away I go.

[crmcatee]

One thing I picked up on previously was it depends on what you're going to use it for - I recall some people using it for track days etc - and having problems with hard disk heads skipping due to the high G's. Same I guess would be true of off roading etc..

Maybe just something to bear in mind if you're planning to use it for that.

[Fordo]

Quality entirely depends on what format the footage is recorded in- hard drive and SD card are both digital, so its just 1's and 0's being recorded.

Quality will depend on the type of codec used to record the footage and the quality of the lens, the quality and size of the imaging sensor, and the skill of the operator!

Personally, if i were buying a camcorder, id go for one that takes SD cards - theyre silly cheap. And if you ever need to go somewhere and do lots of filming, you can just buy more SD cards- your not limited by the size of the hard drive in the unit.

Also, hard drive wear out. We've had a couple of hard drive failures in my companym, so now we replace the HD's in our computers every year or so as a matter of course.

If the hard drive goes in a camcorder, it'll probably be an unconomical repair. If an SD card goes funny, you can throw it away and buy a new one for a tenner.

- SD cards do come in different speeds, so have a read up- i imagine camcorders will require a higher speed of card.

Also do some research and make sure your editing software is compatible with whatever format the camera records in, and that your computer is up to the editing task- a lot of these modern video formats are quite clevery compressed, but that also means they need a fair bit of processing power to edit

[Fordo]

Quality entirely depends on what format the footage is recorded in- hard drive and SD card are both digital, so its just 1's and 0's being recorded.

Quality will depend on the type of codec used to record the footage and the quality of the lens, the quality and size of the imaging sensor, and the skill of the operator!

Personally, if i were buying a camcorder, id go for one that takes SD cards - theyre silly cheap. And if you ever need to go somewhere and do lots of filming, you can just buy more SD cards- your not limited by the size of the hard drive in the unit.

Also, hard drive wear out. We've had a couple of hard drive failures in my companym, so now we replace the HD's in our computers every year or so as a matter of course.

If the hard drive goes in a camcorder, it'll probably be an unconomical repair. If an SD card goes funny, you can throw it away and buy a new one for a tenner.

- SD cards do come in different speeds, so have a read up- i imagine camcorders will require a higher speed of card.

Also do some research and make sure your editing software is compatible with whatever format the camera records in, and that your computer is up to the editing task- a lot of these modern video formats are quite clevery compressed, but that also means they need a fair bit of processing power to edit

[Road2Ruin]

One thing to remember about SD cards for camcorders is that the higher capacity ones ie anything over 2GB are SDHC. These need a special SDHC card reader if you dont want the hassle of transfering through the camcorder. However I got an 8GB card and USB reader for about £20, they may be even cheaper now. As a previous poster mentioned they do come in different speeds but they are all fast enough for SD recording and the difference for transfering onto computer isnt a big deal.

[mcflurry]

Road2Ruin said:

One thing to remember about SD cards for camcorders is that the higher capacity ones ie anything over 2GB are SDHC. These need a special SDHC card reader if you dont want the hassle of transfering through the camcorder.

Most new readers in my experience are SDHC compatible. If not, then £5 on fleabay will get you up and running

[Road2Ruin]

mcflurry said:

Road2Ruin said:

One thing to remember about SD cards for camcorders is that the higher capacity ones ie anything over 2GB are SDHC. These need a special SDHC card reader if you dont want the hassle of transfering through the camcorder.

Most new readers in my experience are SDHC compatible. If not, then £5 on fleabay will get you up and running

Not at all. If you have a computer or printer with a card reader built in unless its less than 6 months old the card reader will probably not read SDHC cards. Even if its newer than 6 months it may not. SD readers cannot read SDHC but SDHC readers can read SD cards.