Hard Drive Camcorders

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Hard drive camcorders are pretty popular these days, and lots of people are looking into getting one. Since it has a built in hard drive it can help us get rid of tapes, flash drives and DVD's, anything to make it easier, right? Besides not having any sort or recording medium to have around, you've got the benefits of having random access to your video files. So lets talk about some of the strengths and weakness of hard drive camcorders.

First, let's talk about random access. That means if you want to get to a certain scene you don't have to fast forward or rewind a tape. That might not sound like a big deal, but consider this, if you've got a two hour tape, it will take two hours to download it to your computer. That is a deal breaker for a lot of people. My brother and sister in law don't take videos for that very reason. Another nice thing about a hard drive camcorder is that you only have to download scenes that you want. After you connect it to your computer, it's like having another hard drive full of your videos. Just select the one you want.
Next in the "benefit" category is storage space. If you shoot full motion high definition video (assuming it's an HD camera) you can get about 7 hours of video with a 30 GB hard drive. If you shoot in economy mode (basically long play mode) you can get close to 37 hours! Now these times are approximate depending on the camcorder and compression scheme used, but hard drive camcorders give some of the longest recording times.

Now lets talk about the disadvantages. Hard drive camcorders are more delicate than say, flash memory camcorders, which have no moving parts. Think about what you do with a camcorder, if you like to take video while doing extreme sports then it's probably not the camcorder for you. Hard drive mechanisms are delicate and susceptible to sudden movement and shocks. The same goes for DVD and tape cameras, so it's something that's not unique to one type of camcorder. Hard drive camcorders are also inoperable in extremes of temperature. For example the JVC Everio has an operating range of 32 to 104 degrees F. You'll probably never get to the high range, but if you want to take video of yourself skiing, then you might have problems. Most hard drive devices don't work well above 10,000 feet sea level. This probably won't affect most people, unless they're mountain climbing, skiing or skydiving. Not typical activities for a majority of people, but it's something to think about.

If you're considering a purchase of a hard drive camcorder but the weakness make it unsuitable for what you want to do, then consider a camcorder with flash memory. It's got the benefit of no moving parts, with the downloading ease of a hard drive camcorder. If you're just an average user who wants to take picture of family outings and vacations, then consider a hard drive camcorder.