Questions about Video recording medium and video sharing sites

[AdamZ]

I thought about posting this in Tech but figured there would me more opinions in Hangar Talk. At Windwood I flew in and had Gary run the video camera in the left seat. I thought we over wrote the video as it was my first one using an SD card rather than a tape. Low and behold I found it last night Yeah!

So here are my two questions:

1) Do those that do a lot of video prefer to usethe Mini DV tapes that my samsung camcorder takes or the SD cards that it also takes?

TAPES: The plus I see on the Tape side is that there is some continuity. for example if I video on a tape and shut off the camera and then turn it back on the tape picks up where I shut of the camcorder. When the Tape is done I pop it out and store it. The down side is I have to store a tape and I suppose tapes degrade over time.

SD Card: With the cards the quality is good ( not sure if its better than the tape cause haven't compared yet) I don't have to keep buying tapes, The video won't degrad over time but on the down side It seems that everytime you shut off the camera it creates a "sub file" on the card so it would seem there is no continuity unless I transfer all files to a new medium say a DVD. In other words If I'm taping my daughter's Lacrosse Game and shut the camera off 5 times over the course of the hour game I'm not going to get one video of the game but five seperate videos ( unless someone tells me how to do it otherwise).

Second Question: I was going to upload the video of the approach to Windwood so I could post a link to it on the forum. I was going to use YouTube well because everyone uses YouTube but then remembered Vimeo. I chose Vimeo because I recall Diana's acro videos on Vimeo and they were just so clear and beautiful. So my question is there a reason to use on over the other YouTube vs. Vimeo?

Thanks for the input. Look for the video to be posted in the Windwood forum as soon as Vimeo emails me that its ready.

 

[ScottM]

The only video camera I own is hard memory (SD). I like that storage media way better than tape as tape is expense, it will degrade over time and is not a good way to store video. SD allows me to easily move the video file to my laptop to start the editing process.

 

[bbchien]

Just buy a lot of SD cards. They're cheap!

AND, a big hard drive at home.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

The electronic/office supply chain stores are selling 1 terabyte for $100 in the flyers today. Some of the drives are small enough to take with you. I have no knowledge about how rugged they are.

 

[Jack Spectre]

I believe that on the MiniDV camcorders, recording on the SD card is a lower quality video. The tape records uncompressed video while the video on the card is compressed. On the newer camcorders that use only memory cards, the video should be uncompressed.

How old is the camcorder you have?

 

[RJM62]

I used to prefer SD, for the reasons others have mentioned. But I've seen the light, glory be, and I'm now a convert to tape. I'll deal with the cost and the relatively slow process of transferring the video to my PC.

Why? Glad you asked. I'll tell ya.

I was riding as a passenger in a go-kart last weekend, and the driver (my 9-year-old goddaughter) crashed into a wall. No one was hurt, but the impact knocked the batteries out of the camera before the file was properly closed.

Actually, just so it doesn't seem worse than it was, the way I was holding the camera I had my thumb over the battery door. When we crashed, I must have slid the door over enough that the batteries fell out.

In any case, I thought that would be a cool way to end a YouTube video -- until I tried to retrieve the file. I tried for four days to recover the file using every data recovery tool I have -- and I have quite a few, having inherited my friend and data recovery guy Stefan's rig when he passed away -- but my efforts yielded only bits (no pun intended) and pieces of the file. Nothing really usable. Finally I decided it wasn't worth any more wasted time.

Now had that been a tape in that camera, the video would have been there. Tape is a sequential access medium that is saved instantly in DV format. If the tape is stopped at an inopportune time, nothing terrible happens. There's no file to close. What's already been recorded will still be readable.

I actually have a very nice tape-type camcorder, but I didn't bring it with me. Why? Because I'm lazy, I guess, and didn't want to carry two cameras. Next time, I'll have them both with me. I've learned my lesson.

-Rich

 

[bbchien]

I used to prefer SD, for the reasons others have mentioned. But I've seen the light, glory be, and I'm now a convert to tape. I'll deal with the cost and the relatively slow process of transferring the video to my PC.....

In any case, I thought that would be a cool way to end a YouTube video -- until I tried to retrieve the file. I tried for four days to recover the file using every data recovery tool I have -- and I have quite a few, having inherited my friend and data recovery guy Stefan's rig when he passed away -- but my efforts yielded only bits (no pun intended) and pieces of the file. Nothing really usable. Finally I decided it wasn't worth any more wasted time.

Now had that been a tape in that camera, the video would have been there. Tape is a sequential access medium that is saved instantly in DV format. If the tape is stopped at an inopportune time, nothing terrible happens. There's no file to close. What's already been recorded will still be readable.

I actually have a very nice tape-type camcorder, but I didn't bring it with me. Why? Because I'm lazy, I guess, and didn't want to carry two cameras. Next time, I'll have them both with me. I've learned my lesson.

-Rich

I hadn't considered that. Maybe my tape MiniDV Canon isn't so antiquated after all.....

 

[SCCutler]

I am very fond of mine... Canon MiniDV... and it has an external audio in jack, hard to find any more.

 

[Erice]

SD is more convenient for transferring, but tape is its own backup. Having lost un-backed-up photos when my hard drive crashed once made me a believer in back ups. I would tend to weigh in on the side of tape.
________
free themes

 

[AdamZ]

I believe that on the MiniDV camcorders, recording on the SD card is a lower quality video. The tape records uncompressed video while the video on the card is compressed. On the newer camcorders that use only memory cards, the video should be uncompressed.

How old is the camcorder you have?

Funny you should ask I bought it in June 2006 for my flight to Gastons.

 

[rottydaddy]

I went with tape because a 'corder that will store on SD with decent quality was out of my price range... but tape is a good backup, and unlikely to be "corrupted" even if the camera is damaged. Consider the video cassette with usable footage that was found after Columbia came apart during re-entry...

The downside? Cost, bulk, and of course time spent transferring the video to a digital medium.
But I've gotten used to it, after setting myself up with a decent but not pricey capture card and cheap editing software. If you have time to sit and watch the tape as you capture, you can rough-edit right away, stopping/starting the record function to eliminate those really shaky parts, or the footage where you thought the camcorder was paused but it was not (LOL). If you do that, it saves some time and confusion later, which can sort of balance out the time spent on real-time capture.

That time is really the only disadvantage with tape in terms of the editing process... just one extra step. And if you are careful with tapes, the quality is superb and they are, in my experience, more reliable than SDs (especially cheap SDs).

After ripping and editing, if I really want to save the raw files, I'll put them on a CD or DVD with the edited stuff, and maybe re-use the tape to save a little money (decent tape is good for many uses). Not a big fan of storing stuff on HDDs long-term, although I will probably get a big external drive eventually- that gives you a little margin of security should something happen to your system.

 

[PittsDriver]

I've had all the above formats and the two that I'm using almost exclusively now are hard disk and micro-SD. You can't beat the micro SD for any kind of extreme environment and I've used my VHoldr cameras in high G aerobatic applications as well as car mounted on the track and never had any issue at all with the quality of the recordings both in standard and HD formats.

If you get in to video at all, you're going to want to settle on a video editing application that you'll use to polish up your raw video and publish it. I use iMovie and Final Cut on Mac OS which provides a completely seamless integration of the process (import, editing, & sharing). It's very easy to pull in all your raw movie clips, edit them together with nice transitions, titles, music (iTunes and other) and special effects. So having separate movie clips from your original recording is really a non-issue. Using iMovie for simple video editing also allows you to share your video by DVD, iTunes, youtube, facebook, or my personal favorite MobileMe.

This wasn't always the case but I can't imagine using tape of any sort for amateur video work. It's just too easy to get really high quality stuff on hard disk and SD. Here's an example of standard format video shot with a Vholdr and produced in iMovie in about 20-30 minutes of work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAXmiABNsWc

 

[TMetzinger]

Consider duct tape to keep the batteries from flying out.

Perhaps a change in writing mechanisms (write a file every second, for instance) would allow your solid-state storage to gain some of the advantages of tape.