Digital camcorders coming of age

Time was that video cameras were so bulky that they were only for those with broad shoulders and strong muscles. Over the years, however, the cameras continued to shrink. The rapid decline in size and weight was certainly sped up by the shift from analog to the digital recording technology that the newer camcorders employed.

And digital has a number of other advantages as well. First of all, you can easily edit, annotate, add titles and effects to your video clips. Second, you can use the camcorder to capture clips that you can send via e-mail to Mom and Dad halfway across the globe. Managing a library of digital video clips is also easier than managing shelves of VHS cassettes.

The digital camcorder can also function as a digital camera, so you can use it to shoot still images. However, for really quality prints, you will be better off using a real digital camera.

If you have an analog camcorder and you want to tinker with your footage, you will first need to convert the analog input into a digital video file. It is a long process, to say the least. With a new digital camcorder, all you have to do is connect the high-speed FireWire cable to your PC or notebook, and you are ready to save your footage on your hard disk without losing any video quality. You can do some editing on your PC or Mac, and then your masterpiece is ready to be burned onto a VCD or even a DVD.

Basically, we have three types of digital camcorders today: The DV, the Digital8 and the DVD camcorders. The most widely used are the DV camcorders, which use MiniDV cassettes. The Digital8 standard comes from Sony, and only a few camcorder makers have adopted this standard besides Sony (are we seeing a repeat of Betamax vs VHS here?). The last category includes those camcorders that store video footage directly on their portable DVD writers.

There seems to be no standard in what a digital camcorder should look like. Some of them look more like the camcorders of yesteryear, but others look more like oversized digital cameras.

When buying a digital camcorder, do spend some time in an electronics shopping center and try out each of the models to see how they feel in your hands. Do you like the way the control buttons are organized, for example? Do you think you need a larger LCD viewfinder? Some LCD screens perform very badly under bright sunlight. So if you plan to use the camcorders outdoors a lot, make sure it has a really good LCD screen.

Check the zoom capability of the digital camcorders that you have zeroed in on. The mainstream camcorders now have 10x optical zoom capability. Digital zoom is not really such a big deal, though, as it may affect the quality of video itself. Also check whether the lens' zoom lever is easy to reach.

Where the microphone is mounted may also make a difference in the audio quality. If possible, choose a camcorder with front- mounted microphone. A zoom microphone is an advantage. See whether it is also possible to use an external microphone, which will give you the best sound recording.

Some camcorders employ techniques such as the Color Slow Shutter found in Sony's DCR-PC101 to make nighttime recordings more visible. So if you want to use your new camcorder at night, make sure it has the ability to capture clear video with very little ambient light. Finally, if you have a lot of analog video recordings that you want to convert to digital, perhaps an analog S-Video or composite input port would be useful. -- Zatni Arbi