Which is easier for amateur home movies tapes or HD (JVC)?

[msf]

My friend, semi-computer literate, wants to take lots of footage of family events and edit out the 'garbage', save on external hard drive, and make a few DVD's of highlites for family and friends and immediate viewing on TV (DVD). She has a Pentium 4, decent speed and RAM, and is prepared to buy external hard drives as needed, a external DVD burner, and any software necessary to acheive this (must be simple to use).

Questions

Should she buy a JVC hard drive camcorder?

Does it make "cutting" easier, finding files easier, downloading to PC easier, and does their software (whatever lite version they include with the camera) suffice for someone who's only goal is to make a home movie dvd? (I guess burning is another subject, but is it easy to organize/capture footage this way rather than dvmini?

Or should she use mini-dv?

Could anyone please share with me the pro's and con's of these two choices, again, keeping in mind that she needs no bells and whistles and that simplicity is of great import, even at the cost of quality?

Thank you,

Mark

[lenti_75]

NOOOOOOOO.

DO NOT BUY the JVC hdd camcorder, it's a BIG bogus.

the ideea is this....

you want to be easy....get dvd camcorder, no edititng, just finalizing and watch.

if you want to edit, then mini dv is the way. this is the best quality, easy to encode, and the final quality is better than any dvd, hdd, or flash camcorder.

the ideea is that edititng mpeg video(dvd, or hard) is a lot harder, and the quality is lower, because is was already encoded once when was recorded.

for start any ulead videostudio or ulead moviefactory is good, cheap and decent quality.

lokk here www.camcorderinfo.com for this year camcorders, what to buy or not to buy.

[msf]

thanks Lenti, thats what I needed to know...will do as you suggest....appreciate the help,

Mark

[Capt.Video]

I agree with Lenti, if you want to edit it at all, straight DV is the way to go, otherwise you will need to inject several other steps and lots of time to convert it back to a format that you can actually edit.

Now, if you never plan to ever edit, sure a DVD camcorder is great. But who here wants that?

Good luck,
Andrew

[edDV]

I still highly recommend the MiniDV tape route. DVD camcorders are much lower quality and tough to edit.

The extra quality in MiniDV masters will be important as people's expectation of quality moves to HDTV.

[aanaravs]

I still highly recommend the MiniDV tape route. DVD camcorders are much lower quality and tough to edit.

Agreed. DO NOT purchase a DVD camcorder, if you plan on editing the footage later. Get a nice MiniDV camera and basically any editing software will do. Most editing softwares come with some sort of DVD-Authoring/building option as well.