tape vs. sd cards

[jmh4416]

Looking to purchase an HD camcorder for short films, documentaries, nature scenes. I will also be purchasing an external mic and light source(s).
Naturally, I am feeling overwhelmed with the wealth of information and opinions out there.

What is the advantage/disadvantage of tape/mini-dv vs. sd cards?

I am smitten with the HV 40 's footage examples on youtube but something about tape seems outdated to me.

How does the HF S200 compare to the HV 40 besides storage format?
I've also seen positive reviews and excellent footage from the Panny tm700 but I see many complaints about fan noise in quiet environments. Would be curious to read your thoughts on how the Panny compares to the Canons.

Price range is $500-800 for the camera. Also, should I buy new or refurbished?

I appreciate your time.
Thanks
Jonathan

[Fade to inferno]

A lot of people who have never used a mini-dv camera consider tape a disadvantage, while all people who use mini-DV will tell you it is not at all a disadvantage.

Advantage
Tapes are extremely cheap.
There is a very very slight compression quality difference (improvement) by using tapes.
Mini DV cameras look bulkier, thus more impressive. (which will help with videography gigs) people like big cameras, they look legit.


Disadvantage
Real Time digitizing or log and capture (an hour of footage would take an hour to upload) but this can be helpful also since you can actually review your footage and make editing decisions.



I would strongly recommend the hv40. Or you can try using a DSLR like the T2i
Those two cameras, i find, are the best possible for your price.


A lot more information and discussion can be found if you search the forum. This has been addressed many times

[Rainer]

A lot of people who have never used a mini-dv camera consider tape a disadvantage, while all people who use mini-DV will tell you it is not at all a disadvantage.

True, but I don't know of anyone who's made the switch who would ever willingly go back to tape.

[Bif]

A lot of people who have never used a mini-dv camera consider tape a disadvantage, while all people who use mini-DV will tell you it is not at all a disadvantage.

Not necessarily so. I've used both. If all goes well and there is no tape transport malfunction or no cassette malfunction then tape carries no disadvantage. But I've had a cassette "bind" enough to cause a scraping noise the internal mics picked up. I've also seen layers of tape stick to each other causing tape to come off the supply spool with enough jerky motion to ruin a recording. I've a friend's camcorder malfunction from the wind blowing dust from a large "dust devil" into the transport while he was changing tapes.

On the other hand I've been using SDHC media and CF media ever since Canon came out with the HF100 and never lost a bit of video from it.

Advantage
Tapes are extremely cheap.

True.

There is a very very slight compression quality difference (improvement) by using tapes.

Not true. I've put footage from the HV20 I used to own on the same timeline as AVCHD shot at 17Mbps (1920x1080) with my HF100's and the sharpness and detail edge goes to the AVCHD. AVCHD shot at 12Mbps looks identical to HV20 footage (both are 1440x1080 in that case). Again, I've not only used both but edited both on the same timeline. Rendered to AVCHD on standard DVD media then played on Blu-ray player, then rendered to HD MP4 and viewed on HD TV with a hardware media player.

Mini DV cameras look bulkier, thus more impressive. (which will help with videography gigs) people like big cameras, they look legit.

Too general a statement and really not true. The HV series is only a bit larger and bulkier than the HF series, the HFS series is close to the same size as the HV's. When you get into the Prosumer camcorders the XH A1 (tape) is not significantly larger in size than the new XF300 and XF305 cams that use flash media. Also close in size to the Panasonic HMC-150 and HMC-40.

The HV40 is going to be the last HV series (actually the last consumer HDV) camera produced by Canon and there are very few (if any) new HDV (tape) designs being brought to market. All new product development is in the area of flash memory gear.

Disadvantage
Real Time digitizing or log and capture (an hour of footage would take an hour to upload) but this can be helpful also since you can actually review your footage and make editing decisions.

Somewhat true. Depends on how much "take" you bring back and how long you can afford to "babysit" it during capture.

Getting onto the computer hard drive takes a lot less time, only minutes for most of what I do. Then I can get right to review and ORGANIZE in very short order. Editing decisions are made from full screen monitor images, not a small capture window.

Each individual will have to make their own call, and the decision on video media may depend on how much computer "horsepower" may be available for editing as much as any other factor. But comparisons should be made by folks who have used both.

I would strongly recommend the hv40. Or you can try using a DSLR like the T2i
Those two cameras, i find, are the best possible for your price.

The HV40 is undeniably the best HDV consumer grade camcorder ever made, the image quality compares favorably with a lot of "prosumer" gear. And the T2i opens up a new "frontier" in more affordable form for the DSLR fan. But neither type will "do it all". For someone contemplating an initial purchase they might look at planning for both the "conventional" camcorder and the DSLR, however I would advise (computer "horsepower" being available) considering making that "conventional" camcorder flash media based.

That way the workflow would be more uniform. If I use both my HF100s and DSLRs on the same project, then getting the footage into the computer is done the same way: Pull the media cards from the cameras and using a media reader copy the video files over to a pair of external hard drives (redundant storage). Then I can move what I need over to the C drive and go to work.

Media cards are reformatted in camera after verifying the files are safe on at least two different hard drives.

[Janke]

HF100 and never lost a bit of video from it.

Just wait 'til a SD card crashes on you...

[jet]

Yes I have never had a tape fail I cant say how many i have used but a GREAT amount,some dvds have lost information and ive lost 3 hard drives, no cards but i have not used many yet.Performave al i can compare is my HV is sharper than a sony SR i owned and 550D footage converted to tape looks identical played on my large screen hd tv
to the origional footage.

[cgbier]

One thing not mentioned yet: The HDV file format is nicer to older (slower) computers. There are some flash card cams using MPEG2 too though (Sony/JVC DVCAM EX).

[MoDu]

Remember that there are other things to consider, besides image quality and storage. How about image quality DURING MOTION, camera handling (manual focus, zoom, grip), optical stabilization (Canon's great here), shooting modes, manual settings?

[Pali]

HV tape footage looks great for the camera's price range. My only complaints about tape are an occasional dropout and it's one hour limit, which is a huge factor when one needs to record a band doing a set of more than 45-50 minutes.

[Janke]

My only complaints about tape are an occasional dropout and it's one hour limit

Be happy you don't shoot with a T2i, its limit is a bare 12 minutes in HD... but no dropouts!

[jet]

Whats a drop out

[Janke]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropout_(electronics)

[Timbit]

Whats a drop out

It where a frame or two suddenly disappear, never to return...

One thing not mentioned yet: The HDV file format is nicer to older (slower) computers.

You beat me to it, CG!

[jet]

We call them tramps,regarding the drop outs in question i was joking you proffs, i had a few with my sony hdv cams but with my HV i cant remeber one with its own recordings.

[pro-hobbyist]

It looks like there are a few differing [read: incorrect] opinions in this thread, so I'll chime in as I've been doing for years... SD cards are better! Here is my list of advantages and disadvantages for each.

Tape
Advantages
-Easy archiving/long term storage
-Tapes are easy to find
-You never run out of space while shooting - just replace the tape
Disadvantages
-Who said tapes are cheap? Spend $3-5 on a tape for every hour of footage you shoot and it gets expensive real quick. Sure you can write over them but that is risky if you do it a lot
-Transfer time
-Dropped frames/etc during transfer
-Takes valuable seconds to swap a tape when bigfoot/aliens are right in front of you

SD Cards
Advantages
-Up to 4 hours of recording on one card if you get an expensive one
-Buy one or two cards, use them over and over again for years
-Transfer time
-Say what you want about bitrate, AVCHD looks sharp
-Takes up (marginally) less hard drive space
-I have also never lost a bit of footage from my flash camera. Overwritten important tapes? Sure. But I've never heard of an SD card "crashing" or had it happen.
Disadvantages
-Initial cost
-Can't carry a lot of extra cards and usually can't buy them when travelling
-Harder to archive (but it's not like modern hard drives crash all the time with no warning)

I don't want to sound like I'm on a crusade against tapes here, I used to use them and they always worked just fine. But SD cards definitely made my life a little easier and especially now that practictically no new cameras still use MiniDV it only makes sense to accept flash. It could be worse; my uncle bought a MiniDVD camera

[jmh4416]

Thanks for your input everyone.

[Bob Sanders]

Just wait 'til a SD card crashes on you...

And I've lost an entire shoot over a dirty head

[Playing]

I've never heard of an SD card "crashing" or had it happen.

So it's you guys that jinxed my system. I just had my first ever SD card crash in the middle of a concert.
Fortunately we had 2 other cameras running. But I will go right out and buy more SD cards. I hated tape since my first reel to reel deck.

[Halsu]

Most of the stuff i shoot nowadays is card based. But shooting to cards is scary to me.

Well, not shooting, but the re-using part. With tapes, i always have a backup, even if all my hard drives crash simultaneously (i never use tha same tape twice). With cards, all i have are the files in the hard drives, because there's no budget to buy new cards for every shoot (i shoot mostly XDCAM EX, those cards are expensive).

And hard drives fail - every single one of them will, sooner or later.

Right now i have 10 terabytes of raid 5 storage, plus about 20 terabytes of USB hard drives for backup purposes. Most important stuff is backed up at least twice. And i still worry about losing the stuff... and soon i need to go and buy more drives, the current ones are filling up.

[Janke]

soon i need to go and buy more drives

Fortunately, drives have become a lot cheaper the past year or two - I just brought home two 2 TB (USB 3.0 = somewhat "future proof") WD MyBooks from Verkkokauppa, at 122 euros each...

I remember when I paid (the inflation corrected equivalent of) 1,500 euros for a 20 MB drive back in the 1980s - that's 100,000 times less storage for more than 10 times the money - i.e. hard disk prices (per byte) have dropped a millionfold in a little over 30 years...

My first "big" CF card was 64 MB (in the year 2000), it cost the equivalent of 200 euros in today's money, now you can get 64 GB for the same price. One thousand times cheaper in ten years. There's Moore's law squared for you!

What does this prove? Simply: Don't buy anything now, wait 'til next year...

[cgbier]

Halsu, I plan to back up my files to BD once I go the tapeless route.

[Halsu]

I guess BD:s could be a decent option, if the amount of data isn't too big. But the point is, with tapes, the backup is always there from the start, it doesn't have to be made specifically.

[Bif]

Halsu, I plan to back up my files to BD once I go the tapeless route.

The optical media we've been used to "burning" so far (CD and DVD) has proven to not be stable. The layers can begin to separate and the data becomes hard to read. Some disks deteriorate from inside.

To be safe you have to "refresh" the data (copy to a new disk) every year or two, I've talked to people who found 4 and 5 year old disks unreadable.

So far I've seen no studies on BD long term stability. So for me storage is multiple external hard drives. I don't have them running continuously but switch them on as needed and off when done.

[Janke]

As I've mentioned before, out of 40 CD-Rs (containing animation I've made for commercial) recorded during the past 15 years, 10% were unreadable when I finally transfered the stuff to hard disks. I had double or triple copies of everything, and fortunately, in no case were all copies on unreadable disks.

I wouldn't trust recordable DVDs or BDs, either. Best bet, IMHO, is at least two backups on hard disk, just as Bif above. I'll have them re-backed up to another hard disk every three to five years or so.

[kcari]

I decided on the tapes because most of my future editing will be done with a laptop and avchd requires much more computer power to edit longer stuff that likely only a quadcore can provide without much glitches. I do admit rewinding the tapes is a little annoying at times, but that's the only negative I can see for now.