Video Tapes Gone In A Flash

For decades now, a camcorder was the one electronics device that I wanted, but did not actually acquire. This has been due to a variety of factors, which I’ll share, and as we proceed, you’ll see where I see the future of home video recording is headed currently.

The first time I saw a video camera in use, I was in middle school. One of the parents literally made a spectacle of himself by setting up a large camcorder on a tripod. This was fed into a portable VCR that was connected by multiple wires. He had a microphone mounted on the camcorder’s top, and had headphones on straight out of a recording studio. Amidst the taped down wires, and high end gear was just another parent trying to enjoy a school concert. While my first thought was “Cool!” I quickly realized that this was anything but portable, and he probably had a sherpa along to lug the gear back to his automobile at the evening’s conclusion.

Back in the early 80’s, the video went to a full sized VHS tape in some type of portable VCR. As time went on, things would get smaller, we're talking a lot smaller... eventually. The full sized VHS tape gave way to VHS-C, a more compact format that in an adapter could fit into a regular VCR for playback. Things were getting down to a self contained unit at this point. Sony, never wanting to accept a standard that they didn’t invent and control (aka: profit from), pushed the Video8 mm tape format. This gave way, in typical Sony planned obsolescence fashion to Hi8, and then on to the Digital8 mm format. While these 8 mm tapes couldn’t play back in the VCR, they did provide a compact memory format to build a camcorder around. Competitors pushed back, and offered a new digital tape in 1994, even more compact, known as miniDV which gained popularity, and is still used in many tape based camcorders to this day.

After digital tape, and with the need for more memory with hi def cameras on the horizon, manufacturers weren’t sure which direction to go in. In my view, they mistakenly pursued cameras that would record directly to discs. This was probably encouraged by companies looking to sell piles on mini discs, or the easy marketing strategy of "direct to disc" by consumers eagerly embracing DVD's for their movies at home. While the advantage of DVD playback was inherent in these discs, that advantage was outweighed by storing the delicate media while mobile, compatibility and stability problems with rewritable discs, and price premiums for the mini discs compared to the larger full size brethren. I can say that many users have enough problems burning DVD media on their desktop computer so that attempting to do this on a mobile video camera becomes a challenge that is not worth undertaking.

The latest attempt to get more storage for hi def video has turned to hard drives. Now that even miniature hard drives, like those that power the current iPod Classic, offer cavernous capacities in diminutive form factors, for the high end gear, this is a reasonable storage solution.

In my own case, for many years, camcorders were simply too expensive. When a low end camcorder was north of $500, I figured I really had to love it to justify it, and I never reached that point. Complicating things were that the computer needed a firewire port in order to import video from a tape, and they are not nearly as common as USB. Finally, when I investigated the batteries involved, and realized that they were all very proprietary, had limited life, and were quite expensive, it was a serious deal breaker each time. I chose a digital still camera back in 2001, and figured I might get a camcorder at “some point.”

Currently, camcorder prices have finally fallen to the point of affordability. There are decent cameras for less than $300, and for a few hundred more, we can get something that is really good. However, at least for now, I seriously have no interest in these devices.

In our current era of really mini electronics, many of the current camcorders simply seem too large. I know that if it doesn’t fit in my pocket easily, the odds of me using it routinely go way down. The issues of proprietary batteries, and piles of media never really got solved in my mind.

Looking at this objectively, the digital cameras are winning the battle. While there were many attempts at convergence, and the mythical “total imaging” device that could handle both stills and video equally well never quite emerged, the digital cameras got video added to their bag of tricks. In the end, while camcorders could shoot stills, they were of generally low quality. While we could argue that the video shot by digital cameras was also of low quality, I would still characterize it as acceptable quality, especially on a standard definition television set. The other tie breaker is the media. Digital cameras, with a few exceptions of Sony (oddball again!) venturing into floppy discs and mini CDR’s, have been flash memory based devices. This means that it is far easier for consumers to download their content, especially with a built in or USB flash card reader that many computers have these days. Add in the standard AA batteries and that many digital cameras fit in a pocket, and it becomes an easy choice for the consumer to choose the digital camera over the camcorder.

The other issue is what will be the final destination for the video. For an amateur filmmaker, then a camcorder is the way to go. For the rest of, to just save some clips, or to email them, or for online video postings, then a digital camera is more than adequate. The so called “You Tube friendly” cameras, like those from Casio, produce highly compressed video that is ideal for this. By using the MPEG-4 format, compression enables an hour of standard def video per hour.

The newest class of devices, exemplified by the Flip Video, also are ideal for online video postings. By taking the blueprint for a digital camera, and then reengineering the device for video over stills, they can produce an affordable product, with a lot of capability, that’s easy of use, and fits in a pocket. In fact, this is now an emerging market segment with new products from both Samsung and Sony's Netsharing Camcorder entering into the foray.

So, where are we going with all of this? For now, I’m not planning on getting a tape based camcorder, now or ever. When I buy my next imaging device, it will almost certainly be a digital still camera with video capability. With flash memory able to offer ever larger capacity cards at reasonable price points, it’s really the way to go to capture video. If I need more video capability, I’d look towards a flash based video camera.

--Jonas