General question about HDD camcorders, when the specs talk about a "tape", what do they mean, and not a disk?!

Question

Do all HDD camcorders have a hard drive? What is this tape I read about? Please enlighten me on these basics. Can you download your filming from a camera hard drive to a dvd with software or get it professionally done?!

Thanks for answering Brian, and clarifying HDD and HDV, something I need to know as much about as possible. So my next question is how do HDV camcorders store footage. Are there mini-dvds for HDV?

Answer 1

YES - of course all HDD cameras have hard drives - thats what HDD stands for - Hard Disk Drive - it is what the video is stored on. I just don't know what the previous answerer is thinking of.

Yes of course you can transfer the video from an HDD camcorder to your PC and edit it yourself and burn your own DVDs.

The 'tape' used in digital camcorders these days is known as MiniDV tape and if you have a miniDv camera you will need tapes , you can transfer the video from an miniDv camcorder to your PC and edit it yourself and burn your own DVDs.

Other camers use MiniDVDs - these are smaller versions of the DVDs which generally come with films etc. on them - you can transfer the video from an miniDVD camcorder to your PC and edit it yourself and burn your own DVDs.

Some also use a memory card - similar to that used in a digital still camera - not something I fancy using.

BUT the bottom line is - did you really mean HDD camera ??? - or did you mean HDV - very different - and that uses tape for video storage ?????

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Answer 2

Cameras don't have harddrives. The usually have recordable dvds. Maybe your too young to remember tapes, but all cameras used to have them, many to most still do. If you want to move it to a dvd you have to hook the camera up to your computer.