DVD camcorder footage editing

[maday]

I'm looking at buying my first camcorder and I am comparing the benefits of dv to dvd.

Could anyone tell me once the dvd has been formatted is it still possible to do any further editing on a pc with something like windows movie maker.

[Brian110507]

Not easily with moviemaker but it can be done quite easily in a couple of programmes like Pinnacle Studio 9 and Ulead VideoStudio 9

Before you commit yourself to this type of camera check out very carefully the price and availability of the non-standard size DVDs used in these cameras, in order to edit your footage on a PC you will have to finalise the DVD in your camera - once you have done that you cannot record on them again and need a new disc.

If your intention is to transfer to PC and edit you would be much better getting the more common Mini-DV (tape) cameras which you can very easily transfer to PC and edit - using MovieMaker if you wish

[melliott1963]

You can only record 20 minutes on the small DVD's as compared with 60 minutes on a MiniDV tape which might cause you some problems. So, not only are the small DVD's more expensive than MiniDV tapes, but you'll need 3 of them for every 1 MiniDV tape.

The video is saved as an MPEG2 file on the DVD. This can only be done using a constant bit rate, whereas when you edit raw footage on a PC, you can then compress to MPEG2 using a variable bit rate which will give you a better quality final result and allow you to save more high quality film onto a DVD than using constant bit rate. You also run the risk of having to re-encode the footage which will lead to further quality loss.

I'd, therefore, personally go for a MiniDV camcorder over a DVD camcorder.