Recording formats that work with X3

[daddog]

Gents,

Can someone point me to a page or briefly explain what the differences are between the recording formats available?
I am looking at a new camera and don't understand all the options or if any would work better with importing in to X3. I certainly don't want to spend the $ on a video camera that has a format incompatible with X3.

Recording formats:
MiniDV (understand this one. My current camera has the mini DVD)

Hard disk - Is this just memory in the camera or an actual spinning hard drive? For example the Panasonic HDC-HS700 has 240GB. I assume that is just memory.

mini DVD-R/RW/RAM - Well, maybe this is the same as mine, but you can use RW.

Flash memory card (SDHC, Memory Stick Duo Pro)?

HDD (memory?)

HD (memory?)

HDV (memory?)

DV (memory?)

Micro MV (?)

Hi 8 (tape?)

Digital 8 (Tape?)

[Black Lab]

The answers to most of your questions can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD#Hard_disk_drive

[UncleBoo]

Er, you're confusing codecs (content compression/encoding and decompression/decoding formats) with storage, and also confusing storage types with other storage types. For example, MiniDV is not the same as miniDVD.

A partial answer to your question:
Hi-8: 1/4" tape cartridge (about the size of an audio cassette) for analog/analogue content.
DV is a (now) low-res codec, originally used with tape-based cameras, but later with disk/DVD storage. it's now pretty much obsolete. Not sure if anyone even makes DV cameras anymore. Everything is pretty much higher res, corresponding to formats used on DVD or Blu-ray (this is a gross oversimplification).
Digital-8: DV content on a Hi-8 tape.
Mini-DV: confusingly, this is tape storage, 1/4" tape using a cartridge roughly half the physical size of a Hi-8 tape. Used for DV content.
Mini-DVD: storage, a physical DVD in a smaller form factor (8cm diameter) than a conventional DVD (12cm diameter), with correspondingly smaller capacity. originally used for DV cameras, later for higher-res content. Mini-DVD is obsolete, replaced at first by an embedded hard disk drive (HDD), and now by either an embedded solid-state "disk" (SDD) or removable media, such as SD card or Memory Stick.

Even a basic discussion of codec formats and implementations is way beyond the scope of this posting. Google "codec tutorial" to get you started.

Edit: the acronym for solid state disk is of course SSD, not SDD.

[Black Lab]

DV is a (now) low-res codec, originally used with tape-based cameras, but later with disk/DVD storage. it's now pretty much obsolete. Not sure if anyone even makes DV cameras anymore.

There are several. HDV cams can still record in DV mode. The best part about HDV/DV is it still gives a great picture, but without many of the problems that come with the highly compressed formats that have become so popular with the point/shoot/watch consumer.

[daddog]

Thanks gents!
Several questions were answered and I have some excellent references to read now.

[daddog]

One more question. Does X3 have any problems editing 1920 x 1080 p60?