No. Here’s what it says from the description:
“Full HD CMOS sensor is the optimal sensor for HD imaging and offers a great number of benefits when compared to CCDs and similar sensors”
Looks like if you want to record in HD you’ll be spending most of your time swapping discs. Only 15 min for highest quality per disc and only up to 60min at lowest HD quality and that is only for double layer.
I’d probably go against this one mostly since it uses the mini-DVD’s, not the normal size dvd’s. It looks like you can only get about 15 minutes of HD video and 30 minutes of standard definition on one dvd. And it looks like by the description you can’t record video to the miniSD card, only pictures. Plus you have to worry about skipping when it’s recording to the dvd too, if it doesn’t get all the way written to the disc, then the whole video is gone. Not to mention you have to worry about scratched dvd’s too.
I’d recommend getting the HV20/HV30/HV40 (which can record 60 minutes of high quality HD video onto MiniDV tape; 25Mbps vs 12Mbps on this unit) or one that can record video to SD cards (which they have 32gb cards compared to the 1.46gb that this uses). Canon and Panasonic both make good SD card camcorders that also record to AVCHD like this one.
mini-dvd? who uses non-rewriteable media anymore? sure you can use dvd-rw but why? flash and hdd are the way to go, dvd is great for watching movies but shooting directly to them… i’ll pass
it says it takes in mini-sd, probably not sdhc compatibile.
but you can get a microsd (2gb or less) and use a mini-sd converter.
now, i’ve been trying to find reviews of people recording video in the highest setting (1080p24, XP+ (12mb/s)), but to mini-sd. if this is possible, screw recording to 8cm dvd-r!
This does use miniDVDs and having had a standard definition version of this camcorder it can get annoying changing out DVDs. They record just over 30 minutes of standard definition video (and I would assume less of HD video) and then you need to switch which takes approximately 3-5 minutes, which if you are filming a show/concert/anything in length you lose some time out of the show.
The other major option, which I suggest, is to purchase a MiniDV camcorder which will allow you to take longer video in a single shot plus it takes about 10 seconds to switch media. As for quality of the recordings there is not much difference.
I have the MiniDV version of this and it does not allow you to record to the SD card but only to save pictures to it. You will need to record to miniDVDs.
We have this camera. Yes it only records 15 mins in hd, but we got it for family videos and who wants to watch more than 15 minutes of an old b-day party or christmas? If you preformat your disks it only takes about a minute to switch them out.