Wikinews:Broadcast/Video cameras

DV cameras are a popular choice for many independent videographers and hobbyists. These cameras output to miniDV tape, which costs about US$3 or US$4 dollars per an hour of video if you buy them ten at a time.

Even the cheapest DV cameras are sufficient for web video. MiniDV tape is a widely-used format that makes it easier to exchange tapes and is also quick to edit, because it doesn't use any interframe compression.

Some consumer video cameras generate a variant of MPEG that can be too slow to work with if the "keyframes" are spaced too far apart, to the extent that many editors are compelled to convert it to another format for productive editing. An exception to this is the new HDV format which uses an MPEG format specially-designed to be editable, but I'm assuming you're not going to spend thousands for a camera, so I won't get into that format.

Watch out for older "Digital 8" cameras. I advise staying away from those because Digital 8 is an obsolete format which has fallen out of use. Also, Digital 8 tapes are a different size than miniDV tapes, and so we wouldn't be able to exchange them. &mdash; DV 12:23, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)