Is a mini dvd camera worth the buy?

pros? cons? can you play the dvd in your computer disc drive even though they are smaller than a regular disc?

Hai!

Mini DVD disc camcorder is more of a novelty and not meant as a serious medium (Media) for an avid videographer. (This statement came from my experience, I currently have personally use Hi-8, Digital 8, MiniDV, MiniDVD and Hard-disc camcoder)

Pros:
1. You could play it directly on the DVD Player and PC with 'tray' type drive. But you have to finalised your disc.
2. If you use the DVD-RW, you could also reuse the DVD Over and over again after you 'format' the disc.
3. The size of the Disc is small and you could carry a few of them in your pocket.
4. Quite cheap.
5. Simple and shorter time transfering Video to PC for Editing (compared to MiniDV, 1 hour Video requires 1 hour to capture to PC)
6. If you were to archive DVD, the space required are less than tape and the DVD does not prone to fungus and mold and in theory could be kept over 100years.....
7. You could just forward / backward to the scene you shot without rewinding - fast forward like a tape.

Cons:
1. Limited Recording time, High Quality Mode about 20 Minutes. Normal mode about 30 minutes (Some LP Mode 60minutes - Very poor quality)
2. Prone to scratch and loss of data.
3. Using compression technology, some picture details are lost.
4. Not all video editing software able to accept and import video from DVD.
5. Slower to 'get ready' to shoot your video. It takes longer for your DVD Camcoder to start and ready to shoot your video rather than Tape.

You have to check your DVD player if it is able to play a DVD-RW or DVD+RW disc. Some DVD player can only play DVD-R format but not DVD-RW or +RW.

Those DVD player that 'suck' in the Disc won't be able to play the miniDVD, only the tray type able to play. (The same goes with your PC DVD drive)

I Hope this will help you.

Best Regards.

Yes, you can play the mini DVD in your PC, so long as it has a tray loading drive. That's probably the last of the pros though!

In theory you can take your mini DVD, pop it into a player and watch it - the problem is you have to finalise the disk first, which means you can't record any more on it. If you want to use the full capacity of the disk (granted it's only about 20 mins) you'll have to wait before you watch. The video quality isn't too good, it's difficult to edit and the DVDs themselves seem to go faulty too often for comfort.

If you're planning to record your new family stick with MiniDV - it's cheap, robust, good quality and you can save the tapes as an archive.