I have about $750 from last year's concessions and I'd like to buy a new camera for our HS team. I think the biggest obstacle with watching film is the linear nature of it- i.e. that it's hard to get to the spot that you want and you spend a lot of time fast forwarding and rewinding to find what you want.

Someone told me that they thought if we got a camera with a mini-disc or something that didn't require tape, that we could assign each wrestler a code and plug it in before each match and then the coaches could access what they wanted instantly.

I guess I'm just hoping to save myself a little research time, so if anyone has any knowledge - I'd love to hear what you know. What do your teams use?

We have a hard disk JVC Everio and I love it. No tapes or discs required, it has a 30 GB hard drive. I have the "share station" too and you just plug the camera up to the share station, press a button, and it starts burning directly to a DVD. For matches last year, I'd come home from the dual or tourney and within about 10 minute have a DVD burned from the day. Also makes it easy to burn multiple copies.

Bonnie, I would not recommend one that uses disks or tapes.

Video cameras that use a hard drive are far and away the best for doing video editing IMO. (If video editing is done using a computer). It removes a extra step or 2 when turning the final product into a disc.

Best Buy has several cam corders with a hard drive in your price range.

How much of a tournament could I get on a tape with a hard drive before I had to back it up to something else?

Do you do anything to code the matches for easy retrieval?

Originally Posted by BonnieJ2

How much of a tournament could I get on a tape with a hard drive before I had to back it up to something else?

Do you do anything to code the matches for easy retrieval?

The amount of video time varies by the size of the hard drive, and also on some cameras by the quality of the video image. The lower the quality of the image the longer the video time.

Each of those things varies per video camera. When looking at cameras online check the extra details for each item. Often the length of video time is listed for the hard drive before you would need to download the drive to a computer.

Once the video is on the computer and or later transfered to a disk getting to any part of a video is a very fast process.

With our 30 GB one we can get about 14 hours.

Originally Posted by Stardust

With our 30 GB one we can get about 14 hours.

That's cool I see that Best buy has one with a 60 GB Hard drive, but the backorder time is 1-2 weeks.

But if you get 14 hours in a 30 GB version that should work for tournaments. I'd hope we wouldn't have 14 hours of actual mat time in a day. We could back it up to DVD every day and be ready to go again in the morning.

Originally Posted by BonnieJ2

That's cool I see that Best buy has one with a 60 GB Hard drive, but the backorder time is 1-2 weeks.

But if you get 14 hours in a 30 GB version that should work for tournaments. I'd hope we wouldn't have 14 hours of actual mat time in a day. We could back it up to DVD every day and be ready to go again in the morning.

You would need to back it up to a laptop computer first, then you could also transfer to a DVD just to be safe. (Dual copies is always best!)

We don't back ours up to computer. We plug it directly into the Share Station and it burns to a DVD very fast. (about 10 minutes for a dual match).

It's also worth making the trip to some stores. We got a great deal on ours because it was an "open box" -- a customer had returned it so it was discounted.