Are all camcorders memory card camcorders nowadays? Do these ones have a hard drive aswell, or do you just record onto a memory card?

mostly memory card based. I use 32GB SD cards with my HD camcorder and that gives around 3 hours of recording at highest quality. You can get 64GB SD cards but price vs size ration is not good compared to the 32GB cards.

I would also advise you to do some research into various models and what functions they have. If you want a Camcorder only to burn the files to a standard DVD there is no point going for a HD Camcorder using the AVCHD file format, go for something that films in standard definition. You will only get p***ed off finding software to convert the file from one type to another etc. And as a rule after the purchase I recommend RTFM

just about every piece of editing software including movie maker, pinnacle studio, vegas, premier, powerstudio has supported AVCHD for some time now. Also I would say there has to be a reason NOT to go to HD now. If you downgrade to SD for the output for now fine, but at least you have the source in HD for future use.

You can burn HD camcorder content In HD to blank DVD's and view in HD if you have a Blu-ray player. It's very easy to batch convert 1080i HD to 576i for DVD. Sony and Panasonic camcorders come with the required software.

Some editors using proxy editing let you use the same edits to burn AVCHD HD and DVD by simply swapping the clip source.

SD camcorders normally severely comprimise quality to record 16:9 using only part of the sensor. Who has a 4:3 TV these days ?

HD camcorders now start at around £300 it's a no brainer get a flash memory HD camcorder.

Thanks for replies. Would I need special HD blank discs to put the footage on? And could I do it on a DVD recorder rather than on my laptop? (Having problems burning footage on my laptop with my current camcorder) Obviously I would need a HD DVD recorder? Would it still record the camcorder footage in HD if my current TV isn't HD though??

A DVD recorder can only record SD (576i). There is no such thing as a HD DVD recorder. The only connection your TV has is that you can't watch HD recordings in HD only downscaled SD.

AVCHD is a joint development by Sony and Panasonic to allow HD content to be recorded onto standard DVD disks. You have to do this on a PC. You need a blu-ray player to play these back. If you only have a SD TV then you will have to watch the playback in SD. DVD's have a limited recording time capability 30-40 minutes for AVCHD. More than this requires a BD burner.

There was a HD DVD format that was a competitor to Blu-Ray but basically that is a long dead format. There may be a few knocking about on eBay but you won't find many people with a player these days.

What you can do is burn AVCHD files to a normal data DVD disk on your PC/laptop that will play back in HD on a Blu-Ray player. There is no way to record or play HD video on a standard stand alone DVD recorder. If you have the money there are a few stand alone Blu-Ray recorders about.

And the type of TV you have, or even if you have a TV at all is irrelevant. The only need for a TV is to see what you are doing. If the camcorder is plugged directly into the DVD recorder then the TV plays no part in the recording process. But since a standard DVD recorder cannot record HD it is possible it will simply refuse to co-operate if you try to feed an HD video signal into it anyway.

As mentioned you can record HD format to a DVD in either AVCHD or BDMV format. AVCHD is a more common and support by a number of blu-ray players (and PC of course) including PS3 I believe. Both nero and pinnacle studio support doing this and I would imagine the other editing software probably does as well. Recording time will be limited to around 20 minutes due to high volume of data required for HD.

If you want to produce HD discs then you really need to get a blu-ray burner which start at around £110 for an external unit or £65 for an internal one. Blank media is approximately £1 for 25GB disc.

And most HD camcorders allow you to chose the recording quality but you are best off recording in HD and then letting your laptop convert it to SD if that is what you need.

Thanks everyone. So can I only create HD footage if I burn the discs on my laptop, not create them on a DVD recorder? I'm not sure if my laptop has the specs to do it. These are my specs:
Acer Aspire 5740
Windows 7 Home Premium
Intel Core i3 CPU M330 @ 2.13 GHz
Installed memory (RAM) 3 GB
64-bit operating system

Basically correct. I am not aware of any standard alone DVD recorder that can burn AVCHD format but your laptop can produce them.

As for specification of laptop, nothing wrong with it. I use a lower specification PC for editing HD and it slow in the rendering part where it converts the movie into the format you want (I just leave it running, there is no interaction required) but fine for editing where you assemble the scenes.

Thanks. I really don't know what to do then. I'm having problems using Windows Live Movie maker to create my DVDs and had lots of different recommendations of programs to use. I can't decide which one to use and the directions on how to do it are so complicated for me to understand I could do with watching a tutorial online, but can't seem to fins any. Was considering Adobe Premiere Elements...

Just tried Windows movie Maker again and I managed to burn a DVD that plays on my DVD recorder, but the picture quality is really bad and it looks like there aren't enough frames per second, iykwim. Plus it took ages to do a 12 minute DVD.

I mentioned it will take a while to render and what settings did you use ?

I added all the video clips into the box and clicked on save, then selected burn DVD from the drop down menu. It brought up a box ready to burn the DVD, which didn't happen last time I tried it. I more or less left all the settings as they were. There wan't that many to change. Only thing I changed was from 4:3 to 16:9. I had it on fastest burn for the speed. What other setting should I have changed?

First thing I would try is burning at a lower speed.

When the conversion is taking place do not use your PC for anything else, leave it alone intul it has finished. Make sure no other programs are running at the same time too.

Thanks, I will try again at a slower speed.