• Who is your primary audience? Family and friends, or will you also use your video for professional purposes?
• What are your video and audio quality needs? Do you need pro-level output or just base-line quality?
• Are you interested in video editing?
• Do you need to take digital stills?
• Are you going to make a lot of copies?

2) Format affects quality: the format your camcorder uses dictates image quality and the kind of tape you'll need. Unlike digital formats, all non-digital will lose quality as each generational copy is made. Also, the quality of video and audio varies according to format. 8 mm, VHS and VHS-C offer the lowest video resolution. Hi8 and SVHS-C give you improved resolution and sound, while the digital video (DV, Digital8, or Mini DV) formats offer the highest level of video and audio quality.

3) Zoom: zoom can be a little misleading in camcorder statistics. Most camcorders have an optical zoom that ranges from 10x-20x and digital zooms in that same range, resulting in total zooms of 300x-400x. You probably won't find yourself using digital zooms too much--they can have dramatic negative effects on picture quality--so the optical zoom rating is the one you should consider most important.

4) Image stabilisation: if image stabilisation is important to you, then look for a camera with optical image stabilisation--digital stabilisation can decrease image quality.

5) Digital still capability: many camcorders now offer the ability to capture digital stills. Manufacturers' claims here can be confusing. Some allow you only to store the images on the tape itself, which means you have to use a special program to capture the image. Camcorders with better digital still features use a flash memory card slot like a digital camera, making it much easier to store, find and download pictures. Keep in mind that most camcorders offer only low-resolution 640 x 480 stills--good enough to e-mail or post on the Web, but not suitable for quality prints.

VHS & VHS-C tapes: VHS and VHS-C are cheap and easy to find--and, most importantly, you can play back both types of tapes in any modern VCR (VHS-C uses a VHS-tape-size adapter that's included with most VHS-C camcorders). This is an important consideration if you want to make first-generation tapes for others or you want to take your tapes to other people's houses without lugging the camcorder with you. VHS-C does have one drawback that VHS avoids: the smaller tape size means you can fit only about 30 minutes of footage per tape.

One of the biggest advantages to DV is that it lets you make digital copies without loss of quality, unlike any of the other formats. While you will experience a loss of quality if you copy to a VHS or 8 mm tape, it will be comparatively small because the original image is so high in quality. Most digital camcorders also allow you to take digital still shots as well, essentially giving you a digital camera as a bonus.

The big promise of digital video is the ease of transferring footage to a computer for editing. While the transfer is not as pain-free as transferring stills from a digital camera, it can still be accomplished with relative ease. To accomplish the task, you need a couple things besides your camcorder and computer. First, you'll need to make sure you have an IEEE 1394 port on your computer. IEEE 1394, also known as FireWire and i.Link, has become the de facto standard in the realm of digital video. All Apple Macintosh computers come with this port built in as of this writing (February 2001), and many other manufacturers are following suit. If your computer doesn't include this port (most PCs don't), you can buy an expansion card. Be aware that digital video takes huge amounts of storage space--about 210 MB per minute. That's why digital camcorders still use tapes (more storage space) rather than memory chips or cards.

Mini DV: The media most often associated with the DV format is the Mini DV tape. Smaller than 8 mm tapes, Mini DV tapes record about an hour of footage and sound.

Digital8: This is essentially the DV format recorded onto 8 mm or Hi8 tapes, while retaining the ability to play old 8 mm and Hi8 footage. Digital8 camcorders tend to be a bit bigger and heavier than Mini DV camcorders, but they use the same IEEE 1394 connector to transfer footage to a computer.

MicroMV: Sony takes "ultra-compact" to the extreme with the MICROMV series of camcorders, a family of digital video recorders that incorporate exceptionally compact and well thought-out design with incredible picture quality, powerful features and ease of use. The world's smallest and lightest camcorders makes it that much easier and more convenient to be ready to capture the moment when something worth remembering happens. They record digitally on PC-friendly MPEG2 format.