News tagged with camcorder

A camcorder (videocamera recorder) is an electronic device that combines a video camera and a video recorder into one unit. Equipment manufacturers do not seem to have strict guidelines for the term usage. Marketing materials may present a video recording device as a camcorder, but the delivery package would identify content as video camera recorder.

In order to differentiate a camcorder from other devices that are capable of recording video, like mobile phones and digital compact cameras, a camcorder is generally identified as a portable, self-contained device having video capture and recording as its primary function.

The earliest camcorders employed analog recording onto videotape. Tape-based camcorders use removable media in the form of video cassettes. Nowadays, digital recording has become the norm, with tape being gradually replaced with other storage media such as internal flash memory, hard drive, and SD card. As of January 2011, none of the new consumer-class camcorders announced at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show record on tape.

Camcorders that do not use magnetic tape are often called tapeless camcorders, while camcorders that permit using more than one type of medium, like built-in hard disk drive and memory card, are sometimes called hybrid camcorders.