Amateur film making and video editing are becoming increasingly popular hobbies and pastimes for many people. It seems like almost everyone “knows a guy” who is interested in video editing on some level. If you happen to be that that guy (or gal) who is interested in the world of video but doesn’t know where to start, a DVD recorder with a hard drive might be a good place to start. While this is one of the most expensive types of DVD recorders on the market, it does offer some unique advantages.
DVD recorders with built-in hard drives primary advantage is right in the description: they have a hard drive. While the size of the hard drive will vary from unit to unit, they offer a pretty significant amount of storage space, usually well over 100 gigabytes. Since the average DVD only takes up about 5 gigabytes of storage space, you can store quite a bit of data on these hard drives. Storing your movie collection on a DVD recorder with a hard drive can be a great convenience.
While most DVD recorders feature basic editing software allowing the user to add menus and set up chapter breaks, DVD recorders with hard drives generally offer much better editing software. This allows greater flexibility for anyone to express their creativity. Many of these recorders feature inputs for digital camcorders, allowing the convenient storage and editing of home movies, major events, and other important videos.
In addition to all these extra features, these units also have all the standard advantages of a DVD recorder. You can use them to record your favorite TV programs or movies, and either burn them to disc or keep them stored on the internal hard drive. You could even edit together clips from your favorite show and make DVDs to share with others.
Once you’ve explored the different editing options and found a final cut that you’re happy with, a DVD recorder with a hard drive makes it easy to burn that video to a variety of DVD formats. That way, you can easily share your video creation with friends.
At the time of this writing, DVD recorders with hard drives often run between $300 and $400, depending on the size of the hard drive and additional features offered. It can be a pretty smart investment, however, as many of these recorders offer the ability to upscale your DVDs into a higher definition format.
