The brave new world of tapeless camcorders has been dawning over the last couple of years. In the past, video cameras which used hard drives or flash memory to store video were low-quality toys designed to appeal to early adopters. Electronics manufacturers are beginning to make tapeless cameras of higher quality:

Similar to the single-CCD Everio camcorders launched in the fall of 2004, the GZ-MC500 is capable of recording up to 60 minutes of DVD-resolution video at 720 x 576 pixels onto a 4 GB Microdrive. New as of this model is the three separate 1.33 Megapixel CCD imaging censors, catering separately to red, green and blue colours.

It’s only a matter of time before all video cameras contain hard drives. It’s also only a matter of time before all these cameras contain wireless antennas to transfer their data straight to a waiting laptop. Imagine your editor being able to edit in realtime. No tapes. No transfers. No dubbing.