Using the SP & LP Recording Modes on your Camcorder

"Hello! I’m Ross on behalf of expertvillage.com. Let’s talk about consumer camcorders. What recording mode should you use? This camera has two recording modes. SP and LP standard play and long play. If you look at your videotapes when you purchase them have a time written on them. Sometimes you have to be careful, sometimes they list the LP speed also. This one here has the SP speed. This has a 120 minutes so two hours and here is a mini DV tape. In this mini DV tape has two types listed up here LP of 90 and then SP of 60 so one hour tape. I always use SP. SP is the faster tape speed where the tape actually moves through the mechanism more quickly. Now you can see here on my display I’m going to hit menu and I’m going to go down to what it’s called on this one record mode and it gives me couple of different things has the SP at the top there and then I can use the thumb wheel. I push that thumb wheel in, it gives me LP option. I stick with SP all the time. The reason why I stick with the SP mode is because the quality of the picture is better and that was especially true in the analog world because what would happen, you might record a picture in SP and it takes up this much tape. In LP, it will be this much tape. And if you can spread that information over more tape, then you actually have a higher resolution more information it’s easier to read."