The most primitive camcorders which were developed by companies like JVC, Sony, and Kodak, used analog videotape. From1990s recording onto digital tape has turn out to be the standard. But from early 2000s tape as storage media is being slowly replaced with tape-free solutions like optical disks, hard disk drives and solid-state memory.

All tape-based camcorders have detachable media in form of video cassettes. Solid-state camcorders can have neither removable media in form of memory cards, nor built-in memory, nor both. HDD-based camcorders generally have non-removable media in form of a hard disk drive.

Camcorders that don’t make use of magnetic tape are frequently called as tapeless camcorders. Camcorders which use two different types of media, like built-in HDD and memory card, are repeatedly called as hybrid camcorders.