Which would you choose?

A digital camera is ALWAYS best to use for taking great to excellent quality photos...and shooting good to very good 'video'.

A camcorder is ALWAYS best to use for shooting excellent quality video...and only average quality still photos.

So...a camcorder can never take photos that rival the quality as those from a digital camera...and a digital camera can never shoot video that is as good as the video taken with a camcorder.

But the video capabilities of some digital cameras is certainly very good and quite acceptable for viewing on the PC or TV...even good enough for posting on YouTube. Canon digital cameras (and some Sony) are well regarded as having the best quality video available in a digital camera. Make sure that video is at least 640x480 at 30fps.

My husband has an excellent 3CCD camcorder which can shoot high quality video and 4MP still photos. However these photos are interpolated, so are not as good a quality as from a digital camera.

If you want to take long, uninterrupted video clips, then go for camcorder.

I like short video clips, short enough to send in an email to family and friends -- or to load on the Internet, so a digicam with a good video capability (lile what petra_au mentions) is my preference. I have a pocketable digicam and carries it with me everywhere and shoots short clips as interesting things happen.

I think whichever one is the most portable would be the most practical.