Looking to get a video camera for my Mac. Best reasonably priced cameras?

I’m looking for a video camera to be used both indoors and outdoors, day and night.

Mainly will be used for internet uploads. Best video cameras for Mac? Hard drive is preferable, also.

Since you did not tell us which Apple Macintosh you are using, that is a bit of a challenge. As well, you did not indicate a budget range – “reasonably priced” means different things to different people.

The normal suspect manuafacturers are Sony, Panasonic and Canon. JVC and Samsung are runners up.

Any miniDV tape based camcorder can easily connect to a Macintosh with a firewire port. This includes pretty much any Mac made in the last 10 years – but exludes the MacBook Air and the most recently released MacBooks. Standard definition DV has always been easy to import to iMovie; when iMovieHD came out, HDV was easy – though a bit time consuming and required doing a custom installation of the Apple Intermediate Codec from the operating system discs. Because DV/HDV compress the digital stream much less than the other consumer storage types, DV/HDV continues to provide the best available video quality. As well, the ease of archive, long-term storage of miniDV tape in a cool dry place and that miniDV tape is inexpensive on a $/gig perspective, continues to make this a good choice – even if the manufacturers want you to think this is not the case.

Any hard disc drive or flash memory camcorder can easily connect to a Macintosh with a USB port. The camcorder mounts like any other external mass-storage device, you copy the files to the Mac… and before you do anything, make yet another copy to another media – typically DVD as data files for archiving. Then you can delete the files from the camcorder and be ready for the next video capture activity. Since you did not tell us what you plan to capture to video, you do need to know that hard drive camcorders have known issues with loud audio – that is, the vibration from loud audio (large noisy crowds, loud music – amplified or not, loud engines, can cause the hard drive heads to park – rendering the HDD camcorder useless. It will not record until the vibration is removed. Also, HDD camcorders will not record at high altitudes – anything over about 9,800 feet. They also have a tendency to be a little more picky with regards to cold… All electronics have an “operating temperature” range. HDD cams seem a bit more restrictive. Since I can’t see the future – like where I want to be capturing video – then the best course of action is to eliminate potential problems. Since we know about the known HDD issues, it is best to skip these camcorders… but that is up to you. In any case, Flash memory and HDD cams generally use the same very highly compressed MPEG2 (standard definition) formats. In order for a Mac to do anything with this very highly compressed video, it needs to be converted. You can download and install StreamClip. For high definition, the very highly compressed AVCHD files can only be used by the most current version of iMovieHD that currently ships with iLife08 or the most current versions of FinalCutExpress or the most Current version of FinalCutPro2. And the Mac MUST be an Intel-chip based Mac. If you are expecting to use an earlier version or on a Mac without an Intel chip, the computer will not recognize AVCHD…

DVD based consumer camcorders barely make useful doorstops, so I don’t waste time with them.

BEFORE you buy, pick whichever camcorder you are considering and do a search using that camcorder’s model number at the apple.com discussions area under the video editor you plan to use. It is likely someone has already banged their head on it – learn from their experience – don’t bang your head in the same place.

Summary:
Step away from the hard drive camcorders and focus on either flash memory or miniDV tape.

Short list consumer camcorders:
Standard definition:
Flash Memory: Canon FS10, FS11, FS100.
MiniDV: Canon ZR900, ZR930

High Definition:
Flash Memory: Canon HF10, HF11, HF100
MiniDV: Canon HV30, Sony HDR-HC9

Short list prosumer camcorders:
Standard definition: Canon GL2, Panasonic DVX100, Sony DCR-VX2100
High Definition: Canon XHA1, Sony HDR-FX1000, Panasonic HDX200

There are others, but this is a good place to start.

Be aware that consumer cams have small lenses and small imaging chips – that’s why they cannot do well in low light. Larger lenses and imaging chips found in prosumer and pro camcorders increase lowlight performance and also increase camcorder size and $.

Just because you plan to upload to the internet does not mean you get to take shortcuts on video quality… I much prefer watching high definition video at vimeo.com… or at least the “high quality” video at youtube when it is available.

Video marketing Tips – Flip Video Camcorder Review

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