Best Type of Camcorder?

What is the best type of camcorder to edit videos easily with iMovie HD and which brand, out of the categories below? I am kind of a nooby with camcorders. I have a budget of about $300-$350.
-DVD
-MiniDV
-Hard Drive
-Flash Memory
-Canon
-JVC
-Sony
-Samsung
-Panasonic

Thanks for the star Alec and if you have any other questions about the cam you buy or using it with iMovie, don't hesitate to come back here. Lots of knowledgeable folks willing to help here.
Small tip re firewire. Most camcorders do not come with that 6 to 4 pin firewire cable. Usually you just get a USB cable for taking still photos off a memory stick or SD card that most miniDV cams also use for still pic recording.
If you buy a Sony miniDV, they call firewire "iLink", but it's exactly the same cable and you can usually get one for around $10.00 from online sources, like B&H Photo, which also has good prices on tapes, but that's another whole issue which you will want to do a bit of research on.
Forest

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Best compression type for camcorder footage archiving?

I have an increasing amount of "raw" digital camcorder data that's been downloaded onto my Mac, taking up increasingly large amounts of disk space. I'd like to archive much of this to DVD or an external hard drive, but may well want to edit it at a future date in FCP.
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If you captured all the footage (I assume DV) properly in FCP, in other words, with timecode. Then there is no real need to archive that footage. Just keep the original tapes and make sure to keep your FCP project file and any other non timecode material you may have used... music, graphics, titles etc.
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rh

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What type of camcorder??????????

My goal is to store video clips(movies) of my newborn that is coming soon. I keep all of my pictures on my mac and therefore my ipod. My thought is - won't we be able , in the near future, to carry around our ipods with pics and videos for families to view? Well, here's my issue: I borrowed a dvd camcorder and tried to get video on to computer-didn't work(VOB FILES OR SOMETHING) I saw all of the "fixes" way too much work... so the dvd option is nice if you feel like carrying around the camcorder or a dvd player to show people your pride and joy. And aren't these of better quality and the newest of technology? So then I say, what about these miniDV cameras-I can put those videos on the computer BUT aren't they lower quality than DVD? AND there is the issue of keeping all those tapes around- aren't we moving towards less media(tapes discs etc)??? So then I say, what about these new hard drive cams like the JVC everio....Can you put those videos on your computer or (imovie)? Is the quality as good as DVD or MiniDV? There are no cumbersome tapes or cd's... Can I burn DVD's with the files that I transfer from the hard drive camcorder- if so isn't this the best option- this way I can have them on my computer, "mess" with them on iMovies, then burn a dvd of my finished product, and/or keep it on my ipod(video ipod when I get one)? If all these options are true for the hard drive camcorder then I guess the biggest downfall would be all of the storage space being taken up on my computer from the camcorder files(but then again I would have them on DVD so I could take them off the computer?????) Any ideas or thoughts?

Typically I think MiniDV tapes hold about an hour of video at normal quality (SP vs. LP). Although just now checking, it looks like there are 80 minute tapes out there as well. In general, while you could switch the camcorder to LP mode and get 90 minute or a couple hours out a tape, you want to stick with SP mode. My understanding is that SP mode is fairly well standardized across the field and, in theory anyway, any SP recorded MiniDV tape should play on any camcorder that supports it. But the LP mode is apparently not standardized enough to different manufacturers may treat it somewhat different than the next. So if you record all your tapes in LP mode on a Canon, then later it breaks and you replace it with a Sony, those old tapes may not play back correctly on the new equipment.
Plus tape is cheap, so why take the quality hit if you are talking about those irreplaceable precious moments, right?
Anyway, back to your questions. One hour of DV format video is about 13GB data. If you get a MiniDV camcorder I highly suggest you invest in an external high capacity Firewire drive. They are pretty cheap now and you can often buy or put together 160-250GB models for $100 or less. But even a 250GB drive will fill up fairly fast with video work. Mine formats out to about 232GB and that is 17.8 hours of video, but since I try not to fill it past about 85-90% capacity, this translates to about 15-16 hours of video. I have already put together another 160GB external FW drive and am looking to put another together and/or replace my eMac's internal 80GB drive with something much larger.
You can store video footage on a DVD as a data DVD through Apple's finder or use something like Toast. But keep in mind that a DVD blank will only hold about 20 minutes of footage, so it takes three to backup one tape. Also, optical media is not yet proven to be long term reliable, so I wouldn't trust it and if I was going to use it for storing video, I would likely make two or three duplicate sets, so now you are talking 6 or 9 DVDs to back up a single tape. At that point it is probably easier and about the same price to backup movie projects back out to digital tape and store the duplicate tapes in a cool, dry place, preferably in a different location that the masters.
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Best low cost camcorder to use with imovie?

Currently use windows movie maker and Canon A620 for simple home movies. Some other movie programs won't recognize the Canon format from the camera. Considering macbookpro when leopard and ilife 07 released.
Looking at lower cost comparisons between Sony and Canon in tape and mini DVD. Sony had better reliability & picture & sound ratings in leading consumer magazine of older similar models, but I had the impression Canon might work better with Apple in general?
Also is the current version of iMovie not compatible with formats used by miniDVD?
Since these cameras are all newer will iMovie recognize them, or is there an update to improve compatibility with newer models
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Canon ZR850 to Sony DCR-HC38 Mini DV
Canon DC-210 to Sony DCR-DVD108 Mini DVD
Looking for comments or other recommendations
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Mark,
You wrote: "..My iMac has 1-400MB and 1-800MB Firewire port. The 400MB port is in use by a hard drive so I want to use the 800MB port for a camcorder. My research has led me to a Firewiredirect.com site that has 4pin to 9pin cables, so I think this will work.."
..but I doubt it.
I've never got a Sony camcorder to work with a Mac by connecting it with a 4-pin-to-9-pin cable to a FireWire 800 port. But you may be luckier!
However, I often get a Sony camcorder to work by "daisy-chaining" it through an FW400 hard drive, as long as the external hard drive has two FW400 sockets on it. Not all camcorders will work this way - and notably not Canons.
But if the hard drive has two FW400 connections, connect the drive to the Mac with one of them, and plug the camcorder into the other socket on the hard drive. (..You may have to experiment by swapping over the connections to see which way works best..)
With a Sony camcorder plugged into the hard drive, and the hard drive plugged into the Mac, the camcorder should be perfectly visible to the Mac ..and you should be able to save your video onto either the Mac's internal disc, or the external disc ..as long as the external disc is formatted as 'Mac OS Extended', and not as MS-DOS-compatible, or FAT32, or some other Windows format.
If your external hard disc has an FW800 socket, then I'd connect it into your iMac via FW800, and plug the camcorder into the FW400 socket on the Mac. The hard disc - if it has an FW800 connection - will probably work better (..i.e; faster..) through that connection anyway.

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I currently own two Sony miniDV camcorders (models DCR-HC28 and HC40) and was doing fine in Premiere Elements and recently upgraded to version 10. I was in the process of using the HC40 cam as a 'pass-through' device to digitize some old VHS tapes, and it worked well for copying from VHS to miniDV tape. Then, I could capture in Premiere Elements and edit, etc. (It would never work to pass all the way through to capture in PE in one step using Firewire). Now, the HC40 camera has locked up on me halfway through my box of VHS tapes, and is stuck showing the Time/Date screen and the touch screen seems to be disabled. What to do?
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Dear JM and Steve,
Thanks much for your replies. I plan to get my DCR-HC40 miniDV camera fixed so I can use it for pass-through digitizing from VHS tapes. I also recently bought one of the Dazzle Video Creator Platinum capture units ($84 at Best Buys) just to try it, and actually got pretty good results in digitizing a VHS-C tape using a VHS-C to VHS adapter unit to play it in our VCR, and then using the Pinnacle Studio HD (version 15) that came with the Dazzle unit to import and digitize through the Dazzle unit.
The Dazzle unit would not show up in Premiere Elements 10 as an option to capture from, but did in Pinnacle Studio 15.   I used our Sony VAIO with i7 processor and Pinnacle captured the one hour, twenty-five minute- long VHS-C tape to a single 18GB .AVI clip which I then was able to bring into Premiere Elements 10 and use for output in various formats.
When using a less powerful laptop initially, the digitizing failed, with 319 dropped frames in the first 5 minutes.. So it takes a more powerful computer to work with a capture unit like Dazzle, apparently.
I will eventually be shopping around for a new, AVCHD format video camera as well based on your recommendations, but the current group of Sonys in this category, such as the HDR-CX130HD ($349) which record video onto SD cards, are getting bad reviews from CNET, claiming they have poor quality HD and other issues. So for the forseeable future I will be sticking with miniDV using my Sony DCR-HC28 and HC40 camcorders.

Best Type of Camcorder?

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