Camcorder compatibility w/ Mac

Question

I've read conflicting info about camcorder compatibility with macs. Some say that using a firewall there is no issue uploading from any brand of minidvd camcorders. Others say this is not true, swear up and down that there are compatibility problems w/ Canon models vs. other brands. I want to purchase a Canon ZR900, ZR930 or ZR950 as these have had good reviews but am reluctant to do so until this question is answered.
Thank you!

Answer 1

The firewall in Mac OS X has absolutely no bearing on camcorder compatibility. The camcorder does not use the network.
With regard to mini-DVD camcorders, they record their video in MPEG2 format, which suffers two problems: 1.) it's a highly-compressed lossy format that's really poor for editing (the video they shoot is not intended to be edited, only played back as is); 2.) recompressing the MPEG2 to create a new movie makes things worse.
Since you're asking about the Canon ZR series, and they are MiniDV and not mini-DVD camcorders, that may not be important to you.
Canon models don't have any particular problems. It's true that they use what OS X calls the FireWire basic profile (IEEE-1394 raw video) rather than IEEE-1394 DV, but the problem there is only that the OS X FireWire driver drops frames (rare, but it happens) sometimes with the basic profile. You generally won't notice, but it can be annoying (you can run Linux on your Mac and it works just fine, it's not a hardware issue). Just make sure that if you use Final Cut you turn off the option to terminate if a frame is lost (and there's a bug in FC where a dropped frame causes it to lose VTR control of the camcorder).
That said I have a Canon ZR mini-DV camcorder (ZR500 -- standard definition), and it's a nice little camera. It's performance in low-light is not all that great, but in well-lit situations the video is quite good. Were I to buy a new camcorder, I'd go with a high-definition model that does 1080i, even if I were outputting to DVD because the sharpness of the video pops even there. However, though I am fond of the MiniDV cassettes as a backup medium, there's some huge advantages to SD and HD storage for camcorders (for example, no low-frequency hum from the DV tape mechanism), but AVCHD is really tough (takes a lot out of your computer) to work with.