Camcorder

I want to buy a camcorder with enough features to have me happy for at least 3 years. I already bought one through the internet that thought would be a good buy, yet it films at night awfully. Sound is poor also. I see on your website many options but I am unable to decide which is right for me without help. Questions like, ? What does night filming capability means? Does it film fine at night or not? By night filming I understand it has a flash, not so? I want a good camcorder. Can anybody recommend one for me?

I am also looking for a camcorder but I do not know very much about them, can anyone give me some ideas of things I should make sure that the camcorder should feature to make it a worth my money?

Similar Messages

Unable to capture movie from camcorder.

I had tried to capture a movie from HDV camcorder for the first time since I updated to 10.5,
and got a green and pink image from iMovie. It looked like signals been mixed or track is off.
Then I tried with Quicktime and it seemed like working in the beginning but at the end of the clip
an error occurs saying unable to save the movie. FCP HD crashes trying to do capture either.
Anyone with similar symptoms? Any troubleshoot check list anyone?

yes, my powerbook is too slow to capture at full resolution, so I've tried with smaller size w/
'better' setting, i believe w/.264 encoding, but still i got an error. I don't know why this happen.
i had no problem before upgrading to 10.5. i checked the mini DV tape for any defect playing
it back and capture but it's not the cause. I was able to capture same tape with same camcorder
on my new iMac D2C .1.5.1 at my office. perhaps something to do with G4 or PPC version of OS...

FCP 6.0.6 will not recognize my new Sony HVR-Z7U camcorder

I cannot capture any mini DV fotage from this camcorder (Sony HVR-Z7U) into FCP.
Im using I link 1394 6pin from the camera to the computer.
Wrong wiring? or settings in camcorder?

Thanks Nick and all,
Most of my videos are shot in HD 30p. That being said, Nicks Easy Set up instructions got my camera to work with FCP. Go figure. I guess now I'll just need to pay attention to my sequence settings.
I thought since I shot in HD, setting the camcorder in DV NTSC mode would not run the camcorder in HD for FCP. That was my original thought, so I keeep trying all the HD capture presets. It's working, hope it is capturing in HD.

Looking for help getting imovie to recognize sony DCR-SR47 camcorder

Has anyone been able to up load to imovie from sony DCR-SR47 camcorder?

It depends on which camcorder you have.
If it records onto miniDV tape (..or "microMV" tape..) then you definitely need to use FireWire; nothing else will do. Buy one at any electronics store; it's called a FireWire or DV or i.Link cable. It must have a teeny 4-pin connector at one end (..to plug into the camera..) and a larger 6-pin connector at the other end (..to plug into your Mac..)
..unless you have a new MacBook Pro, which needs a slightly different shaped 9-pin FireWire 800 connector instead of the 6-pin connector.
You cannot use a USB connection for tape-based camcorders, even if they have a USB socket ..as that's just for transferring stills, not video.
If your camcorder does NOT shoot onto tape, then you'll need to transfer via USB. That applies for all chip-based and hard-drive based camcorders, and - I think - DVD-based camcorders.
All current AVCHD camcorders use USB.
If in doubt (..but there should be no doubt..) read the camcorder's instruction book. If you can't find the instructions, download them from the manufacturer's website ..almost all instructions are available online.
But if it needs FireWire - if it's a tape-based camcorder - you CANNOT use USB.

Please Help:(,Unable to capture from camcorder using Audigy 2 ZS Video Edi

Hi there! Well I have been trying to use the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 zs video editor to transfer Hi8 tapes from my camcorder (Samsung SLC860) to my laptop (Compaq presario, AMD Athlon 64 3200+, .25 GB RAM, xp). I have successfully done this before *sort of*. Before i was able to capture video from my camcorder without the sound. But now I cant even capture video! I get an error when using Ulead VideoStudio 8 SE reading: 5065:29:0. Please help, anything would be great! Thank you! Oh, i've tried reinstalling the drivers already, didnt work. P.S. I connect the camcorder to the Creative Audigy using S-Video. I have also tried A/V out from the camcorder to video-in on the Audigy. I have also downloaded VidCap and other driver updates from Creative but those didn't work either. I've tried VidCap other capture programs, none worked. Any help would be great. Thank you!
Message Edited by DjShadowalker on <SPAN class=date_text>06-06-2006 <SPAN class=time_text>:09 AM
Message Edited by DjShadowalker on 06-06-2006 :09 AM

Hi there! Thanks for the reply, unfortunately, I've tried VidCap and it wont let me capture either. The Start button on Step 3 isn't acti've. Its not bold, and when i click on it nothing happens. But under device manager and Sound, Video and game controllers, there are alot of things. They are as followed: Audio Codecs, Legacy Audio Drivers, Legacy Video Capture Drivers, Media Control Devices, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Video Editor Audio Device, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Video Editor Video Device, SoundMAX Intergrated Digital Audio, Video Codecs. Do you think any of these could be interfering with one another? If so, which ones can be safely disabled? I've also tried downloading all the necessary updates for VidCap and I've even tried reinstalling the Audigy card many times. I am able to see the preview of the video on both programs VidCap and VideoStudio but I just can't capture. Once again, the error message on VideoStudio is: 5065:29:0. Thank you so much, hopefully I hear from ya soon and this can be fixed.

I need a digital camcorder that imports direct to iMovie - any ideas

I have been using a MiniDV JVC camcorder to import direct into iMovie - worked great but the camcorder heads are now worn out. So I use an Hitachi HD flash card camcorder that outputs AVI files. I then have to convert through Handbrake to get a useable file for iMovie.
This is much too slow as I produce lots of short video for customers - is there a better direct camera to get files straight into iMovie or should I use different software on the mac?
Last resort, I have been told to buy a pc to use for producing edited DVD movies - I don't really want to move off the mac - HELP?

Wow...good question.
Do your FCP setups have capture cards? You could send a signal from the toaster machine to FCP via the capture card and recapture the footage in FCP. Will take a while, but it should work.
Tough working with proprietary formats.
Shane

Elgato video capture versus digital 8 camcorder to import hi 8 movies

Hi!
I have hi 8 video tapes which i want to import into my MacBook.
I would like to work on them with iMovie 09, cut them, set titles etc. put music on and so on.
Earlier I plugged my hi 8 camcorder into my panasonic DMR E85H dvd recorder with built in hdd.
Then i importet them via handbrake into my MacBook.
Then i importet them into iMovie 08 an did some cutting and so on.
Then i recognized, that there where horizontal interferences in the movie.
On the dvds the video is ok!
It doesn´t matter if i play the videos in Quicktime or in iTunes or iMovie.
If i would use a Elgato Video Capture to import or a digital 8 camcorder to import the videos to my MacBook would i be able to get a better result?
Which one should i prefer - i have to buy each of them!
Would the size of the camcorder-imported videos be bigger then with the Elgato device?
Now i´m using iMovie 09.
Thanks a lot for helping me out!

Based on your comments about horizontal interferences, it may be that you are seeing interlace artifacts. The solution may be to deinterlace the clips.
You might try checking the settings in handbrake to deinterlace.
You might also take the clip you have produced in HB and deinterlacing using a free tool like MPEG Streamclip or JES Deinterlacer.
Your MPEG2 on DVD is already compressed from the original on tape. Then HandBrake decompresses and recompresses it to h.264. You generally want to cut out compression steps in your workflow whenever possible, because each generation of compression will introduce noise and loss.
You could also reimport from DVD using MPEG Streamclip (and the Apple QuickTime MPEG2 Playback Component). You could deinterlace at this step if needed.
You could certainly import through a camcorder with passthru capability. It will be DV which will be a very high data rate and potentially high quality, but it will never be higher quality than the underlying analog material. But you will have eliminated a compression step so you will be closer to the original.
ElGato products will certainly work as well. I use the ElGato EyeTV hybrid to capture from a VHS Deck, as well as to record high definition TV shows. My ElGato will capture to MPEG2, although the newer models may capture directly to MPEG4 (not sure). You would then use the ElGato software to export to iMovie in an editable format such as h.264 or Apple Intermediate Codec.

Choppy video in iMovie/iDVD from Sony HDD Camcorder

I feel like I must be doing something wrong here, I've just moved from a windows XP machine to a nive shiny iMac which is lovely and I just want to hug it a lot, but.....
My DVD's just aren't coming out right, here's me thinking Macs were renowned for their video editing, but all my stuff is looking better from windows.
To explain further, I connect my Sony DCR-SR32 to the mac via USB (the Sony is a hard disk camera which records to mpeg2) iMovie recognises the camcorder and allows me to import all my clips. I spend hours putting together some holiday footage with appropriate fades, titles and cuts. I then import the finished project into iDVD and spend more hours messing with the motion video menus and getting everything looking right.
I then burn to a DVD and it looks horrible, the frame rate looks like it's about 10 fps and it's jumping around all over. After some research, I find that Perion is probably to blame, and I can work around it by exporting from iMovie as a DV file or removing Perion which I've creating a DVD.
So the output is better, not so jerky, but something is not quite right, while it's not jerky its not quite as smooth as if should be, and the colours seem to be a little more pixelated a bit like when a divX movie struggles in an area of low contrast.
I'm comparing this to running XP in a parallels session, attaching the camcorder and hitting the "Disc burn" button which burns a lovely smooth and colourful DVD without a problem.
I thought this must be an issue with the conversion, convert to h.264 when the file is pulled off the camcorder, and then again into mpeg to burn must be missing something, but I took the raw mpeg files and got Toast to burn a DVD and that was the same "not quite right" result. I've read a lot about OSX's difficulties with mpeg2 and suggestions to use Streamclip with the MPEG quicktime plugin - will this do anything better, it just seems that with any conversion you're going to lose some quality, and converting several times to get something into iMovie then again when iDVD prepares the disk seems to be asking for more trouble ?
I've double checked all the obvious things, like is it set to PAL, and is the DVD burning at the best quality. I'm even burning to disk images to take the physical DVD out of the equation.
But still the results are not satisfactory. I really don't want to have to run windows still, iMovie and iDVD - although fairly basic were really nice to use, and the overall result is great... if I could just get it to look right.
Any idea on what might be wrong in all this, or how I can get a better quality movie to burn ?

Ok, this time I tested it in playback mode.
Connected USB. Chose HDD connect. NO NAME appeared on desktop. Opened iMovie (started my stopwatch at this point). Detected camera - scanning. Generating thumbnails (at this stage it is generating thumbnails for all the clips I have on my camera. For the record, I have 6 clips of 52secs, 22secs, 40secs, 27secs, 29secs and 1min). Finally, after around 1m50s, the 'Import From' window pops up showing me the thumbnails for each clip. I stop the stopwatch.
I only want to import the 1min clip this time, just for timing reference. To import this 1min clip on my imac (see my mac profile below) took 2m30s. This includes generating the thumbnails too, although I'm not quite sure why it does this again. I think 2m30s is very slow considering that DV would/should import in real time.
Anyway, those are my findings today and I for one now have a better understanding of how to connect my camera...playback mode only!
Thanks.
Lee

DVD camcorder (VIDEO_TS) - preserve clip date and time

I had asked this question on the forums a long time ago but iMovie did not seem to be supporting it reliably at the time. But since some time has passed, I wanted to check if iMovie '09 can import clips from a mini DVD (those used in camcorders to capture video directly on to DVD media) AND preserve the clip's date and time.
What I see is that the first clip gets some date and time related to the event's date and time (perhaps the start time of the first clip?) but all the other clips which are imported, get timestamps of 1 second after that first clip's timestamp.
These are all my home videos and in order to keep each clip short, I have had the habit of pausing after about a minute or two, resulting in MANY clips over MANY DVD's, so manually updating date and time is absolutely the last resort.
The DVD player can see the clip date and time correctly, and so could the camcorder (I have since sold the darn thing!) so I know that information exists somewhere in the DVD, but it seems like iMovie is unable to "see" it.
Any help would be appreciated, including programmability hints.

Thank you for your post. I figured out why iMovie was assigning today's date to everything that I imported. It turns out that many of my video files did not have a real "created" date--some had no date at all and some had Wednesday, December, 1967 or 9 (I think). iMovie defaulted today's date in both of these situations. I took your advice and ot A Better Finder Attribute and easily converted all of the files using the option to copy the "modified date" into the "created date" attribute. Now everything imports correctly into iMovie.

Unable to connect Hitachi camcorder to iMovies

iMovies version 9 does not recognise my Hitachi DZ-HS301SW camcorder - this is a hybrid HDD and DVD model.
The camcorder is not listed on the list of supported products for iMovies. This is very annoying. What can I do. I have seen a lot of complex answers posted in other forums requiring that I download the content first to my HD and then convert the files - but this would be very cumbersome.
Is there anything I can do? Does apple sell any software to help me?

OK - so how do I do that? I have saved a video file (MPEG) to the mac hd using the software that came with the camera - but imovies won't open/import it - it is shaded grey. If I buy the Quicktime MPeg 2 software will that enable me to use it in imovies?

Capture video from a USB camcorder?

I've happily used iMovie since 2003, but now I have a new Canon Vixia HF S100 camcorder and a new quad-core Mac Pro (and new Snow Leopard). I tried to use iMovie '09 but it drove me up the wall. When I read that iMovie '09 converts 1080p to 1080i (i.e., it throws away every other horizontal line) I bought Final Cut Express 4. Now I'm plowing my way through the manual. I've reached page 175, "Capturing Your Footage to Disk."
When I connect the camcorder to the computer and then in Final Cut Express choose "File > Capture" I get this error message: "Unable to initialize HDV deck. Please make sure a deck is connected and try again." Apparently Final Cut Express isn't communicating with the camcorder. When I connect the camcorder to the computer iPhoto automatically opens, so the camcorder is communicating with the computer. I successfully connected the camcorder to iMovie and downloaded videos. So the problem is with Final Cut Express.
I believe that the problem is that in "Easy Setup" I chose "HDV-Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i60." I chose this because the camcorder's manual says that its Recording System is AVCHD (MPEG-4 AVC/H.264); and its Television System is 1080/60i.
However, in "Easy Setup" it specifies "Device Control Preset: HDV FireWire NTSC." My camcorder doesn't have FireWire, it has USB. I looked through the User Preferences and System Settings but couldn't find any option for connecting via USB instead of FireWire. I looked at the other Easy Setup options and I only saw FireWire connections, no USB.
Is Final Cut Express unable to communicate with USB camcorders?
I tried using Canon ImageBrowser 6.2.0.1, it downloads photos from the camcorder but I can't get it to download videos. If I could get it to download the videos maybe I could import them into Final Cut Express.
I could download the videos into iMovie and then import them into Final Cut Express, but if iMovie throws away every other horizontal line when it downloads videos this will result in lower quality videos (i.e., that's why I bought Final Cut Express).
What should I do?

Well the help seemed straightforward, but....
Do I use "capture" to get to view my video on the FCExpress screen, or "Import"?
Whatever I use I just get an image from the inbuilt camera on the mac....not what I am after.
I used to work for Sony and Canon and I can tell you I wrote instructions that were understandable. All I get on my screen with the Final Cut Express is:
Capture Preset must have a video or an audio digitizer set to capture. Please change to desired present in the Audio/ Video Settings.
<OK>
Well that is not OK since they don't directly send you there to make the changes and after searching for 30 minutes you wonder WHY it should be made such a mystery. WHY not just tell us what to do and lead us there? We are not interested in reprograming like the windows boys - that is why we use APPLE but Apple have left us with the "searching forums" option. You have better things to do with your time rather than write the Apple instructions. But there is NO other option, rather than try combination after combination after combination after combination until you have no more time and look for something which has a chance of success - like stopping the river flowing outside past the house. Managed to do this four times in the last month - why is this easier than connecting the camera to the computer? Because you can see what is going on.
Your help is as ever greatly appreciated and will rescue the Apple from joining the fish;-)

Unable to import video from camcorder into iMovie HD

I am using a Mac mini PowerPC G4 (1.5). I recently bought a Sony Handycam DCR-DVD 106E camcorder that uses DVD discs. The camcorder has no Firewire (iLink) output so I have inserted the DVD into my external DVD writer/player. I can play the footage via the Mac Mini's DVD player software but I cannot import the video clips into iMovie HD.
The icons on the DVD appear to be PC files and are not compatible. Does anyone know how I can take off the footage I have shot and get it into iMovie HD, please?
My secondary thought is that maybe I need to be able to convert the footage clips into Quicktime files, maybe, but I don't know how to go about this, if, indeed, that is the solution.
Please, please help
regards, Huguenot

Your camcorder is incompatible with iMovie 5, which is designed to use DV streams from tape, imported via firewire.
If your camcorder uses DVD disks it likely produces files in mpeg2 format, which is the standard, compressed, final delivery format of a DVD and is not intended for further editing, and cannot be imported into iMovie 5.
I am a bit puzzled as to why you chose that camcorder!
Ideally you should take it back and exchange it for a camcorder that records onto mini DV tape and which has a firewire output.
As it is, firstly you cannot import the footage due to lack of firewire. Secondly, in order to use iMovie at all you will have to convert the mpeg2 files into a DV files which is what iMovie uses.
For that you need mpegStreamclip:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/mpegstreamclip.html
which is free, but you must also have the Apple mpeg2 plugin :
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/
which is a mere $20.
Another possibility is to use DVDxDV:
http://www.dvdxdv.com/NewFolderLookSite/Products/DVDxDV.overview.htm
which costs $25.
But any way you do it, there will be penalty in terms of quality.

Why does my FCX program quit suddenly when I try to capture from my camcorder?

Why does my FCX program quit suddenly when I try to capture from my camcorder?
When it opens it says "no codec found". I used HDV Apple intermediate codec 1080i60. What codec should I use?

Do you mean Final Cut Express or FCP X?
These are two different apps.
Al

Unable to Import from my Canon DC220 camcorder...

I had begun a project with I-movie 6 of which my camcorder was not compatible with...my solution was to upgrade to I-Movie 08 of which the Canon DC220 is compatible with and I-Movie should import from (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306171). Unfortunately, when I plug my Camcorder into the USB and switch it to PC/Computer mode, I get a pop up on the screen stating that I "inserted a Blank DVD" and gives me a few options on how to proceed. I did try to use other USB ports on the Mac...nothing. I did try a couple different DVDs of which I recorded on...nothing. So I was able to eliminate the problem being with the DVD or the USB port I was using. Please advise as I am at a loss. Thanks so much.

Unplug your USB cable and then press func. to enter the menu on your camera.
plug in your cameras power supply. Then select Finalize. This will close the disc and prepare it for importing.
I'm still having trouble, but this is a step you must follow.

Digitizing HDV footage with a Consumer Grade HD Camcorder

I have HDV footage on mini-digital tape. I need to digitize using Final Cut Pro. I shot the footage using a Sony HVR-V1U camera at 24p (an HDV camera and recorded onto mini-digital tape. I no longer have convenient access to the Sony HDV camera and was wondering if I can simply use a consumer grade high-definition camcorder to digitize the footage into my computer. If so, is there any quality degradation?

I have HDV footage on mini-digital tape. I need to digitize using Final Cut Pro. I shot the footage using a Sony HVR-V1U camera at 24p (an HDV camera and recorded onto mini-digital tape. I no longer have convenient access to the Sony HDV camera and was wondering if I can simply use a consumer grade high-definition camcorder to digitize the footage into my computer. If so, is there any quality degradation?

How to capture a dv shot on an NTSC camcorder, now played thru a PAL cam?

I borrowed a dv tape shot by someone else on their camcorder and am trying to capture the content in iMovie 6 by playing it through my videocam. Specifically, the tape was shot on a new Sony dv camcorder in NTSC format, but now running thru my older Sony dv handycam that I purchased in Europe and which is a PAL machine.
When I attempt to capture in iMovie 6 just a few frames are captured and then everything stops. I've set the menu on my camera to output in NTSC format but no luck.
I know it's not an iMovie problem because tapes I've shot on my own PAL camcorder are captured perfectly.
Any suggestions for a workaround?
Many thanks,
Roger

Sorry, ...... borrow a NTSC cam.
Your cam is a PAL. Although, it has a NTSC output feature, in its guts it still remains a PAL cam. So, if you stick a NTSC filmed tape in it, it will play in black & white. No color, because it cannot read NTSC color coding. There is no workaround this. Your cam can export to NTSC, but cannot read from NTSC as almost none of PAL cams can. Except of universals, those have PAL/NTSC in/out. Expensive and uncommon.
I had the same problem while I was in Europe.
Borrow a different cam. All I can tell you.

Camcorder

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