Help with deciding camcorder purchase

Question

Hello all,
I'm not sure if I'm posting this in a right forum. I'm seeking advice/input on camcorder brand that is mac compatible to purchase. We had JVC HD, which was absolutely crazy to convert onto quicktime, so we wold like to get mac compatible/user friendly camcorder in the price range up to $1,000. We'll be using camcorder to tape our babies and their milestones....thanks in advance.

Answer 1

"..can you explain the difference between Minidv tape vs. mini dvd?.."
Yes.
iMovie is a program which edits anything recorded on small video tape cassettes called "miniDV" cassettes. They look like this:
"MiniDVD" discs are small DVDs, which look like this:
iMovie CANNOT edit anything which is stored on mini (..or full-size..) DVDs, unless the material on the DVD is first passed through some other program to re-encode it into a different form.
That's because the video stored on a mini (..or full size..) DV tape is in 'DV' format, and consists of a series of separate video 'frames' ..a bit like the frames of a film, or the individual shots you take with an ordinary camera.
iMovie cannot edit the video stored on a (mini or full-size) DVD because it's stored in a different format called 'MPEG-2', and it consists of only occasional complete frames, plus descriptions of how the video differs, over the next second or two, from that individual 'key-frame'.
So most of the frames on a DVD are "virtual frames" ..they don't really exist, except as descriptions, such as "the eyes which were at such-and-such a position in Frame 1 have now to moved a bit to the right".
A DVD player takes these descriptions, and reconstitutes the actual frames from these descriptions, then shows them on your TV screen (..or in the miniDVD camcorder's viewfinder). It uses built in fast circuitry to do that.
iMovie cannot edit those "virtual frames", and other software, such as 'MPEG Streamclip' has to be used to rebuild them into real, editable frames. This can be a longwinded business, and is nowhere near as fast as the immediate replay of DVD frames in a proper DVD player.
There is also - despite what it looks like when you play a DVD of a Hollywood film - some loss of quality when video is recorded onto a DVD, and even this loss can't be restored when 'actual' frames are rebuilt from the 'virtual' frames. So the quality of camcorder videos shot in miniDVDs is seldom as good (..unless you shoot in 'high-definition'..) as the quality of video shot onto miniDV tapes. (..In order to fit video onto those tiny discs, the video is 'compressed', and this irretrievably loses a little of the original quality..)
So why do camcorder manufacturers make miniDVD camcorders?
(1) You can jump back to any part of the video without long-winded rewinding.
(2) You can easily post - in the mail - a miniDVD of a movie you've just shot.
(3) You can slip the miniDVD into most DVD players, and instantly have your movie on a TV.
(4) The DVD mechanism is simpler to make than a tape mechanism.
But what you CANNOT do - and the manufacturers don't mention this - is easily EDIT it ..although many miniDVD camcorders do come with a rather poor version of an editing program which runs on PCs.
..And yes: Canon, Sony, Panasonic miniDV tape camcorders are compatible with Macs and with iMovie. But they generally come without the necessary 'FireWire' or 'i.Link' or 'DVD' cable to connect the camcorder to a Mac (..they usually come with a USB cable, instead..) so you'll need to buy a "4-pin-to-6-pin" i.Link or FireWire or DV cable in order to connect the camcorder to the Mac.
Oh; and Canon camcorders generally don't work with a Mac when an external FireWire hard disc is also connected to the same Mac ..but ignore that: plug in the camera, and it'll work with a Mac.