Best Camcorder for Macbook Pro (late 2008)

[mynameisadam]

hi, im in my 4th year doing a very important projects, and i've decided to do a project that includes me using camcorders which i have no expertise in. I went to the apple store and they suggested for editing and high quality i get a panasonic and a hard drive format camcorder while in futureshop they suggest that i use flash memory which is of higher quality and sony camcorders.

So to all the macbook users which camcorders have you used that have worked best for you? I'm looking for a mini hd camcorder thats around $300 under and i will be using final cut / imovie to edit.

Also the macbook i have now does not have a firewire so using a usb to firewire wont effect the camcorder/quality in anyway will it?

 

[spinnerlys]

There is no Firewire to USB adapter. Both interfaces are completely different. Firewire has its own chipset, USB uses the CPU.

So it is best to get a camera that does not use Firewire as its interface, which excludes every DV and HDV camera, which are tape based anyway.

HDD and flash memory camcorders use compression (H264 codec) to store the video on those storage devices, so they will not differ that much.

What kind of filming do you want to do? Indoors, outdoors, tripod, handheld, fast moving, slow paced, .... .?

The most important parts in a camera are the lens and the CCD/CMOS chip behind that, as they capture the actual image. The way it is stored is also important, but neglect-able in most consumer cases.

Have you taken a look around these forums via MRoogle, as that question of yours comes every once in a while?