My Head Hurts - Upgrading to HD on new iMac

[Mac'nCheese]

Ok, maybe some one can dumb this down for me. I thought this would be easy. I have a new iMac on the way and am due for a new camcorder. A bunch of new hd camcorders from sony, panasonic, etc are coming out soon and I figured I would choose from them. However, the more I read about hd and macs, the more I get confused. All the different types of hd, compression, compatibilty with editing programs, burning to that bag of hurt, blu ray.... I have no idea what to do now.
maybe someone who has gone through this could help. here's what I do now with videos, nothing special....: I shoot on my old sd canon camcorder. I do very little editing with the clips using iMovie. Pretty much, just trim the long clips down, delete the stuff I don't like. I then use iDvd to burn a copy for my parents and in-laws after making a simple dvd title page (usually just a photo of the kids and some text like Christmas 2006-March 2007).
So, I want to keep doing the same type of stuff, just with a new hd video camera. I want a good camera with decent low-light shooting but nothing as expensive as a pro-camera. I want more features then those flip cameras. I want to edit on my mac and burn to a blu ray disc that we can then pop into a blu ray player hooked to an hd tv. But when I look for equipment, I always see that one isn't compatable with macs or the compression makes the hd look like crap or I can't find a decent burner that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars. If anyone out there can help with any advice, I would appreciate it (about any of this, camera advice, burner advice, etc). I hope to buy everything in May when most of the brands have new cameras coming out. Thanks in advance.

 

[matteusclement]

specs

what kind of new imac are you getting? the 27"?
So you want something a little more up from a simple FLIP or point and shoot eh?
I use miniDV tapes and love em, so I can only speak from that side.
The canon HV series seems to be a popular one amoungst mac users. HV20, 30 and now the 40 are available. You could pick up a hv30 now for under 900. The big thing for me is that it is durable. It seems to be tough as nails and keeps going and in the off chance it is damaged, it can be repaired. Well... it has a better chance of repair that an ALL electronic device. This leaves a very nice "long term" feel for me.
The tapes also make it possible to have a HARD COPY of all those shots of your kids. Think of when they get married, you can go back and get those tapes and make a video. With a recent hard drive loss of all my media work for the last 5 years (and travels) I at least have the tapes as back up. Also, you'll never worry about hard drive space "being eaten up" by all that footage. You'll always have the full HD video ready to capture.
The hv series uses the HDV codec and imovie turns it into AIC so that it isn't so CPU heavy. This means it will work with imovie nicely.

 

[Mac'nCheese]

Yup, I ordered the 27 inch, i7. Should be here on Saturday.

 

[matteusclement]

so does the HV series sound good to you?
canon also has a HF series that is FLASH drive based.
But again, those tapes can be a life saver. I have learned that you just can't trust a hard drive.

 

[Mac'nCheese]

I was actually hoping to get away from tapes. I have a Canon SD and after a few years the mechanics that the tapes use got so loud, you could hear a hiss over all my videos. They replaced the unit and a few years after that, the same thing started to happen. I do like how cheap tapes are compared to sd cards so you can not feel bad about saving the tape and not re-using it. Maybe sd cards will come down in price and I'll start saving them as well. As for your stuff, you didn't have a back up hard drive? That sucks, losing all your stuff. I have a firesafe with my old sd tapes in it so even if my house burns down and takes my imac and backup hard drive, I'll still have the originals.
My big problem is the internet. Everytime I start to like a camera, I do another search and see a new one coming out and I think I should wait for that one! The old days were much easier, just go to a store and buy the most popular one!

 

[spice weasel]

My big problem is the internet. Everytime I start to like a camera, I do another search and see a new one coming out and I think I should wait for that one! The old days were much easier, just go to a store and buy the most popular one!

There will always be something better on the horizon. If you have use for a camcorder now, then just go ahead and get one. The only time I'd recommend waiting is when you pretty much know that a new batch of releases will be announced, say around CES time.

For what it's worth, I have an AVCHD-based Canon, and with the Core i7 iMac the imports are faster than real time. Can't say that for tape. But tape definitely has the advantage of cheap backup. Then again, if you take care in backing up your files anyway, then there's no reason to shy away from a flash-based or hard drive-based model.

 

[Mac'nCheese]

There will always be something better on the horizon. If you have use for a camcorder now, then just go ahead and get one. The only time I'd recommend waiting is when you pretty much know that a new batch of releases will be announced, say around CES time.

For what it's worth, I have an AVCHD-based Canon, and with the Core i7 iMac the imports are faster than real time. Can't say that for tape. But tape definitely has the advantage of cheap backup. Then again, if you take care in backing up your files anyway, then there's no reason to shy away from a flash-based or hard drive-based model.

Are you able to edit your hd videos in iMovie? and then how do you burn your videos?