Simple Video Camera Suggestions?

[M. Malone]

Hello everyone, I have a friend of mine who wants a simple video camera that shoots video that would work on his Mac.

he doesn't edit with iMovie, or any type of software. He currently uses his digital camera to shoot movies. He likes it because all he does is mount the camera to his mac, drag the movies into a folder, and he has his memories ready to play with quicktime and ready to email to friends and family.

Is there a video camera with decent quality that does this type of thing?

 

[sal]

Hello everyone, I have a friend of mine who wants a simple video camera that shoots video that would work on his Mac.

he doesn't edit with iMovie, or any type of software. He currently uses his digital camera to shoot movies. He likes it because all he does is mount the camera to his mac, drag the movies into a folder, and he has his memories ready to play with quicktime and ready to email to friends and family.

Is there a video camera with decent quality that does this type of thing?

is he against the idea of capturing tape? What is his budget? that might help narrow down the choices.

 

[M. Malone]

is he against the idea of capturing tape? What is his budget? that might help narrow down the choices.

no budget, he doesn't like tape, he just wants simple drag and drop, I assume something with a memory card would work great? thanks!

 

[zioxide]

a lot of memory card/hard drive cameras are incompatible with macs, so make sure he checks compatability on apple.com before he buys something.

 

[M. Malone]

a lot of memory card/hard drive cameras are incompatible with macs, so make sure he checks compatability on apple.com before he buys something.

ok, I was checking out the Sony Net Share Camera, this thing shoots in MPEG-4. How would extracting the content out of the camera be? would he simply mount it into the mac, and drag the mpeg-4 files and just play them with quicktime? or is it more complicated?

here is the camera:
Netshare

 

[Father Jack]

I have a camera that stores mpeg-4 movie footage onto a SD card. All you need to do is stick the card into a card reader and it will automatically go into iPhoto.

You can, as the previous poster suggests, just drag them.

 

[M. Malone]

I have a camera that stores mpeg-4 movie footage onto a SD card. All you need to do is stick the card into a card reader and it will automatically go into iPhoto.

You can, as the previous poster suggests, just drag them.

excellent! what type of camera do you use?

 

[Father Jack]

It's a very small Sanyo Xacti HD2 It shoots 720p HD movie and has a 7.1 Mp still photo facility. The camera can store 1 hour of 720p movie on a 4 Gb SDHC card.

 

[M. Malone]

It's a very small Sanyo Xacti HD2 It shoots 720p HD movie and has a 7.1 Mp still photo facility. The camera can store 1 hour of 720p movie on a 4 Gb SDHC card.

excellent, thank you so much, would any Mpeg 4 camera work the same way or each company has their own way of doing, I'm really sick of those big companies that like to lock down the capabilities of their products so you're forced to use the supplied software, sony is guilty of that.

 

[Father Jack]

No absolutely sure but even if the camera does not store the Mpeg-4 movie files on a removable card, you should be able to connect the camera by firewire or USB2 cable and it's simply a mater of going into finder and dragging the files from the camera icon onto the desktop or to a predesignated folder .... 🙂

FJ

 

[ftaok]

excellent, thank you so much, would any Mpeg 4 camera work the same way or each company has their own way of doing, I'm really sick of those big companies that like to lock down the capabilities of their products so you're forced to use the supplied software, sony is guilty of that.

Another flash based HD camcorder is the Canon TX1. It uses Flash, and the M-JPEG codec. Resolution is 1280x720.

The downside is that movies files are extremely big (due to M-JPEG). But it's Mac friendly and a nifty piece of gear.

I forget, but someone on this forum has one.

 

[LiKevin]

movie and video File Format conversion software:
We recommend the use of WinMPG Video Converter and Ann Vodeo Converter.

WinMPG Video Convert V6.8.0.3:

http://winmpg.com/down/WinMPG_VideoConvert.zip
Ann Video Convrter 2.0.0.000:

http://www.annvideo.com/download/AnnVideoConverter_Setup.exe