Who is using a camcorder with their macbook?

[dloreski]

Hi all.
In the process of considering a mac, I occasionally need to upload videos with a camcorder.
From what I've read, macs don't get along with many tapeless camcorders? Or is that incorrect?
And the mini DV camcorders all use firewire which would push me down to the base macbook or up to a pro.
I would love to hear what people are using and how it's working out.
Thanks!
- Dave

 

[BeauGiles]

Hi all.
In the process of considering a mac, I occasionally need to upload videos with a camcorder.
From what I've read, macs don't get along with many tapeless camcorders? Or is that incorrect?
And the mini DV camcorders all use firewire which would push me down to the base macbook or up to a pro.
I would love to hear what people are using and how it's working out.
Thanks!
- Dave

At school we're using one of the Canon tapeless camcorders (EDIT: The Canon FS11), which records video to a .mod format. This can be renamed to a .mpg and then put through VisualHub, then you can use it with iMovie, Final Cut, etc.

Or, it turns out iMovie supports importing from it; just select it as the import source, and it'll copy and transcode it for you. Make sure the camera you're using is on Apple's official support list and all will be peachy.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3290

iMovie '09 works with many tapeless camcorders that record to flash memory, a hard disk drive (HDD), or DVD media. These devices use a USB 2.0 cable and include camcorders using MPEG-2 (standard definition), MPEG-4, AVCHD, and H.264 formats. If you use the AVCHD format you will need a Mac with an Intel-based Core Duo processor or better.