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Will This Camcorder Be Compatible?

N

nomad2010

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 27, 2007
29
0
ok so im going a little crazy right now over the whole camcorder thing but i need one asap and i just looked up the canon HV20 is specifically compatible for vista. well being a member here i am obviously on a mac. but should i not buy it and hold out for the HG10? http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=177&modelid=15617

but like the sony hdd's will it be compatible with my mac? so what is my best bet? or should i go for a sony. but will a sony hold up to the 24p and picture quality of the canons?
 
twoodcc said:
well i know some have the HV20, so it will work on a mac.

i'm sure the HG10 will work with imovie 08
Click to expand...

well im only saying this because the sony hdd's dont. would it be safer to go with the hv20 then?
 
Tape-based HD camcorders tend to have higher picture quality than hard-drive-based ones, for now. The format used by most hard drive camcorders, AVCHD, uses 'better' compression, so that at the same bitrates, AVCHD should look better than MPEG-2 (the format used by HDV tape camcorders.) But at present, no AVCHD camcorder uses the same bitrate as HDV. Right now, AVCHD tends to look a little worse than HDV; but you do have the advantage (or disadvantage, depending on your point of view,) of having a hard drive.

However, AVCHD camcorders are supported by iMovie '08 just fine. iMovie just converts AVCHD into "Apple Intermediate Codec" on import. (I believe iMovie '08 also converts HDV into this format. iMovie '06 left it in HDV/MPEG-2.)

Apple even has a list of supported AVCHD camcorders, which includes the Sony SR1 and SR7, and the Panasonic SD1. Others should work just fine, but Apple hasn't tested them.
 
Hi,
I just got the HG10 and opened it. It was immediately seen as a camers in iMovie'08, showed me the clips and I imported them seamlessly into imovie'08.

So, if you are using imovie'08 it should work fine.

The issue for me is I use imovie HD 6, the previous version, and it doesn't natively support the same stuff as the '08 version, so I had to convert the mpeg2 to mpeg4 to import into iMovie HD 6.

Anyway, it is also true that the HV20 had major awsome reviews, I was just checking them before I bought the HG10. I don't want tape, so I went with the HG10. The AVCHD compression is known to be less superior to the HDV that the tape cameras use and the reviews of the HG10 mention it is lower quality in some respects and much less supported overall as of now. But, I still wanted the HDD camcorder over tape.

Also, I was looking at the Sony 60GB HiDef HDD and the new JVC. I found the Canon HG10 to have a superior rating in low light, so if low light (including just ambient room lighting is an issue, you may want to consider the Canon as a really excellent alternative.

So far my experience with the Canon is AWSOME! I have yet to determine the file access (I can't find the files on the camera, but iMovie'08 found it and it worked seamlessly.

Good luck!
 
dbw77 said:
The issue for me is I use imovie HD 6, the previous version, and it doesn't natively support the same stuff as the '08 version, so I had to convert the mpeg2 to mpeg4 to import into iMovie HD 6.
Click to expand...

This is the major problem with HDD based cameras. Not only is the original source worse quality but the transcoding of the footage looses quality each time.

So you are going MPEG-2 -> MPEG-4 -> output format and each stage looses quality.
 
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