[Jowl]

Hope this is in the right forum

I'm looking for a HD Camcorder, records to SD Card and is compatibly with OS X/iMovie.

Two reasons I'm looking - one is for personal use (basic stuff - honeymoon footage, recording any Ankle Biters we may have etc) and the other is to recommend to a customer (primary school).

I was looking at the Panasonic SD9 camera. It seems that OSX converts the recording to an Apple format for importing into iMovie - which takes longer than a straight copy. Does OSX treat all HD cameras this way? Would it be a lot quick with a non-HD camera?

ANy thoughts, camera suggestion would be much appreciated

[A n d r e w]

Try posting here: Camcorders & Video Editing - AVForums.com

[Curly99]

moved to the Camcorders and Video Editing forum.

Curly

[A n d r e w]

Originally Posted by Jowl

Hope this is in the right forum

It is now.

Originally Posted by Jowl

I'm looking for a HD Camcorder, records to SD Card and is compatibly with OS X/iMovie.

You don't say which version of iMovie you have, but there are lists of camcorders compatible with iMovie '08 here and iMovie'09 here.

Originally Posted by Jowl

Two reasons I'm looking - one is for personal use (basic stuff - honeymoon footage, recording any Ankle Biters we may have etc) and the other is to recommend to a customer (primary school). I was looking at the Panasonic SD9 camera.

I have an SD9 which gets used for similar reasons. Works fine with iMovie (the 25p mode is not supported, but it's not that great a shooting option anyway), although I use Final Cut Express for most projects.

Originally Posted by Jowl

It seems that OSX converts the recording to an Apple format for importing into iMovie - which takes longer than a straight copy. Does OSX treat all HD cameras this way?

Apple video applications (iMovie, Final Cut) treat all high definition camcorders which use the AVCHD format this way, as well as many standard definition camcorders that record to memory card or hard drive.

Originally Posted by Jowl

Would it be a lot quicker with a non-HD camera?

Depends on the spec of your machine. I import AVCHD video from my SD9 using a 2GHz Mac Mini and it takes about 1.5x record time to import and transcode. The faster the processer, the faster the transcode. Anything recording to tape and using firewire rather than USB as the interface will import in "real time," so may be quicker.

Originally Posted by Jowl

Any thoughts, camera suggestion would be much appreciated

How much are you looking at spending? Panasonic is releasing new camcorders some time in the next few months. Also, the Canon HD camcorders are very good, and have a strong following, though they're more expensive than the SD9 (as will be the new Panasonic camcorders). If money is absolutely no object, then Sony makes some very nice consumer camcorders, too. Personally I'd stick to those main brands. To my mind, the overriding consideration when buying one of these things is to get the camcorder with the largest sensor that you can afford - small sensors (like the 1/6-inch CCDs in the SD9) are great when there's lots of sunlight around, but perform less well indoors, which is something to consider given that you'll be using this to record clips of potential little ones growing up. Recently, all of the major players have shifted to CMOS technology rather than CCDs, as CMOS sensors are less expensive meaning you can have a larger chip for (roughly) the same money. Aside from that, feature sets from camcorder to camcorder are fairly similar, although the new Panasonic camcorders seem to offer the most in terms of manual control - this may not be a concern to you, though.

Andrew.

[Jowl]

Thanks for a great response Andrew - expecially the last bit.

We have access to iMovie 8 or 9 - I'll check out the links you provided. I was readying of some issues with iMovie and the SD9 but thought they were solved (by a quicktime update mainly). The school has 2.4Ghz Intel iMacs but I'm thinking the quicker it does it the better for them- even it that's to go SD rather than HD. Cost would be a factor here given the hammer they'd get!

For me personally, I may edit movies on my Windows machine unless I upgrade my original Macbook. Cost is less of an issue but I don't want to spend a lot of money on something I'd hardly use - that happened on the last camcorder I bought quite a few years ago.

Again, Thanks for your response

J

[A n d r e w]

Originally Posted by Jowl

Thanks for a great response Andrew

That's what we're here for. Mostly.

Originally Posted by Jowl

I was reading of some issues with iMovie and the SD9 but thought they were solved (by a quicktime update mainly).

Software producers are often left to play catch-up with camcorder manufacturers. There were problems with using an SD9 with iMovie until the middle of last year, at which point Apple released an updated version of QT which solved them.

Originally Posted by Jowl

I may edit movies on my Windows machine unless I upgrade my original Macbook.

Fair enough. The advantage that the Apple transcoding method has is that the resulting uncompressed video files, while enormous, are far less of a strain on processors. On the Windows platform you'll need something with more grunt to edit AVCHD "natively."

Good luck!

[Jowl]

I built a Quad-core based Windows machine to aid converions of TV recordings from EyeTV (mpeg2 files) to H264. Same for DVD rips to H264. The grunt on that should be okay for HD Video - I hope!

I was hoping the new iMacs might have had a quad-core processor. I would have been very tempted then to dump the Windows box and move to iMac. Having iMovie/iPhoto on all my machines would have been very handy!

Thanks again for your advice.

[nigelbb]

Is there a particular reason that you want to use SD cards? The Canon HV30 is a fabulous HDV camcorder that uses mini-DV tapes. They are captured into iMovie in real time & the resultant files are very processor friendly s 2.4GHz iMac will have no problems nor will your MacBook.

Tapes are cheap & you always have a backup of your recordings to archive after you have edited the raw footage unlike SD cards (unless you plan on buying anew SD card each time you use the camcorder). Do edit the footage. iMovie makes it so easy to produce videos that even people other than you will enjoy:-)

Finally don't even consider recording in SD. HD is so much better & you will only regret in future years that your didn't record in HD when you had the opportunity.

[A n d r e w]

Originally Posted by nigelbb

Tapes are cheap & you always have a backup of your recordings to archive after you have edited the raw footage unlike SD cards (unless you plan on buying a new SD card each time you use the camcorder).

True, tape does provide an instant archive, but SD cards are pretty easy to archive by making a disk image through OS X's Disk Utility. I keep an image of every full card on an external drive (when you "mount" the image iMovie or Final Cut will treat it as if it were a standard memory card and the usual import options will apply), back up to DVD-R for storing off site, and format the memory card.

[Jowl]

While I'm not an expert on Camcorders, I always used to advise friends to go for tape over DVD or HDD as it was easy to find tapes, cheap, better battery life etc.

SD cards now seem like a good idea to me - still cheap, available everywhere and no moving parts to name but a few advantages.

[nigelbb]

Originally Posted by A n d r e w

True, tape does provide an instant archive, but SD cards are pretty easy to archive by making a disk image through OS X's Disk Utility. I keep an image of every full card on an external drive (when you "mount" the image iMovie or Final Cut will treat it as if it were a standard memory card and the usual import options will apply), back up to DVD-R for storing off site, and format the memory card.

That seems like a lot of extra work to me. Notwithstanding the fact that it already takes you 50% longer to import the files from SD card than from DV tape because of the transcoding necessary.

The other plus point for tape point is that the HDV format is very processor friendly when editing compared to other HD video formats e.g. real time rendering only needs to be done on small portions of the time line versus the entire file.

[A n d r e w]

Originally Posted by nigelbb

That seems like a lot of extra work to me.

It's not much work at all - the computer does most of it while I get on with something else. The DVD-Rs mean I've got an off-site back up if needed (your tapes aren't likely to welcome a fire or a flood) plus I can access every clip I've ever shot directly by double-clicking a file stored on an external hard drive. Shuttling through a tape to find that certain shot from your kid's first birthday can be time-consuming, too.

[nigelbb]

Originally Posted by A n d r e w

It's not much work at all - the computer does most of it while I get on with something else. The DVD-Rs mean I've got an off-site back up if needed (your tapes aren't likely to welcome a fire or a flood) plus I can access every clip I've ever shot directly by double-clicking a file stored on an external hard drive. Shuttling through a tape to find that certain shot from your kid's first birthday can be time-consuming, too.

The tapes can be the off-site backup of last resort. Of course I can just as easily run off DVD-Rs of what has already been transferred to hard disk. I can also keep all the files on local storage.