[Stimposs]

hi team,
loads of great stuff on here about which camera to buy but i have a couple of questions. I have a brand new imac with stacks of processing power and i have been keen to start using an HD camcorder using imovie....yet i've heard some strange claims that you can't edit using an HDD hard drive camcorder with imove (?) - my sister in law however does this for a living at Oxfam and refutes this claim as absolute nonsense.

So basically i'm asking which is the best camcorder that will enable me to fully edit within imovie on a mac?

Also does anybody know if i can burn an HD dvd using a mac? i wasn't sure if you could which begs the question how do i produce an HD disc with my setup?

hopefully you can make sense if this! thanks in advance,
Michael

[A n d r e w]

Originally Posted by Stimposs

i've heard some strange claims that you can't edit using an HDD hard drive camcorder with imovie (?) - my sister in law however does this for a living at Oxfam and refutes this claim as absolute nonsense.

She's right. Here's a list of camcorders officially supported in iMovie '09: iMovie '09: Camcorder Support. A number of hard-drive-based camcorders are listed.

Originally Posted by Stimposs

So basically i'm asking which is the best camcorder that will enable me to fully edit within imovie on a mac?

Can't answer this without knowing (a) what you intend using it for, and (b) how much you want to spend.

Originally Posted by Stimposs

Also does anybody know if i can burn an HD dvd using a mac?

There's presently no Blu-ray support from Apple (and isn't likely to be in the foreseeable future), which makes physically distributing HD content a little tricky for Mac users. You can still upload HD content to the web (e.g., Vimeo, YouTube), or watch your HD content on your iMac or on an AppleTV, or use iDVD to burn standard definition DVDs. I wouldn't let any of that stop you from getting a high definition camcorder, however.

[Stimposs]

thats absolutely awesome thanks - good to know i was barking up the right tree.

i'm really going to be very much a 'home' user, i wanted to get one to start filming my young kids really - so don't need anything majorly serious. i would guess my budget is about £400-£500, anything over this would probably be a little wasted on me.