What Camcorder is for me?

Question

I am looking for a camcorder that is availible in the uk. Is quite cheep (no more then £300) able to edit the vidios off it onto a pc. and has decent pics sound and stuff. i dont mind weather its second hand it just needs to be good. Also some help on good vidio editing softwere would be helpful (pref free and just for cutting off ends of vidios and putting them together ad what not.

Answer 1

MiniDV (digital video) tape provides the best available video quality because DV does not compress the video as much as MPEG2 used by most internal hard drive and flash memory based camcorders. The worst camcorder video quality is captured by DVD based camcorders which burn to .VOB files.

If you get a miniDV tape based camcorder, your computer will need a Firewire 400 port, and a firewire cable that will connect the DV port of the camcorder to the firewire port of the computer. Firewire, IEEE1394 and i.Link are all the same thing.

I am in the US - so I don't know what the PAL equivalent camcorders are to the Sony DCR-HC28 or DCR-HC96 or Panasonic PV-GS320 (NV-GS320?) or Canon ZR800 or ZR950. Check the manufacturer's websites localized to your country for information.

DO NOT BUY A DVD BASED CAMCORDER. Worst video quality and the discs are a pain.

WIndows has MovieMaker in WinDVD... Apple Macintosh has iMovie and iDVD.