What is the best camcorder for shooting a senior video?

Question

Just like the question says I am looking for a good quality camcorder to shoot my class' senior video next year at my high school. Should i go with high definition or will it be a waste of money since i doubt most people that will view it will have an hd tv?. I have a macbook pro with final cut express to edit it so it should be compatible with that. Also, would a dvd or hard drive camcorder be better?.I only want to spend around 700 dollars at the most. Any help is appreciated, thanks

Answer 1

http://laprincess.ecrater.com/product.ph...

Answer 2

I'd suggest going for any Canon or Sony MiniDV camcorder within your price range.  My video production/film production prefers Canon and Sony over other brands for camcorders.  My teacher also prefers MiniDV tapes over the DVD and hard drive camcorders.

I, myself, have heard that MiniDV tapes produce better quality images than hard drive and DVD camcorders.

Check out the included link to browse through some great camcorders.

Answer 3

DO NOT BUY A DVD BASED CAMCORDER. They are the worst available video quality for video editing.

Any miniDV based camcorder will provide you with easiest transfer since your MacBook Pro has a Firewire400 port built-in. You will need a 4-pin to 6-pin firewire cble to connect the DV port on the camcorder to the firewire 400 port on your Mac.

For standard definition, the Sony DCR-HC62 and Canon ZR930 are suggested. They are well below your budget - but you should also get a high-capacity rechargeable battery or two, a good tripod (and use it), sturdy case (Pelican is good), and a decent video light (for night video capture. And maybe an external mic or two.

Do not reuse the tape. Shoot it, fill the tape, take it out of the camera, lock it, label it, pop in another tape and start shooting. This tape is also your long-term archive...

The next batch of camcorders worth looking at are likely outside your budget - but are worth mentioning... Canon HV20, HV30, Sony HDR-HC7 and HC9. They do standard definition and high definition.

In either case, be aware that 1 hour of standard definition video uses about 14 gig of hard drive space and high definition is more like 45 gig of hard drive space per hour of imported video. Consider getting an external drive - minimum 500 gig - for the video project.

If you decide to go hard drive based or flash memory, those files will transfer using USB - but you have an extra step by having to convert them using StreamClip (free from Apple):

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/vi...

then exporting as DV so FCE can use them.

BEST video quality is with miniDV tape because DV and HDV are the least compressed.

Hard drive and flash come next - the MPEG2 (standard definition and AVCHD (high definition) compress a lot. Only the most current version of FCE (and FinalCut Pro 2 and iMovie HD7 - that shipped in iLife08) can deal with AVCHD formatted video. When you transfer the video to the computer, you delete the files on the camcorder so you can start capturing more video... the FIRST thing you should do is make a back up archive of this original video in case your hard drive crashes. The time you thought you save by using hard drive or flash memory camcorders and copying the files over USB rather than importing just got eaten up.

DVD based camcorders compress the video the most. Their video is terrible for editing - and you will need to rip the video with HandBrake in order for FCE to get to it. Please do not go this route.