Best Camcorder to Buy

I want to buy a camcorder and had originally looked at the DVD camcordes but I belive they can only record up to 20 mins and no editing?

I been told the miniDV camcorders are the best?
Any advice?

Looking for the following:

To take video of the kids, holidays etc
Would like to be able to edit and send clips over the web
Would like to put video onto DVD's.
Is it possible to plug the camera straight to the PC and burn a DVD from it?

Any advice or recommendations would be great!

Thanks

Any miniDV camera by Sony works well, but many other brands too. Can't advise you on the best, depends on the features you want and budget. Go for a brand with a good lens and the largest optical zoom range you can afford. Try out a lot of them and see what feels comfortable for you.

Is your computer Mac or PC? Do you already own editing software? Can vouch for iMovie which comes free with the Mac but I've never used the Windows equivalent (MovieMaker, I believe it's called).

Again, a mac comes with iDVD which is the most idiot-proof DVD creation software around.

If you have a miniDV camcorder you can't burn a DVD straight from it, you need to capture the video to the computer, transcode it to mpeg (the DVD picuture format) and then burn the disc. Your DVD creation software can more or less automate much of this process but you will find you need to experiment with settings to get best results. You learn by doing, really.

The new hard drive camcorders are coming out now - think the cheapest is about eur800 - jvc are doing them - advantage is no spooling through tapes anymore, automatic chaptering etc and direct transfer of mpeg files to pc. Also, a few hours storage compared to swapping minidv tapes all the time.

However he wants to be able to edit. AFAIK there's no easy way to edit Mpeg material without first converting it to another format. Then you have to convert back for DVD transfer. Big quality loss I'd imagine.

ice said:

I want to buy a camcorder and had originally looked at the DVD camcordes but I belive they can only record up to 20 mins and no editing?

Click to expand...

Not quite true. My Sony DVD92 camcorder records up to 30 minutes on each DVD at the standard quality setting, you can crank up the recording time by cranking down the quality settings if you wish. You can also just swap out the DVD and stick in a fresh disc.