What types of digital cameras work with macs?

ok i know people reading this will say any type will work but let me specify. my brother has a sony digital camera i connected it to my laptop to see some videos and it wont let me. The file type is not recognized. So christmas is coming soon so im going to ask for a digital camera. Now what i want to know is what type should i get that records in a format that i don't have to convert? im not looking for a specific one if you want to go ahead up to you. But i just need to know what format a certain camera needs to record so i dont have to go through video coversions and can just edit my videos when i connect a camera. hope this made sense. Im off to bed but i will check responses tomorrow. hopefully someone answers

I have never really owned a Sony Digital Camera. What is the format? Do you know?

All I know is my Canon saves all movies in AVI and with Perian installed on OSX, all the videos I shoot play just fine.

EDIT: I just searched in Google and everything I saw said Sony's videos are in MP4. Do you have Perian installed in OSX? Every OSX user that wants to play most any video on the net should have both Perian and Flip4Mac installed.

rockmetalr said:

ok i know people reading this will say any type will work but let me specify. my brother has a sony digital camera i connected it to my laptop to see some videos and it wont let me. The file type is not recognized. So christmas is coming soon so im going to ask for a digital camera. Now what i want to know is what type should i get that records in a format that i don't have to convert? im not looking for a specific one if you want to go ahead up to you. But i just need to know what format a certain camera needs to record so i dont have to go through video coversions and can just edit my videos when i connect a camera. hope this made sense. Im off to bed but i will check responses tomorrow. hopefully someone answers

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I've got an old Sony camera DSC-P51 (with a whopping 2 megapixels) that works fine on my MBP. I plug it in and iPhoto pops up downloads my new photos and offers to erase them from the camera. (I've yet to figure out where iPhoto stashes my photos, but that's a different issue!)

I have an older Sony DSC-P200 which produces a 640x480 image. The videos are viewable but the audio has given me problems when editing, so I have to convert the file. I think I used MPEG Streamclip for this. The reason for the 'fix' is because these files are MPEG1 Muxed.

Newer cameras, like Canon's PowerShot SD980 IS, use the H.264 codec so usually are compatible with a Mac. I'm not sure of the container file (.mov, .avi, .mp4) it uses. I think iMovie will convert the file.

forget my last post now i remember what the problem was. Viewing was not the problem editing them on iMovie was the problem. The file type that the sony uses for VIDEOS is MPEG and for some reason iMovie wont let me edit them i plugged in my camera and clicked import and look for filed to import but they are like unclickable i see them but the writing is like clear almost indicating that the format doesnt work with iMovie i guess. So thats what my problem is thats why i was asking what type of Digital Camera do i need to get so that once i have movies i can edit them on iMovie without a problem. I tried converting the video i had with handbrake and it would not let me it quit on me unexpectadly is there any other program i could use with Snow Leopard i got 3.06 mghz 4 ram if it helps. What format would i need to convert it to to view on iMovie i tried changing it to a quicktime format but that didn't work either. but if no other programs what type of camera should i get besides canon i guess with avi if that works with iMovie. Please dont over look this and not answer i tried searching past posts couldnt find one to help me if you got one just paste link or something

got it

nvm used streamclip converted my files to DV and now can import them and edit them on iMovie wooo

digital camera and macs

Take this with a grain of salt since I have only been using a mac for a few months. I have never seen a digital camera ( still or video) that would not work with a mac.