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Best Camcorder for HD?

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so I got my new iMac 27 over xmas and Im a few months away from video'ing again. I want to get a new HD camcorder...the Canon's look REALLY nice.

which is better easier for the Mac? hard drive or SD cards? also what format? most are AVCHD I believe?

also how to connect to Mac if its the HD type?

my current 4 year old Sony handycam wont hook up to the Mac with what i have which I was very surprised.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
27" iMac Quad Core i7 2.8 ghz 1TB HDD
The canon vixia line is very nice and they all offer very good features also. I prefer sd cards as you can pop out the sd card and put it right into your iMac but a camcorder with a hard drive should work to. I don't really know what you mean when you are asking how to connect it. A little detail would be more helpful. Thanks
 
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I am certainly no expert but have spent the last 2 weeks researching this, talking to digital camera experts and the kind folk in the apple store. I was advised to leave well alone from the sony cameras for using with macs. From what I can gather the top end canon and panasonic cameras seem to have the best reviews. I went for the panasonic hds sd200 instead of the canon hf100 cause it is supposed to be better in low light. Nearly all the top cameras record in AVCHD but from what I gather this is a pain to use with imovie so it may be worth getting final cut express. One of the new sanyo cameras films in MPEG 4 and ifile which is supposed to be easier to edit on your mac, but I don't think the picture quality is as good as the canon/panasonics.
As previously said this is all from what I have read or been told. If its wrong please feel free to let me know.
I've also been told that imovie compresses full HD images and you can't convert them back to 1080 hd after editing. I think you need final cut to edit and produce full HD footage. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks
 
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I am certainly no expert but have spent the last 2 weeks researching this, talking to digital camera experts and the kind folk in the apple store. I was advised to leave well alone from the sony cameras for using with macs. From what I can gather the top end canon and panasonic cameras seem to have the best reviews. I went for the panasonic hds sd200 instead of the canon hf200 cause it is supposed to be better in low light. Nearly all the top cameras record in AVCHD but from what I gather this is a pain to use with imovie so it may be worth getting final cut express. One of the new sanyo cameras films in MPEG 4 and ifile which is supposed to be easier to edit on your mac, but I don't think the picture quality is as good as the canon/panasonics.
As previously said this is all from what I have read or been told. If its wrong please feel free to let me know.
I've also been told that imovie compresses full HD images and you can't convert them back to 1080 hd after editing. I think you need final cut to edit and produce full HD footage. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks
 
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21.5" iMac, 3.06GHz duo, 4GB RAM, 500GB Hard Drive, NVIDIA 9400M| 8GB iPod Touch
A friend of mine got a Canon Vixia HF200 (which I had been looking at myself) and it's been working flawlessly with his mac. Just make sure you have a class 4 SD card or higher (but under a class 10, no double-digits) because anything under that won't be able to record in full HD.
 
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I can assure you that the kind folks at the Apple Store have no clue about digital video cameras and editing applications. Trust me. I console my students and consulting clients every week about bad info they got from the kind folks at the Apple Store.

Sony are nice cameras, and work with Macs as well as any other brand. Canon is nice, but a tad behind Sony and Panasonic and JVC technically in the video camcorder area. Look at Panny, JVC, and Sony.
 

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