Digital Hard Drive Video Camera...What should I buy?

I just picked my new mac osx tiger.
I am still waiting for my final cut studio software.
Can anyone tell me whhat video camera to buy that would do the best job for the least amount of money?
I just returned a JVC digital hard drive unit that was said to talk to mac...NOT! I took it back and am done goofing around. I want to get something that will look professional and easy to transfer to the mac.
Any Camera experts out there?

Hi signman, I'm not the person to answer this for you but it would definitely help if you added your budget for the camera and maybe even what you plan to do with it. Welcome to the forums!

how did the JVC not work with the mac? it should have...

Whatever you get, it needs to have a FireWire out port on it. That is all iMovie will do.

Also remember that the camera (tape or DVD, not sure about HDD) will not mount like Hard Drive but will be controlled through iMovie for playback and dumping to the Mac.

I would try another HDD camera from a different store... maybe from a different make or model you might have more success
I have a dvd camera and cant get it to mount unfortunatly

DVD cameras (or at least all the ones I have come across) do not support OS X . If you give me your budget and the quality you are looking for, and possibly experience level in video, I should be able to find a good camera for you.

Budget... Thats a thought...

I don't have a budget, I just try to make it happen with what money I have, I saw some online for over $5000....yikes.
However, I do want quality and I don't have anymore hair to pull out.
I intend to do short commercials as well as web page creation.
I might have to wait a few weeks to rake in some more cash.

Signman said:

I don't have a budget, I just try to make it happen with what money I have, I saw some online for over $5000....yikes.
However, I do want quality and I don't have anymore hair to pull out.
I intend to do short commercials as well as web page creation.
I might have to wait a few weeks to rake in some more cash.

Click to expand...

If you are looking to do commercials for tv you are going to need a HD camera and I would even recomend a 3ccd HD Camera. (if its for you own company and jut want to put something together to advertise for yourself) if you are looking to to get into the commercial world, then you are not going to be able to just get by with a consumer level hd camcorder, you may want to save up for something more up there like the XL-H1 or the HVX-200

Camcorder

I use a Panasonic PV-GS250. 3CCD, mini-DV. Not a HDD unit. Great quality video though.
Read up on the differences between the formats. An HDD camcorder won't show up as an external FW drive. It's used as a streaming video device for input into iMovie.
From my research (at the time I bought it), the mini-DV units had better video recording quality and were more versatile.
When the HHD is full, you're done until you dump it. DVDs give up quality when streaming.

Just my two cents.

Yeah, go with tape, on the most expensive format you can afford.

HDD and DVD don't currently have the kind of quality that you're going to need, as they both pre-compress the footage in a not very helpful way.