I'm looking to buy a hard drive camcorder and want to make sure I have no problems transfering to my mbp for iMovie. People online have been saying that if there is a firewire port on the camcorder I should have no problems. The girl a Best Buy says stay away from Sony at all cost and stick with JVC. However, someone online has said JVC requires you to download some software to change file formats.
This is all very confusing. I'm new to video and imovie and just want the simplest, easiest, most convenient camcorder for around $500. I want to plug it in and go. Does anybody have any recommendations?
Let me clear something up for you, just in case, sounds like from your post you don't know all you should.
Firewire is great for miniDV, which is used to move the file from your camcorder to your mac directly into iMovie in realtime. miniDV is actually a tape, so you plug the camcorder via firewire into your mac, click import on iMovie and hit Play on your camcorder.
Firewire and USB can be used with a HDD camcorder which records to a HDD. If the camcorder has the firewire, great, USB, great. Whichever it has, the idea is that it is saved as a file. YourMovie0001.xxx
This file is most likely to be mpeg-2 format these days, and the size of the HDD on the camera will vary, as will the time you can record with it without clearing out files.
Moving the files from the HDD camera is faster generally, because it is basically a copy/paste thing.
Formats do vary between companies. I have a JVC, and yes you will need a piece of software to convert from their mpeg-2 format called .mod to .dv for editing in iMovie.
Also, the apple quicktime mpeg-2 codec is required, which is a $20 download.
Best Advice
Since you have a laptop, take it with you to Best Buy or wherever, and let them do a sample video on each of the different HDD cameras you like, then transfer it to your MBP and see how hard it is to work with. Get the one you like best.
Check out what software comes included with each camera, is it OS X friendly, or Windows only?
Does it support Firewire, or USB only. What's the battery life vs. the Recording time. (face it - 8 hours recording time is no good with 2 hour battery).
Never, and i Mean never take someone elses word on it, especially the employees of the establishment, because regardless of their best intentions, unless they are your spouse, mother, father, brother, sister, or kid, they probably have no clue what you want out of the camera, even when you tell them.
Best of luck, I'd be interested to know what you go with, and why when it's done.
Brian