[bronson]

Hey everyone. First timer here!!

I just bought a Sony Mini DV camcorder. The main reason was the salesperson told me that it was the only Firewire camcorder available and he's seen many Mac owners returning other camcorder formats because the USB is too slow.

The image quality is great when viewing straight from the camera to TV but when I import to iMovie... not so good. The importing seems to kill the quality.

What about mini DVDs? Do you even need firewire or just insert the disc into your computer (providing it's not slot load). Is the quality from the DVD better than the downloaded DV file??

Thanks.

[ibook_steve]

You should note that this question belongs in the Peripherals forum since it is not PB or MBP specific.

In any case, I'm very surprised to hear the salesman say this was the *only* FW camcorder. Pretty much every mini DV camcorder today has Firewire (or iLink as Sony calls it). The USB connections on these machines are not for transferring video. The USB is for transferring pictures and other data to some sort of removable flash media on the camera, like an SD card.

As for importing into iMovie, you have to understand that a computer screen is much clearer and at a higher resolution than a TV, so you'll notice lower quality than the TV. You can adjust the playback quality in the iMovie preferences.

Steve

[Chaoticjoe]

I have a Sony cam quarter and I hate it's guts. The think uses those mini DVDs, and I don't know how to get the footage on my computer via fire wire because theres no slot. Do I have to get a specialized Sony wire for this? What I do now is stick the DVDs in my windows after "finalizing" them and I can take the file from it and have it on my computer. Problem is, the file's can only be played back. There's no editors that can run these Sony files. I hope a special wire can import the video as a readable file or something.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Chaoticjoe 

I have a Sony cam quarter and I hate it's guts. The think uses those mini DVDs, and I don't know how to get the footage on my computer via fire wire because theres no slot. Do I have to get a specialized Sony wire for this? What I do now is stick the DVDs in my windows after "finalizing" them and I can take the file from it and have it on my computer. Problem is, the file's can only be played back. There's no editors that can run these Sony files. I hope a special wire can import the video as a readable file or something.

Many (most?) DVD camcorders don't have any plug to connect them to a computer; you're supposed to take the DVD out and drop it in your DVD player.

If you want to edit them on a Mac, rip them with MacTheRipper or similar and then convert to a format that iMovie can read with ffmpegx or similar.

[wolfen]

The Panasonic mini-dv's are significantly better quality than any DVD-recording camera I could find. The charm of burning DVD's directly is soon lost if you compare the quality side by side with one of these units. If all you're ever going to do is view raw footage and want it to be a simple process, the DVD thing is great. But if you take any interest in producing quality, well edited pieces you will grow disappointed with the DVD's quickly.

And yes, you can connect it via firewire.

My 2ct.

[aristotles]

I bought a Sony High Definition DV camera. You should have done some research online before buying.

I would stay away from DVD camcorders since they record on MiniDVDs and you would have to convert the compressed DVD video in order to edit it resulting in loss of quality. DV or HDDV (High def) is the way to go.