Of Camcorders, Macs and other things

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Gunner Asch 17 years ago

Ive recently had the need to do some machine p*rn..so Im looking for a camcorder. I know little or nothing about them. Id like to find an older (cheap) camcorder..it will get little use, mostly parts cycles and perhaps some grandchildren video.

It has to have the ability to import a clip into my computer and over to CD/DVD

Do I use tape, memory chip? Analog? Digital

I tend to worry about older mechanical transport tape systems..rubber going bad on drive wheels and so forth, so have stayed away from VHS cam corders etc etc

Any suggestions or information would be appreciated.

Im also...cringe..after years of avoiding Apple like the plague...gotten the bug to try Mac. Someone suggested a G4...whatever the hell that is. I know even less about Macs than I do camcorders...sigh...

I take it that a G4 is a chip series?

What would anyone suggest in light of the fact Im cheap, a life long PC/Winblows user, with some Linux experience, as an entry level Mac?

Id mostly be noodling around with it, internet and maybe some photo stuff. Im NOT a gamer, My fastest machine is a 1.2 ghz...and really dont need anything with a lot of bells and whistles. Just something cheap I can run a browser etc on..and will introduce me to Mac operating systems and so forth.

Again..suggestions/links/FAQs would be appreciated

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cavelamb himself 17 years ago

Forget tape.

Almost any modern megapixel digital camera can take movies.

Length of the clip will depend on how much memory is installed, but memory is pretty cheap these days. All you will need to download to your computer is a USB port (and XP, or the camera drivers. XP has zillions of them built in)

If you, as a digital dinasaur, ar running 98, you are pretty much going to have to change your evil ways!

As for Macs, I'm also considering migrating (defecting) due to the lack of acceptable OS options for PCs.

Check out the Mini Macs. $600 (or there abouts) up. They can use a lot of PC peripherals too, like monitor, USB stuff, etc.

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Refurbs...

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Cydrome Leader 17 years ago

with serious limitations- which may or may not matter for your use.

- some cannot change zoom once you start recording

- lack of decent audio, or separate inputs for audio.

- the video resolution is usually poor for still cameras, and unrelated to the res of the CCD itself.

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John Haskey 17 years ago

Just for an example, here's some video shot with a Canon SD750 (street price around $160):

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(the video is third generation, from the camera, from the editting software, and then re-encoded by vimeo)

Original resolution is 640x480. For inexpensive video it's pretty good. I agree that the audio capability is a bit lacking. I get between 15 and

20 minutes of video on a 2gb SD card as I recall.

---john.

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brewertr 17 years ago

You have a Sony laptop, these cameras will plug right into your laptop via firewire and start right up with video capture/transfer damn close to plug and play.

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Tom

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