Would you recommend me a good Camcorder?

Can anyone recommend a good camcorder?

• I'm looking for a camcorder to make amateur movies. My budget is around $600 or less. My computer doesn't have a FireWire port so hopefully they still sell camcorders that still use USB to transfer videos.

• Answer:

  If you got your desktop computer in the past 5 years, it will most likely have Firewire. You will need to look on both the front and the back near the USB terminals. If you have a laptop, firewire was not added to most laptops until 2001. If it is on your laptop, it will be near the USB ports too. If you do not have a firewire port, you can purchase a firewire card for both laptops and desktops for $50 or less. There are only two connections for the Firewire 400 used for Video Capture - the large 6-pin and the small 4-pin. Your camcorder normally has 4-pin. Any camcorder for $600 or less will be a good camcorder for general filming needs. You need to be more specific with what you need to film in order for anyone to narrow down the list of cameras from the hundreds available. In this price range, you will have two basic choices for camcorder and the format it records: HDV/miniDV tape or AVCHD HDV is an HD signal on a miniDV tape. These camcorders will need Firewire for video capture from the camcorder to the computer. AVCHD camcorders record video to miniDVDs, Blu-ray disc, hard disc drives (HDD), or flash memory, and this video is transfered from the recording media via USB like a digital still camera. Each of the different recording formats have different strengths and weaknesses, but the video signal saved to each is the same. AVCHD can save the same video signal into a smaller space than HDV, but most people are having a hard time capturing and editing the AVCHD files at this time. The market for handling AVCHD files will catch up, but it may be a few more years. AVCHD is easy to use but people are having a hard time getting it to transfer and edit. There is also not a good long term storage medium for AVCHD at this time. MiniDV is usually limited to recording 1 hour at a time, but it is easy to capture and edit as well as store for a long time. Choose Wisely, and Good Luck