[Macworld]

Post your comments for Tapeless camcorders are not a Mac's best friend here

[abradacabra]

I recently purchased Canon HG10 - awesome HD hard-drive based camcorder and it works with latest iMovie. Toast Titanium 9 can play the media directly without conversion. The only issue that I have is that movies in full 1080p resolution do not play smoothly on MacBook. It seems that either graphics chip or internal hard drives in Mac portables are not fast enough to keep up with the stream of full HD. Canon says you should use external hard drive but I haven't tried that yet.

[Buffyzdead]

With the Canon HF10, are you able to take advantage of the true HD Quality of 1920 x1080 while EDITING under iMove?...FCE?...FCP?
How about the 24 cinema frame rate?
If not, does iMovie, FCE, FCP, require an Apple update to support this?
Thank you.

[SamTheGeek]

I recently purchased the SR-11 and was surprised to see it work with iMovie on the first try. I do like how iMovie will downres video for you, to 980p from 1080i which i an odd format, but uses much less space for the same disc usage.

[fisherstechguy]

I recently purchased the DXG 567V. It's similar to the flip-video SD camcorder. I have the same 'problem' with smooth playback on the macbook - and the video's in 720p.
I can get my files to work within the FCE and iMovie 08/iMovie HD environments but I find I have to render each clip once in the FCE timeline and the import in to the iMovies takes longer than (I'm assuming due to the render time) I would prefer. Hopefully Apple can catch up to the field here soon.

[lancemoody]

On the professional side Apple's flagship Final Cut Studio shows some embarrassing flaws that affect work flow and reveal a penchant for adding flashy features on top of a flaky and sometimes unreliable code base.
I detail a problem I had using P2 material here:
http://discussions.a...46596&tstart=75
I don't really expect a solution.

[worx3d]

I recently bought a Vixia HV30, a Canon miniDV HD camcorder, and so far I like it very, very much.
Now, I still feel that I am not sure if I'm missing something by not going with a tapeless camcorder. What would be the disadvantages of a miniDV camcorder compared to a tapeless camcorder?.. besides the fact that I get to have a collection of small tapes... which actually I like, I like the feel of having a backup of my videos...
why would you go with a tapeless?

[meta]

I have no problems with my Xacti. I mount the SD card via a card reader, copy across the MPEG-4 files, drop them on iMovie, and they work.

[Adammiller]

Im waiting for the day when hard drive camcorders become evolved enough (big enough hard drives and/or changeable hard drives) to be used for professional or even just high end consumer use.

[Adammiller]

With the exception of a $700+ P2 card.

[MegaJustice]

We love (and swear by) the Sony XDCAM EX1. Works great with Mac's and the performance of this camera is great. Low light, high definition, tripod, hand held, studio or field.

It's the most flexible camera we've ever used. The cameras that are listed are pretty low end. It naturally depends on the environment and your needs. We have used this camera with live broadcasts, webcasts, streaming video and it performs in so many situations. It's the most versatile camera available for high definition tapeless workflow.

Cheers,
Chris

Christopher Justice
Chief Executive Officer
Sparksight, Inc.
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[MegaJustice]

I should also note that the reason to go tapeless is that it reduces your production time. Significantly. Naturally, you don't have the tape to rely on as backup but it just means you need a backup strategy to disk. Sigh...I may be old school too but I miss the confidence of tape for some situations.

Again, this review is mostly consumer level cameras. So, given the poor software, you're bound to have issues. Select a camera with native encoding to a common format and avoid software-based import solutions.

Finally, I'll say this, when I am not shooting with a prosumer camera, I use an Aiptek HD Camera. $79 bucks. 4 gig card covers almost all situations and the video can be copied directly to the Mac...no software or "import" needed. Direct to iMovie, Final Cut Express/Pro. I don't recommend cameras in the consumer class that don't support H264. That's just me.

Chris

[caboolture]

>yet the Vixia HF10 and the HDR-SR11 were the only two that worked properly with a Mac
:( Unfortunately not on my Mac - a Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz. The older version of iMovie does not recognise it at all. When you try and install iMovie '08 on this the installer says the machine is not powerful enough. Any hints greatfully appreciated!

[caboolture]

Ooops, I should clarify - it does not recognise the Canon Vixia HF100.