[jamus]

After going through 3 of these at work, I have to say I am really starting to despise seeing these things come through my door. I have yet to find a Sony drive-based camera (XD Cam not included since it is optical) that actually works well with a Mac using iMovie or Final Cut Express.

[philg]

We have had many users in the same situation where they have been frustrated at the lack of support for these new cameras and the AVCHD standard overall. VoltaicHD for Mac, from ShedWorx.com, seems to fill that gap with many happy users.

[nisp]

I'm using a Sanyo Xacti on my macbook pro, but have no problems at all importing content using the included USB cables...

[BrianChen]

@worx3d

My personal preference is MiniDV, too: You get the highest quality and rarely ever run into any importing problems. But I can see why some people would want to go tapeless. Podcasters, for instance, would love to skip that tedious capturing process that we MiniDV users have to deal with to meet their deadlines.

We also tested the Vixia HF30, and in our evaluative jury (comparing the HF30 to hi-def tapeless camcorders), the HF30 scored the highest ranking. MiniDV is still king.

[trip1ex]

I have a Flip Ultra video camera for capturing the kids. It doesn't work directly with IM08 either.

YOu have to convert the files to an appropriate format first. It's definitely a hassle to start with, but once you find an acceptable method of conversion then it's a small extra step of dragging and dropping into the conversion program and importing into IM08.

And actually it's the miniDV cameras that have worse problems with those Mac owners using just IM08 because you can't get the full quality back out of the footage when you make a DVD.

[hayesk]

I don't know why anyone would want to use these camcorders for editing. They compress it directly to the disk in MPEG2 or MPEG4 format. Then when you edit them again in iMovie, it will re-compress them again resulting in quality loss.
miniDV saves in a format much more amenable to editing.

[RichardBronosky]

I think that if you have to install anything from the manufacturer, it is a failure. The interface should be standard, Firewire, USB, CF, SD, etc. The file format should be standard, DV, MPEG2, MPEG4, H.264, etc. Anything else is FAIL!
Now if only iMovie would edit the 720p video from my Sanyo Exacti without converting it! But, that's not Sanyo's fault.

[tallscot]

>I don't know why anyone would want to use these camcorders for editing. They compress it directly to the disk in MPEG2 or MPEG4 format. Then when you edit them again in iMovie, it will re-compress them again resulting in quality loss.

I don't know why any Mac user would want these camcorders.

Windows PC users, however, don't have to transcode. Ulead, Pinnacle and Sony edit native AVCHD. Ulead's software lets you burn AVCHD to a standard DVDR disc and play it in HD on a Blu-ray player.

[tallscot]

BrianChen said:

@worx3d


My personal preference is MiniDV, too: You get the highest quality and rarely ever run into any importing problems. But I can see why some people would want to go tapeless. Podcasters, for instance, would love to skip that tedious capturing process that we MiniDV users have to deal with to meet their deadlines.


We also tested the Vixia HF30, and in our evaluative jury (comparing the HF30 to hi-def tapeless camcorders), the HF30 scored the highest ranking. MiniDV is still king.

I'm a Mac user. If I buy the Canon HF10, can I just copy the movies to my Mac and stream them to my TV with an Apple TV? If not, is there any 3rd party solution on the Mac so I don't have to go through the hassle of transcoding? I don't want to edit. I just want to shoot, copy the files to a hard drive, stream them to the TV.

Thanks!

[gumguy]

For me, with the Xacti, I must record in a lower HD res other than 1080i even when using a card reader, at least when trying to import into Final Cut express HD. The 1010 has been announced but who knows if it will have the same problems. It would be nice if Apple could provide a fix for these three so we could use them to their maximum capacity. For the Sanyo 1000, if there are other fixes I am not aware of, please provide them.

[Alphaman]

I've got a Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1 that records MPEG4 at 1280x720p, and iMovie08 works as expected with it, and does not have to transcode to read the .MP4 files the HD1 creates. I've had this camera for a couple years now, and while I had a very hard (and expensive) time getting PC software to work with the video from this camera, it was a pleasure to see it "just work" with iMovie on my brand new MacBook.
The idea that "tapeless camcorders are not a Mac's best friend" should be qualified to "a handful of tapeless camcorders are not Mac-friendly".

[tallscot]

>The idea that "tapeless camcorders are not a Mac's best friend" should be qualified to "a handful of tapeless camcorders are not Mac-friendly".

I think it's a majority, not a handful. Most of the tapeless HD camcorders I see are AVCHD or MPEG2. Does iMovie edit MPEG2 without transcoding it? Correct me if I'm wrong.

I wish MacWorld would create a table displaying the various HD camcorders and have a column that states if the camcorder requires transcoding on import. I won't buy a camcorder that requires transcoding and when they say "Mac compatible", they are counting camcorders that require transcoding on import. We need to identify the HD camcorders that can be edited natively on the Mac.

[tony_d]

Because these cameras essentially use a Hard drive why can't the OS X just recognize it as a hard drive and place it on the desktop. Then I could just drag the files off of it. Is there any reason why this couldn't work this way?

[gumguy]

My Xacti is the HD1000 if I need to clarify. I get immediate mp4 files, but again, I cannot see thumbnails when recorded in 1080i an imported from a card reader into iMovie or Final Cut HD. So I record in the lower res mode which is still a great quality but I have read in other forums as well that the 1080i issue and Mac's, with the Xacti HD1000, has "issues". Again, I hope it can get corrected with a software fix.