[roloru]

I'm buying a camcorder for my 11 year old grandson who is computer-savvy and photo-savvy and interested in importing miniDV footage into his iBook (with iMovie 6). I myself have been working with iMovie since version 1 (haven't gotten to 08 yet) but am confused by the talk about MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. The cameras I'm considering are the Canon ZR series and the Sony DCR-HC series. Will iMovie 6 (and later 08) be able to import clips from these cameras, and what is the difference between these MPEG formats?

[edmetric]

There is a lot of info on the internet about video. Overwhelmingly so.
I believe the Mac will read the Canon DV file but, I think maybe don't know, if Sony is a little different and may not be usable with Mac. I use a Canon miniDV and a Casio SD (which wraps the file in an AVI container which takes a little more fiddle like QT Pro, special video components in the QT library). Both give me good service with Mac.
I'm pretty sure the Canon will firewire import into the Mac without a problem. I'd double check on the Sony were I you.
You have to decide how you are going to use video and what size image you want before you start so look into that. The larger the image you want, the more pixels you have to pack onto tape/flash, the larger the file will be. Different formats use different compression standards to shrink the file size and that is the problem.
iMovie 08 supports standard and high definition video, as well as the most popular formats, including DV, HDV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and even AVCHD.
Google around for info on MPEG.
MPEG-1 is older compression which contains the popular MP3 audio format
MPEG-2 is broadcast quality television and what you find in DVD VOB files.
MPEG-4 is newer compression used with support for DRM; one form is H.264 for iPod.

[stahome]

I have a Sony DCR-xxx HandyCam and an Intel Mac. The software that comes with the Sony camera is not Mac compatible. The Handycam outputs MPEG-2 format which iMovie'06 does not support. My understanding is that to use my Sony with my Mac, I'll need to purchase software from Pixela (around $99) to be able to import video and make edits. If anyone else knows of alternative software that can do this at a lower cost, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

[romayfield]

I would stay away from the HDD camcorders. There is not enough support right now for hdd camcorders to work within iMovie or Final Cut Pro. I would stick to a miniDV camcorder, if not for the only reason that tape is an easily backup media format and is less vulnerable to data corruption.

[roloru]

Many thanks to edmetric , stahome , and romayfield . I've bought a Canon ZR800 mini-DV camcorder; now let's see how creative my 11-year-old gets!