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[Bernard]

I have to admit I am not the most computer savoy person out there. I been thinking of taking some videos on my layout and posting them here. Here are my questions:

 

1) What do you recommend as a video camera for taking videos with the sole purpose of downloading them. I really don't want to send a lot of money on this camera and I usually buy my cameras at New Egg:

http://www.newegg.com/

 

I am also told that there is a special camera with the sole purpose of downloading videos.

 

2) Once you film the video, what is the process of downloading it?

[CaptOblivious]

If you have a Mac, iMovie makes certain things very easy. You can do like we do: Get a cheap MiniDV camera (they should be under $100 now!), and a firewire cable, and iLife '09. iMovie will be rather simplistic compared to what you're used to, but it allows you to take a movie on a miniDV tape, quickly edit it into something presentable, and upload directly to YouTube in only a couple of steps.

[Martijn Meerts]

I have 2 videocamera's, both record to SD card. The quality isn't quite as good as you can get on miniDV, but after compressing the video's it's hardly noticable. SD cards are also easier to carry and fit more ;)

 

I have 1 "normal" videocamera with a high level of zoom on it, which I plan to use for closeups and such, and I have a full HD camera with crappy zoom for all the overview shots. The idea was to use iLife '09 for rough cuts and image stabilization where needed (the stabilization feature in iLife '09 is great btw ;)), and then move it over to Final Cut Express for the heavier stuff.

 

Of course, I haven't really had the time to sit down and learn all that stuff yet =)

[Guest ___]

I have a camcorder that records to SD and it's a bigger pain than I expected it to have been. I figured looking at the write files I could just drop and drag to the PC like my still cam's video mode. Wrong. I have to do all this compiling BS, and encoded everything for HD, argh, I hate video. Maybe it's easier with the MAC, but on the PC's it's a pain, and I won't even try to get in to video post-production on Linux.

[Martijn Meerts]

Video formats are terrible. Luckily both my camera's record in a common format and iMovie can read it without transcoding or any other weird stuff. One of the reasons I picked the camera's I did was for the video format.