Recommend a cheap camcorder?

[akpcep]

Hi all,

I want to get into making short abstract films/montages to go along with my music, so I want to buy a cheap (around £150) camcorder to start recording footage.

I don't need anything fancy as it's mostly going on the web anyway, but I'm a bit bewildered about the choice available, all the different formats etc.

The MOST important thing is that it must be really easy to get the video off the camcorder and into the PC, so USB would be a must I think (no firewire card).

Any help/recommendations would be much appreciated! Also, any recommendations for free video editing software would be splendid. Thanks!

 

[dgatwood]

I don't need anything fancy as it's mostly going on the web anyway, but I'm a bit bewildered about the choice available, all the different formats etc.

HDV:
High definition format based on MPEG-2 on DV tapes. The highest quality prosumer format. Requires FireWire.

DV:
Standard definition format based on DV, a variant of M-JPEG. The second highest quality prosumer format. Requires FireWire.

Everything USB:
Standard definition format based on MPEG-4. Picture quality is acceptable, but not great. Note that I've never seen devices other than cheap webcams with crap video quality that do live capture via USB. USB-based devices typically show up as video clip files that you copy to your computer. This doesn't matter to most people, but if it does to you, it's worth noting.

WARNING:
Most tape-based camcorders with USB (e.g. DV camcorderrs) do NOT provide video via USB or provide degraded video quality designed for webcam purposes. Most use USB solely for access to a flash card for still photos. Bottom line: you probably don't want a tape-based camcorder if you don't have access to FireWire.

Honestly, I'd buy a FireWire card and a cheap DV camcorder and not deal with any of those flash-based cams, but that's because I prefer cheap tape-based storage that I don't feel the need to reuse to save money. Others' opinions on that subject may vary.

On the question of cheap video editing software, I use a Mac, so normally my advice would be iMovie (free), but since you don't have FireWire, unless your sole machine is a MacBook Air, it's safe to say you're not a Mac user, so I don't have any suggestions.

 

[akpcep]

That's great, thanks for the reply.

I think I'm definitely going down the miniDV/firewire route after having done some more reading, seems to be plenty of choice in the < £200 market.