Camcorders Of The Future
A question for people who know about Camcorders and Apple macs?
I am interested in becoming a Full Time Director and need a Camcorder to practise on and to connect to my Apple mac Power book G4 which one of these options would be cheaper for me – a Camcorder with firewire with firewire cable, or to get a digital camcorder or one with a hard disk in it. Can I get cheap Camcorders off of Ebay?Is it cheaper to buy a Camcorder or to just rent it from a company, and to just teach myself the basics at first and than buy one in the future when I have the money?
Rent a camera – expensive. Even a cheap one is likely $50/day (and I doubt you’ll find many that low). So unless you’re getting money back from what you’re doing, you’re better off owning one. And get a cheap one now and then a real camera later on.
Firewire with a tape drive, built in hard drive, or flash memory cards, any type is fine. Especially if this is just for practice. All options have their good and bad points.
Tape – easier to make it work with Mac or PC. Its tape, its reliable, its easy to store, if you have a hard drive crash you don’t lose the raw materials. But you can run into timecode break issues if you don’t practice good camera habits (and timecode breaks can be a pain). And firewire can sometimes be a bit flakey. You have to be careful with it so you don’t burn out the port on the camera or computer.
Hard Drive or Flash Memory – have to be careful that the codec and file type it records to is going to be friendly for your computer. You have to have lots of external drives around so you can adequately backup and archive the material. But its less likely to run into timecode problems. And its easier to get onto the computer (no issues about firewire connections or such).
eBay camcorders – its a risk like anything else bought off eBay. I’d sooner look for a sale from a local store. I’m just not a fan of eBay.
I’d invest in Final Cut Express at the very least, if not Final Cut Pro. Or you could also look into Adobe Premiere Elements or Pro. Those would be your better options on the Mac. Don’t rely on iMovie.
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