Camcorders and the iMac

[AndyWest]

I'm thinking of buying a camcorder but have never bought one before. I have had a look on the inter web and like the idea of HD camcorders.

I have an iMac and will be using iMovie to create my movies.

Does anyone know what type of file will open in iMovie and what it saves as? i don't want to purchase a camcorder if it saves in a file format that iMove can not open.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[Dman]

If you're buying a new HD camcorder, you should have absolutely no problems opening anything in iMovie.

Edit: See here for compatible camcorders

 

[AndyWest]

DMAN, That's really helpful, Very handy page that!

thanks

 

[chrisgeary]

I had a Canon HF100 and it wrote files as m2ts. This needs to be transcoded into AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) before iMovie can use it. Don't worry, iMovie does this for you. There are arguments on the net whether this introduces quality degredation or not but its probably not worth worrying about for consumer grade camcorders.

 

[AndyWest]

I really want one for ghost hunting so needs to have 'Night Vision' but HD camcorders are way too expensive that have this feature. I don't mind non High Deff. It's all SO confusing