Video recording question

**Chris Fitzgerald** · #1 07-28-2006, 12:24 PM

Right after my son Ian was born, my wife bought a Sony video recorder to capture some of those "Kodak moments". I think it was an 8mm camera...the tapes were about the size of a little box of raisins. It crapped out and stopped recording sound right after the warranty expired, and we haven't used it much since. To be fair, we never figured out how to get the stuff from those tapes onto digital media, anyway.

Ian is 3 1/2 now, and we have two iMacs in the house, both equipped with iMovie and iDVD, and both have DVD burners. My wife's birthday is next week, and in addition to all of the usual little stuff I want to pick up for her, I thought it might be nice to try to find something to record some of Ian's antics with, since I know he won't be this old forever. I don't have a fortune to spend, but I'm so behind the times with this stuff that I don't even know where to start. Is there anything out there in the "under $1k" range that will allow us to shoot some vids of our kid and then upload via firewire or USB to the iMacs for compiling/editing/burning? It doesn't have to be pro quality, but he's so damn cute I just wanna capture some of this stuff.

Any and all advice appreciated.

Boardndave · #2 07-28-2006, 02:29 PM

I suppose you could record using a digital camera. Most of them have decent video quality. If you want a new camera, there are probably about 100 choices out there. Best of luck...

ee-san · #3 07-29-2006, 07:38 PM

Check out camcorderinfo.com for more than you ever wanted to know. We went with a Panasonic VDR D300 after reading their reviews. It's pricey but very convenient with the DVD format and the sound from the stereo mike is pretty remarkable--lot's of depth and quality. Hard disks are getting pretty popular too.

bpclark · #4 07-30-2006, 07:47 PM

There are a whole bunch of digital camcorders under $1000 (quite a few sub $500) and all of them of them should have the firewire port on them to transfer to your computer. You may want to consider looking into the Sony Digital8's first. They use 8mm tape and can play back the 8mm analog tapes you've already recorded with your original camcorder. The TRV280 is $270 on Best Buy's website.