digital camcorders

[Elaine]

we are thinking about buying a digital camcorder. I cannot imagine that we will want to download the recordings to the computer, we only want to copy them to video to view. do you hook up the digital camcorder to the video to record from it as normal? is it better to buy the 'mini dv' type or not?

[Phantaxus]

All the digital camcorders I have used have the leads supplied to connect them to a non digital source. When buying check with the supplier what leads are provided I suspect that some of these leads may be specific to the brand of camcorder, so make sure they dont get lost as getting replacements could be difficult and/or expensive.

[Phantaxus]

Your digital camcorder will almost certainly come with a firewire out to allow you to connect it to a computer at a later date should you wish to do your own video editing. When a DigiCamcorder is connected in this way you are able to control the transport controls (play, rewind etc.) from the computer. Some of them also come with a firewire in as well, the advantage of this is that after you have editied you video on the computer you can record it back to DV tape with no loss of quality.