HD camcorders for FCP 7 NEWB question!

[webstersp]

I'll lbe jumping to mac from pc later next year (waiting for the next Imac 27 release).
My wife is pregnant and we are curently in the market for an HD camcorder, so i want ot to be compatible with FCP7

What would be my best choice for final cut pro 7?
I want to keep the best image quality and I've read that AVCHD (best image quality) is not compatible with FCP without transcoding.

Thanks

 

[spinnerlys]

As far as I know, you will only get AVCHD with consumer, flash based HD camcorders, thus transcoding the video has to be done, and there is not really a visible image quality loss doing that, as a less compressive codec is used to transcode the footage to.

Btw, do you need FCP and all the applications in the Final Cut Studio suite or might Final Cut Express suffice your needs?

 

[webstersp]

I haven't really looked at the difference between FCP7 suite and express.
This will be my first camcorder so i guess that the express version would be enough for me.

I want to use it to capture our future family member and also want to make music video for my band.

Like this guy did with Canon S100
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aSF9wQ4_dg

I just found on another post that converting file with toast 10 is prett easy.
This is the camera I'm looking at: Panasonic TM700

 

[lcseds]

I'll lbe jumping to mac from pc later next year (waiting for the next Imac 27 release).
My wife is pregnant.............

err, maybe a new 27" Imac and camcorder now while you still have money??

 

[webstersp]

err, maybe a new 27" Imac and camcorder now while you still have money??

Haha Yeah!

The camcorder is a christmas gift we are giving to us!
As for the Imac, well after using pc all of my life I think it's time for a change.
I record my band, do lots of photo (side job) and now I'll add video!

 

[aki]

Yes you will need to transcode. This is a Good Thing. AVCHD is terrible to work with unless you are on some crazy machine. Don't worry about that part. It's a Just Works thing.

When the HD consumer/prosumer camcorders first came out there was a bit of an issue with which hardware played nice with FCP/iMovie and which didn't - now, pretty much any model works. If you are paranoid, google the model you are considering and just confirm some other mac user out there is using it.

But you shouldn't have any problems.

(FYI I don't really use FC much any more, but I used to use it all the time to edit video off a consumer HD camcorder with no issues.)

Oh a final note: Final Cut pro is serious software. If you have no editing experience, there is a learning curve involved. If you don't expect to have a lot of free time, you should probably consider iMovie as a first option - it does most of the stuff you would want for "family video", and is much more intuitive. FC is very powerful, but you should consider TextEdit over Word if you just need to write memos. So to speak.

 

[webstersp]

Oh a final note: Final Cut pro is serious software. If you have no editing experience, there is a learning curve involved. If you don't expect to have a lot of free time, you should probably consider iMovie as a first option - it does most of the stuff you would want for "family video", and is much more intuitive. FC is very powerful, but you should consider TextEdit over Word if you just need to write memos. So to speak.

No problems for the long learning curves. I already did it with pro-tools and reaper and i just bought Apple Pro Training Series: Logic Pro 9 and Logic Express 9 and doesn't a mac yet!

I like to read a lot, not story books but read to learn!