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General discussion

DVD camorders on a Mac?

May 11, 2006 7:08AM PDT

I do a lot of movie editing from my digital camorder to my apple computer. I thought you could not use DVD's and make movies on a mac, but some guy at Best Buy told me I could. I went to the apple sight and they do not sell DVD camcorders, only tape so that makes me think....no.
Does anyone know?
Thanks

Discussion is locked

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The problem is that DVD-VR format and lack of firewire.
May 11, 2006 9:10AM PDT
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DVD to the mac
May 12, 2006 12:55AM PDT

This is not an easy thing to do. I have posted other places this information because I had this problem. You can rip the VOB file from your finalized disk on your mac. When the VOB is on your hard drive, covert it to a DV stream, then you can edit all you like. Its not a pretty solution esp. when compaired to just using I-movie . If your camera has a fire wire port, you can also pull the mpeg4 video directly off. If your camera is a sony, you will need a PC to do this first, then transfer to the mac. You will need to buy the mpeg4 codec from mac to use with quicktime. Do not use quicktime with the pc, its awful. So they guy from BB is correct, but its not easy and its very time consuming. Also all DVD cameras have an increase risk of damage due to more moving parts and worse battery life. The chances of losing video are very high with these devices, use miniDV for now. MiniDV gives you a great image quality and solid DV stream to start with.

Paul

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"but some guy at Best Buy told me I could."
May 12, 2006 4:57AM PDT
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Yup! Best Buy really doesn't sell anything that is at all
May 12, 2006 11:04AM PDT

high quality. I remember when I was learning about inkjets, a guy in Best Buy told me Epson didn't make photo printers any more. BB seems to have never heard of the 2200, 2400, etc.

They are not a good source of either information or product. If you know what you want, and they've got it, then a purchase makes sense. Otherwise, look elsewhere. Circuit City is pretty much the same story.