Camcorder

I'm looking for a recommendation on a camcorder purchase please. Budget circa £300.

We've just bought a Sony DCR SR32

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-DCR-SR3...1917896&sr=8-1

Its pretty good - 40x zoom, hard disk inside etc. Cool for the price.

Is anyone else using record-to-DVD camcorders? I've found MiniDV camcorders to be somewhat fiddly to use in a lesson, especially if there's half a dozen groups of children - you have to find a Firewire cable, wait for the video to transfer to the computer, worry about free disk space, etc. I was thinking that being able to simply shove a DVD into the PC and read a video file straight off it would be a lot less messing around. Does anyone know what video codec these camcorders use - is the file on the DVD readable by Windows Movie Maker / Mac iWossname / Adobe Premier, or is there a conversion step involved, or do we have to make sure a particular codec is installed?

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David Hicks

The disk has to be finalised before it can be read on another player. I'd look at HDD cameras because they just look like an external USB drive.

Try the Sony DCRSR52E - 30GB HDD and our technophobic teachers are using it with ease.

Cost is around the £300 mark

Thanks folks - as usual some extremely useful answers.