A good HD camcorder for the summer?

I'm looking at getting into video editting mostly with wakeboarding videos and I'm looking for a good HD camcorder.

I've been looking at this camera but I dunno if it's any good. I've seen it advertised for $700.
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langI d=-1&productId=11033112

Have any of you used this camera or any other HD cameras worth looking at?

Also, what software do you use for editting videos.

Thanks

I have had great luck using a Canon Vixia HF10 and a Mac for editing. No problems and the HD vids look amazing.

i'm getting a camera to shoot some wakeboard video this summer too. After reading a lot of reviews i'm going with the canon vixia hg21. It has a 120gb hard drive and a view finder it retails for around 900.

For editing i've been using the adobe cs4 master suite, mostly after effects. Since the hg21 camera records in AVCHD its important to get an editor that can edit AVCHD natively without having to do conversions.

I'm interested to hear other opinions about the HC3, especially compared to AVCHD equivalents.

AVCHD is a good acquisition format given it's variable rate "intelligent" compression and very low data rates but it's still a long GOP codec and seeing as the pros generally ingest or convert it to prores422, DVC HD pro or a similar I frame codec for post purposes I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me why editing it natively is such a big advantage?

However whether you're editing natively or not AVCHD is probably superior at this point at the consumer cam level to HDV based units, it's just way more modern technology.

I just picked up the HF10 for <600 and am learning. In the meantime I am dumping all of my important mini dv tapes onto some big drives before I sell the GL2. I made a quick test DVD in iMovie/iDVD with the HF10 and it looks good, not sure if it is any better than the SD GL2, but then again, I have a lot to learn about the AVCHD game. I am sure I am doing something wrong. Either way I am getting a lot more home movies out of the deal, since my wife is a lot less intimidated by the HF-10.

iMovie transcodes AVCHD to AIC (Apple intermediate codec) and as Alan pointed out the results look good. All of the HD formats transcode well.

I transcoded a bunch of HDV to Prores422 and I couldn't see any difference at all in the video other then it took up more space. It certainly looked every bit as good as the original source footage. It did render a lot faster with slomo however and I didn't have to re-conform it before I compressed it for the web, which still saved time in spite of the time initially it took to transcode.

It's my understanding iMovie and FCP do this in realtime during ingest so in my mind transcoding is superior to native editing, at least "on paper" since one doesn't have to reconform at the end of the editing process.

I edit my Canon HG-10's AVCHD natively in Sony Vegas, which is something I found to be much more intuitive than changing the file type and editing in something like Adobe Premiere. This is primarily because at the end of the day, you are still required to output the video, so you're going to spend it changing the file type one way or another. I just merely stick with the AVCHD, and when I finish with the video in vegas, I render the file as either an HD .wmv file or an HD .avi file. It just feels easier than changing the file and loading it into Premier, only to output the final video once again to a file type that's compatible with internet uploading sites/DVD making programs.

I do the same with my HG10--edit the original AVCHD files in Vegas. If you have Vegas Pro, you can render in AVCHD and load the edited clip back on the camera as a quick and easy way to show the video on your tv.

you can edit original AVCHD files in the new cs4 premiere, but i bet vegas is a lot cheaper.

Thoughts on AVCHD vs HDV? Trying to narrow my options. Anyone think tape will soon be a thing of the past, like VHS was phased out?

AVCHD should have less macro blocking then HDV given it's compression scheme when it comes to footage with a lot of movement.

The issue with AVCHD is it's data rate. Most of your consumer AVCHD cams max out at 18 mbits and average way less then that. HDV is a constant 25 mbits which means way less data has to be interpolated.

I've seen some really good HDV footage out of the Canon and Sony prosumer HDV cams as well as the Canon HV series. It's a very mature scheme and all of the companies have good encoders.

The new Panny HMC150 AVCHD cam maxs out at 24 I believe, which is the max for the codec, and should provide a far superior picture to a comparably chipped HDV model.

Just for comparison Sony XDCam records a proprietary mpeg format at 35 mbits and Panasonic DVCPro HD (hvx200) is variable and maxs out at about 100mbits. Both of these are far superior to HDV but you won't find them on consumer cams.

I'd base that decision on workflow and whether you want to go to tape or solid state.