Vacation Camera

Just when I am about to purchase HD camcorder for use on vacation trips we have all these new formats AVCHD Dual Flash Memory and so on. What are the advantages and disadvantages? I do like the Ideal of not using tape and transferring to a laptop and start editing during some free time. But how is the quality of the video? And will these new formats work with FCP?

I believe FCP 6.03 can deal with AVCHD but no other version before that. You would just need to have a way to capture that clips from a memory card on your machine. If the camera has Firewire, then maybe a direct capture?

The quality is good but not GREAT! But if this is for personal use (family, etc() then the difference will never matter.

I would go for the Canon HV 20 or the new model HV30 (same picture just the color changed).

It is not a AVCHD but HDV, brilliant picture quality and you have still a lot of manual control that not every camera in this price class has (still cheaper than the new AVCH in the market).

And the tapes could be archived easily and working with transferred material will be less CPU intensive like working with AVCHD.

Negative Point:
Takes time to log everything onto your HD but I suppose if you do it really seriously, this is the least time...