Camcorders

[Cyberus]

I have never owned a camcorder before, and of course to ask questions on one I should perhaps track down some camcorder forums, but you guys are always so helpful . And I'm guessing a fair few of you are into film.

I'm basically wondering what format I should get - I'd like to avoid tapes altogether, and just do editing on a computer, or on the fly on the camcorder. Something that will allow me to burn short films to DVD would be perfect. I understand that there are some cameras that encode in MPEG format, and that there are cameras that use memory sticks etc, but these are among the most expensive ~1000 GBP / 1500 Euro/USD

I'm basically going travelling in the next few weeks, and wanted to document my travels, with a mixture of footage of places I vist and little mini interviews with my friends abroad and commentary from me.

Can anyone give any advice. Thanks in advance.

[odin]

I think most modern digital photocameras can make MPEG video's in 640*480 with sound. You'd have to fork out some serious cash would you want to record any longer clips (seeing the prices of 512mb flashmem cards).

[whabang]

A cheap DV-cam would prolly be the best in price/performance ratio, however, you might need some serious CPU-power to edit the films.