I am not sure this is the right place to put this, but here we go anyway.

My husband and I are looking for an inexpensive HD camera for personal use. We looked at the Sony DCR-SR40 and it seems cool, but nowhere can I find what format the video files are. I see reviews about how great it is to use and easy on a PC, but we would edit on a Mac. Does anyone have some more information on this for me?

Thanks!

The SR40 isn't a High Definition camcorder. You might be confused in that it's an HDD/Hard Disk Drive camcorder, but isn't HD. You'd be best off looking at the Sony HC3, UX1, or SR1 camcorders, JVC and Canon also offer some great small/low cost cams. I have a Canon HV10, and outside of action sports, it's a great camcorder as well.

I meant HDD. (Preggo brain)

Thanks for the reply.

We found some reviews on the Sony and they are not that great. Sigh.

So you're looking for an HDD camcorder? Or an HD camcorder? (then there is always the HD-HDD camcorder, if that doesn't confuse you enough?)

You're going to be hard pressed to find any small SD camcorder worth a darn, IMO. SD as an acquisition format is essentially dead, and if what you'll be working with needs to have any kind of a shelf life, you definitely want to be doing HD, IMO. Even cheap HD is somewhat better than many mid-high value SD cams.

I have the Sony DCR-SR82. Its the older model, the newer one is SR85. They are both the same I checked the specs, only difference is the look of the camera.

Anyways, It the format of the camcorder is in the MPEG, not sure on which kind of MPEG. On my PC it works great! (I used to use my PC with Vegas) It works just like an external hard drive for your computer. But on my Mac which is what I use now and I run Final Cut Express. FCE can't read the files to log and transfer, it claims its not a video file. Same thing when you try Quicktime. So I have to use iMovie to upload them, and then FCE can read the file, you have to search where ever you saved the clip.

The only problem with this, FCE won't play the file back at original widescreen, it squeezes video. But iMovie plays it back just fine. There is a couple of ways to fix the problem. Get Quicktime Pro, then when you export you can go to preferences and change the resolution. Problem with that, Quicktime Pro costs $30. I found another way to fix it, I went to apple.com and found a little program they have thats freeware called MPEG Streamclip. It will do the same thing and its free.