Newbie Question.

Hey everyone, sorry I am just a newbie... So any of you that want to
help thanks in advance!

I am looking for a average/low priced camera. I don't know anything
about cameras or editing software but I will need both. I only need
this camera to shoot some stand up comedy. I just need a cheap camera,
a tripod, and some kind of editing software. I will need this camera
to put the videos on my computer so I can edit them then publish them
online or burn them to a DVD (I already have the DVD burner on the
computer).

Can someone point me in the right direction?

I do not need anything special, just a chepo camera that will capture
video and then I can edit that video on my computer.

Richard Crowley...

There appears to be lots of mini-DV camcorders on eBay for <$200
("Buy-it-now"). Mini-DV tapes cost ~$5 for a 60-minute tape, and it
is easy to suck the video into your computer using Firewire and edit it
with someting like (free) MovieMaker, assuming you are running a recent
MSwindows computer(?)

You can take the edited DV video and easily (and without trans-coding
artifacts) convert it to either MPEG2 (for making DVDs) or to a web-
distribution format of your choice (WMV, Quicktime, RealVideo, Flash, etc.)

It would be very helpful for you to state...
1) Your camcorder budget
("average/low" could mean anything between $150 and $1500?)
2) What kind of computer you have
3) What operating system/vesion you are using

Remember that you should do something about audio beyond
trying to use the microphone built-into the camcorder. I would
not buy any camcorder that didn't have a mic-input jack for
this kind of application.

Thanks again!!