Hi there,

I hope you can help.

We are a small primary school looking to purchase a good quality digital camcorder to record our schools special event, mainly things like Christmas plays our the children.

At present we use a friend to record and burn to DVD so parents can buy a copy, but this has be started to get expensive.
It will be more cost effective to invest in some hardware to shoot.

Can anyone offer advise on equipment that is easy to use, produces good quality sound and video but not too expensive, below £1000.
Someone will be used to take important footage for special events, but the rest of the time teachers will also need to use just basic features.

We also have a local copy that can duplicate our final DVD; we will just need to edit it.

If anyone can make any recommendations, it would be much appreciated.
Please let me know if there are any questions needed to get further advice.

Thanks,

Simon

Recommending a camcorder can be difficult. Try looking through the following review page and see if it helps you narrow things down a bit.

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...elect-2005.htm

As far as software goes it all depends on how complex you want to get. If you just need simple editing you already have the software you need if you run XP in Windows Movie Maker. Failing that you could have a look at Premiere Elements 2 which is fairly cheap and gives great results.

OT a bit but given that it is no longer acceptable for parents to takes pictures and home movies of their kids in school performances (obviously because we're all considered to be complete perverts) then how do you as the school get away with it?

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I'm not young enough to know everything!

They make the rules

That's a very interesting point you bring up Alan about what you can shoot and what you cannot shoot today. A few weeks ago I was shooting from a public road and a guy who owned a property just off that road came out and asked me what I was doing. There was an old cathedral in the distance and you need to be about 2 miles away from it to get in the surrounding area. Anyway this guy questioned me up and down about who I was and why was I taking pictures of his 'industrial units'. I told him I wasn't taking pictures of his premises directly and it was the cathedral in the distance. He hung around until I left. Also back in August I and others were at a music concert and yes there were youngsters there playing instruments and all of us including parents were either asked to leave or told to put the cameras away. Once someone sees you with a camera it seems they automatically assume you are either a spy or a pervert who wants to abuse their children. I'm not a police officer or solicitor but I think I can say the kind of people who are arrested and prosecuted for these offences are already known to the children. They have access to them and have gained their trust, compare that to a complete stranger. It appears that everyone now needs to be asked if it is alright to be videoed whether they are 5 or 105... it is just getting out of hand.

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Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

Let's not turn this into a political discussion - it could go round for ever without reaching a conclusion.

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