This is prolly totally impossible to do, but anyway, i'll ask....i'm getting closer to buying an HDD HD Camera and editing on my laptop. However, my laptop only has a 100 Gb hard drive. My first question is, 1. Can you import video onto my laptop and then transfer onto the external drive w/o losing quality? and my second question is, 2. Can i actually edit videos off of the external drive or do i need to put the vids back onto my laptop and edit straight from there? Thanks

Trnsfers no problem.
Editing off the camera drive - no.

The consensus of film makers on this site is that hard drive cameras are best avoided.

Mini dv cameras, SD or HD are technically superior in every way.

I reccomend you get the tape equivalent - thay produce better output that is much easier to edit.

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I have two prejudices - I am anti HDV for consumer camcorders, and I eat mooks who claim to be pro wedding vidders and ask dumb questions.

www.zaskarfilms.com You tube channel 'zaskarfilms'
JVC DV5001e (big cam), Sony PC6E (tiny cam), Vinten pro5, PAG light, SM58, Sony ECM50, Sony C-76, 0.5x convertors for sony, Rode video mic, Vegas 7.

i know you can't edit off of the hard drive on the camera, i meant actually buying an external hard drive that holds like 350 Gb or somethin like that. is THAT possible?

I have been told that some Sony Cameras with Vegas 8 allows editing the footage in the camera in situ

You can capture to the PC and have the data sent straight to the external drive connected via the USB, thus saving using the laptop HDD