Unlimited budget? Red One.

Healthy budget? Any from the Sony XDCam area.

Great budget? Sony HVR-Z1, HVR-Z5, Panasonic AG-HVX200, Canon XLH series, JVC GY-HM100.

Pro/Prosumer? Sony HDR-FX1000, Canon XHA1.

Consumer? Canon HV40.

Packet cam? Xacti whatever that is "HD".

As for computer specifications, if you stay with HDV, it will be less taxing than AVCHD, but the computer is only part of the equation. The video editor’s computing requirements will be identified by the video editor’s manufacturer.

I’ve been editing HDV for 4+ years on a G5 PPC Mac. A little on the slow side, but got the job done. I would not be able to edit AVCHD video on it because the editing applications require an Intel CPU for MTS files. iMovie ‘08 or newer of FinalCut 4 (Express or Pro) are fine – assuming the Intel CPU. There is no version of Windows XP + MovieMaker that can deal with HDV or AVCHD video. Only certain combinations of Vista + MovieMaker can. Sony Vegas and Adobe premier float to the top for the Windows/Vista HDV/AVCHD video editing environments.

If you go with HDV, that typically means miniDV tape in the consumer camcorder environment – so your comuter requires a firewire port. USB won’t deal with HDV (or DV). If you go with AVCHD/MTS, you willcopy the video files over USB, but the first step the editor needs to do is decompress the MTS video file.

MINIMUM suggested requirements are a:
=> multi-core CPU made in the last couple of years – newer/faster is better.
=> 4 gig RAM.
=> external drive for the video projects and the internal drive with the start-up operating system needs to have LOTS (50+ gig) of available drive space.

For more details, check the video editor manufacturer specs. You want to EXCEED them – by a lot… they are providing minimum requirements, only. That means NOTHING else is running and you are not impatient.

best quality by a mile is Mini-dv (tape) then media card then hdd then (VHS because mini-dvd doesn’t even come in) Mini-dvd. HDD and media card need the most resources IE high powered Computer to handle the highly compressed video. Quad core and minimum 8gb ram, fast HDD. so you need a 64bit OS you will then be ok to edit the video.

Tapes do not need such a high end computer you can use almost any fast Processor, ram at least 4gb but you could get away with less.

brands Sony, Canon, for Mini-dv Sony Canon, JVC for the others.

Little dog is right!!!!

Hope that helps

RR

Canon VIXIA HF200 HD Flash Memory Camcorder with 15x Optical Zoom

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001OI2Z2I?ie=UTF8&tag=yahanswer-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001OI2Z2I