live input camcorder?

[Danny Hays]

You can capture live, without tape from most any firewire camera using Vegas.

[Jeff Scheetz]

Thanks danny! Any thughts on a good cheap hd firewire camera just for that purpose?

[Danny Hays]

Here’s a link to many HDV cameras you can use with a firewire capture program like Vegas. I’ve seen some laptop cameras that vegas sees.

[Jeff Scheetz]

I am probably an idiot Danny…. where was the link?

[Danny Hays]

Sorry Jeff, the link I was going to post had mostly non firewire cameras. Firewire cameras are getting harder to find with all the new HD memory on flash card cameras. In fact I was helping a friend buy a computer to edit his DV footage with and other than a few high dollar laptops, there were no computers with a firewire port at Best Buy so I had to buy a desktop and put a firewire card in it. My best suggestion is to get on Cragslist in you area and search for HDV cameras. A new HDV camera won’t be cheap. I wont buy any tape based cameras which all HDV cameras are since my Sony HVR-A1 ate a tape and cost alot to repair. I won’t put a tape in it anymore. I’ll use it live like you want to do. You may get lucky and find an HDV camera where the tape handler doesn’t work and will be cheap. All you need is the firewire port to work. The reason I suggest HDV and not DV is most HDV cameras have the ability to set it to downconvert and use it as a DV camera as well. If you dont need HD, search for DV cameras. Do you really need to capture live into Vegas? The reason I ask is I payed about $2000 for my Sony HVR-A1 about four years ago. I also just bought a Sony Vaio i7 laptop for just under $950 and a Panasonic HDCSDT750K HD camera that can capture 1080 60p if you want and it has a detachable 3D lens included. It captures Highly compressed AVCHD .mts files that need an i7 to edit smoothly. But both the camera and laptop together were less than my Sony HVR-A1 and that’s the entry level HDV camera from Sony. It’s still hard to find one of those under $2000. I’d hate to see someone pay that for an HDV camera when they could have bought what I did for less. The quality of the video from my Panasonic blows away the Sony and I have a super fast laptop with it for less than the Sony HDV camera alone.

Here’s the camera, which you could probably find for 750.
https://www.rythercamera.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=29983&gclid=CL_RzJC9vakCFcpR2godRniqgg

Here my laptop.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/750917-REG/Sony_VPCF13UFX_H_VAIO_F_VPCF13UFX_H_16_4.html

Good luck with what ever you decide