Part 1: What are Camcorder video files?
For casual use, digital camcorders often cover weddings, birthdays, graduation ceremonies, children growing up, and other personal events. HD digital camcorders from Sony, Panasonic, Canon, GoPro, Kodak, Flip is known as its exceptional image quality and flexibility, with them camcorders, you can experience superb digital life.
Digital Camcorders format follows:
MiniDV (1995): Smaller version of the DV standard was released by Sony, which became the most widespread standard-definition digital camcorder technology for several years, and was the format which made capturing footage via the 4 pin DV socket to your computer easy for video editing.
DVD (1995): Uses either Mini DVD-R or DVD-RAM. This is a multi-manufacturer standard that uses 8 cm DVDs for 30 minutes of video. DVD-R can be played on consumer DVD players but cannot be added to or recorded over once finalized for viewing. DVD-RAM can be added to and/or recorded over, but cannot be played on many consumer DVD players, and costs a lot more than other types of DVD recordable media. The DVD-RW is another option allowing the user to re-record, but only records sequentially and must be finalized for viewing. The discs do cost more than the DVD-R format, which only records once. DVDs are also very vulnerable to scratches. DVD camcorders are generally not designed to connect to computers for editing purposes, though some high-end DVD units do record surround sound, a feature not standard with DV equipment.
DV (1996): Sony debuted the DV format tape with DVCAM being professional and DVCPRO being a Panasonic variant.
D-VHS (1998): JVC debuted the digital standard of VHS tape and which supported 1080p HD. Many units also supported IEEE1394 recording.
Digital8 (1999): Uses Hi8 tapes (Sony is the only company currently producing D8 camcorders, though Hitachi once also did). Most, but not all models of Digital 8 cameras have the ability to read older Video8 and Hi8 analog format tapes. The format's technical specifications are of the same quality as MiniDV (both use the same DV codec), and although no professional-level Digital8 equipment exists, D8 has been used to make TV and movie productions (example: Hall of Mirrors).
MICROMV (2001): Uses a matchbox-sized cassette. Sony was the only electronics manufacturer for this format, and editing software was proprietary to Sony and only available on Microsoft Windows; however, open source programmers did manage to create capture software for Linux [1]. The hardware is no longer in production, though tapes are still available through Sony.
Blu-ray Disc (2003): Presently, Hitachi is the only manufacturer of Blu-ray Disc camcorders.
HDV (2004): Records up to an hour of HDTV MPEG-2 signal roughly equal to broadcast quality HD on a standard MiniDV cassette.
MPEG-2 codec based format, which records MPEG-2 program stream or MPEG-2 transport stream to various kinds of tapeless media (hard disks, solid-state memory, etc). Used both for standard definition (JVC, Panasonic) and high definition (JVC) recording.
H.264, shorthand term for compressed video using the H.264 codec that is part of the MPEG-4 standard in an MPEG-4 file most often stored to tapeless media.
AVCHD, a format that puts H.264 video into a transport stream file format. The video is compressed according to the MPEG-4 AVC (aka H.264) format, but the file format is not MPEG-4.
Multiview Video Coding is an amendment to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video compression standard for sequences captured simultaneously from multiple cameras using a single video stream. An MVC stream is backward compatible with H.264/AVC, which allows older devices and software to decode stereoscopic video streams, ignoring additional information for the second view. Multiview video contains a large amount of inter-view statistical dependencies therefore combined temporal and inter-view prediction is the key for efficient MVC encoding. A frame from a certain camera can be predicted not only from temporally related frames from the same camera, but also from the frames of neighboring cameras. These interdependencies can be used for efficient prediction.
Part 2. How to play Camcorder video files on Mac?
You can use MPlayer OS X or VLC Media Player to play Camcorder video files on Mac. They are all free.
Part 3. How to convert Camcorder video to MOV, MP4, WMV, MPG, AVI on Mac?
You need a Mac Camcorder Video Converter to convert camcorder video to MOV, MP4, FLV, WMV, AVI, etc. on Mac OS X (including Snow Leopard). Then you can import them to imovie, final cut pro, final cut express for editing, also can put them on iPod, iPhone, PSP, Xbox 360, other potable players.
Step 1: Download Camcorder Video Converter
Video Converter for Mac which can convert Camcorder video to MP4, Camcorder video to MOV, Camcorder video to AVI perfectly. This Mac Camcorder video Converter also can extract audio from Camcorder video and Convert to MP3, AAC, M4A, etc. Compared with other video converters, this provides you with better output quality, more advanced functions and higher conversion speed.
Step 2: Set the output format and location
Load the Camcorder video you want to convert and choose the output format from the drop-down list of profile "Format". Hit the button "Browse" to select the saving place from your Mac.
Step 3: Start the Camcorder video conversion
Click the "Convert" button to start the Camcorder video conversion on Mac and then you can just go out for a walk or take a nap, and the conversion may have been finished when you come back.
If you want, you can Camcorder video to MOV, convert Camcorder video to MP4 on mac, convert Camcorder video to 3GP on mac, convert Camcorder video to DIVX on mac, convert Camcorder video to WMV on mac, convert Camcorder video to M4V on mac, import Camcorder video to iMovie, import Camcorder video to FCE, import Camcorder video to FCP.