Samsung SC-D382 MiniDV

Cheers to the reviewer that got this camera to work on Linux. I could not get it to work with iMovie and Samsung support told me why. This was the cheapest camera available at the time and when it arrived it seemed as though it fit the bill. The zoom was good and the picture in the camera was about what I would expect. It could do better in Low Light compared to other camcorders that I have had. It searched focus a lot and did not do very well with color and was very grainy but again - I did not expect much. However, there were a few glaring problems - the video output of the camera when you plug it into the TV was greenish for low light but acceptable for brightly light subjects. But the worst, it does not seem to use industry standards for DV out and will not work with Apple iMovie. A piece of my transcript with the Samsung rep: {me}:I know what codecs are, but which one does this camera need? what is it's video format? {support}: It uses AVI format and when the files a... Read more

I'm covering this camcorder in more detail on youtube with user "rofthorax", that's my account. I purchased this for about 179 dollars from Sams Club, and have had nothing but fun with it ever since. I've only had it for five days, but in this time I've connected via Firewire to my PC with an old Firewire IEEE 1394 card that had been collecting dust for almost a decade. Purchased a Firewire cable from Radio Shack, and have had a flawless integration between this camcorder and Ubuntu Linux (Free OS) Kino video editor(FreeVideo Capture and Editor utility, comparable to Movie Maker on XP). I was expecting to have a lot of trouble and looking around for drivers, but it worked the first time without a hitch. Some of the things I can do with this camera and Kino: 1. capture video to DV on the computer via firewire at ~3MB/sec, good enough for video editing. 2. control the DV cam via firewire with Kino, fast forward, rewind, step reverse/forward, shuttle controls, stop, pause, et... Read more