A colleague in education brought one of these into our office and asked me to give a few pointers in how to use it. I was unsure what the file format was in which it saved so I plugged in the USB cable to the laptop (Windows Vista) and it immediately saw the camera as an external drive. I was able to copy the video files across into a folder on the hard drive and in less than a couple of minutes I was ready for editing.

First stop... Windows Movie Maker for Vista. Create a collection and then import media... Because the files were not immediately displayed I changed the file type to All Files... At that point I was able to select the media files and import them into the movie maker collection.

I have to confess I was surprised... I have tried Disk Drive cameras before but found the files types required propriatary software that excluded software like Movie Maker. This was all so easy and took away the time normally needed for tape capture. Suddenly filming and editing in a 1 hour lesson looks like a real possibility.

Armed with this information FfL purchased our own JVC Everio Hard Disk Camcorder to experiment with so we can report back to you.

The camera is light and easy to handle with a nice bright 16:9 wide screen LCD display. Setup is relatively easy through a MENU button and a little joystick by the side of the screen. Default or factory setting for the video capture quality is 'Fine'. There are four settings 'Ultra Fine' (The setting I immediately chose!), Fine, Normal and Economy.

So with a charged battery and camera in hand I went around the school shooting various scenes and returned to my office within the hour to hit a brick wall (a metaphorical one!).

I copied the source files across in the same way as before, imported them into collections, but when I came to edit them they would not play or preview. I compared the file extensions to the previous imports and found they were the same... After further investigation I found that Everio camcorders record video using a .MOD extension this is in fact an Mpeg2 standard readable by almost any laptop with a DVD drive built in. My problem was created when I changed the setting to Ultra Fine... I did a test capture in Fine and also in Normal. Fine still caused some issues but Normal recording was easily handled by Movie Maker.

If the package you are using won't import .MOD files you can change the file extension to .MPEG and try importing again. SInce it is an older file format I suspect most packages will be able to handle them. Please let me know of your packages and import experiences. For now I am delighted with the results in Movie Maker. You can see an example of a film made in LOW LIGHT conditions in the FfL Theatre - Magnesium Reaction in Hydrochloric Acid. As I run some more tests I will add them to this thread.

I was less impressed with the resolution of the stills camera built into the device but it would be fine or better for stop motion animations. If you are taking photos for news stories or publicity purposes then stick to something greater than 5 megapixels these stills fail to inspire. I will post a full list of features and ratings that relate to this camera shortly. But, in the interim, you won't go far wrong by purchasing one of these cameras for your classroom. Cost of our 30Gb Hard Disk camcorder... £230 plus VAT...