First Off this Camera Is not State of the Art (maybe in 2002-2003 but not in 2007), but still it is a good value. Not only is it a Firewire DV camera that works with my Mac (iMovie) it offers a Digital Camera (8mb SDcard) and it can be used in reversed fashion to convert Analog signals (Composite & SVIDEO) to Digital. The video Features are ok and nothing to write home about. For a student this is a good camera to start off with. Well hope that helps.