This should be a sticky as often as it gets asked, so I'm sorry for another of these threads but I searched the first 10 pages without finding anything.

I'm wondering what the best value camcorder on the market is? There's always that one item that filled a sweet spot. I would like something that uses a memory card, is HD and while I'm more worried about getting my best bang for the buck than the price itself though $400 give or take $100 would be nice.

I run a Mac if that helps at all and the last camcorder I purchased was a Sony Mini-DVD format so it's about time for an upgrade.

could you be a lil more spacific on what you want and waht you like to do. rather us just post
canon vixia series

I don't use one much, I just want it to be HD and use flash memory. Otherwise, it'll be a normal use sorta thing with a fair mix of in and outdoor and so on. This is just a general memory capturing camcorder as I don't use one a whole lot.

As I said, there should be some stickies for this topic and while I found some year old threads like these those aren't of much use to me now.

Look I don't mind doing some searching but if you all can give me some good value options I would really be thankful. I contribute on many forums with 1,000 plus post counts so I'm not being lazy here.

Life is going to be causing me to take some bigger than normal risks over the next year so I would like to make DVDs for my kids in the event something happens to me. I would guess 40-80 hours with so I want something that's simple, easy to get into my computer and burn copies of.

Any help would be really really nice!

I believe the Sanyo HD2000 fits your needs but maybe a bit above your budget range. It is HD and uses SDHC cards. The best part is that you can connect directly to an external HDD to save and view your videos easily without the need of a PC. The only major downside is the poor IS.
See my other comments in this thread which is somewhat similar http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1146015