So a friend of mine needs a DV camcorder for an online animation class. Thus far he's been making do with snapping photos with a digital camera mounted on a tripod, but it's adding some unwanted...jiggle to his work.

The course videos suggest a DV camcorder connected to a PC via FireWire and a program capable of grabbing frames from a DV stream. His machine has a FireWire port (in the front, no less!) and he plans on making do with the free MonkeyJam software for frame grabbing, but it's the camcorder that's got him confounded.

The school supplies a Canon HV40 to its on-campus students, which can record to DV tape or flash memory but costs upwards of $800, and recommends the Canon ZR960 (which only does DV tape) for those who can't afford the more expensive model.

So, are these recommendations about right for what he needs, or are there other options? What he needs is a digital camcorder he can frame-grab from, but he's not sure he wants to put up with the...inefficiencies of DV tape. For another thing, he's having trouble actually finding the ZR960 in-store anywhere...