My daughters are both cheerleaders, and I do alot of videotaping of their competition routines. I currently have an SD quality Panasonic SDR H-18 that has decent quality.

I use Sony Vegas Pro to create the video's, and then burn them using Tsunami MPEG PRO.

We have a home theater now with a 120" screen, and I am really dissatisfied with the Sd quality videos. Unfortunately, I dont' have alot of $$$ right now!

I'm considering selling my current video camera on eBay (maybe get around 120.00) and buying either the Kodak Zi8 or the Sany Xacti which are both the compact, cheaper HD video cameras. I like the convenience of a hard drive camera, but it isn't a big deal to me.

Has anybody made the switch? Are you happy with the quality? I'm just concerned as mine are high-motion videos, but mostly in decent lighting.

I always use a tripod or monopod when recording- this makes a huge difference.

Just thought of an option- I have a Panasonic Lumix DMC TZ5 which is an amazing small camera; and the video is pretty good quality. The only problem with taking video with my camera is that the zoom is tricky. You have to zoom really slowly or it is very blurry. So I could possibly just stick with my camera to take the HD videos.