Rather than destroy a perfectly good remote, I've used a PIC microcontroller before to record the button sequences that I care about from a remote (start/stop, zoom, etc) and store them in memory. Then it's a very simple matter of playing them back for the camera at the appropriate time. If you're good with surface mount, you can make very small boards less than one inch square that will do everything you need - reed switches, debounce, etc. If you use through hole parts, you can still get them very small. Power with a button cell, or steal power from the camera - if you write the code correctly, the button cell will last for years, as the power consumption is so low on the low end PICs. Cost will be well under $5, other than the housing, but you can fit it into ANY camcorder housing's leftover space.
No complicated processing needed - just record and playback the IR code verbatim.
