AVCHD Question + Camcorder advice

[CasDon]

I'm in the market for a new camcorder to record my wife's graduation & sister in laws wedding.

While I'm not set on High Def the "future" proofing part of me is seriously considering it as I already have HD equipment at home .. however the PC isn't up to editing HD and I'm not really keen on upgrading it.

So to my question, do all High Def Camcorders only record in AVCHD or can you set them to record in MP3/MP4?

After this I've targeted 2 camcorders I like the look of

Panasonic HDC-SD9
Sony HDRXR105E

While the Panny is much cheaper, once i add on a spare battery to give my 4 hours recording time (needed for the sister-in-laws wedding) and another SD decent high capacity SD card I'm approaching £470

Where as the Sony is £522 but there is £50 cashback from Sony up until the end of August bringing it down to £470, as the sony already has a 6hr battery life and 80GB HDD there's no extras so I'm in two minds

However if the answer to my question is a no then I may well drop back to a Standard Def camcorder for Sub £300 such as the sony 57E

[mmace]

Originally Posted by CasDon

So to my question, do all High Def Camcorders only record in AVCHD or can you set them to record in MP3/MP4?

mp3 is a container for audio (mpeg 2 layer 3)

mp4 is just a container too and contain more than one codec and many forms of a codec

you can get 2 main HD camcorders, one does HDV onto mini DV tapes (easier to edit, uses MPEG2 codec), the other is AVCHD (h264 codec) which can be in a variety of containers like m2ts, mts, mov, mp4 etc. AVCHD requires a more powerful PC to edit (top end quad core or i7)

[CasDon]

Originally Posted by mmace

mp3 is a container for audio (mpeg 2 layer 3)

mp4 is just a container too and contain more than one codec and many forms of a codec

you can get 2 main HD camcorders, one does HDV onto mini DV tapes (easier to edit, uses MPEG2 codec), the other is AVCHD (h264 codec) which can be in a variety of containers like m2ts, mts, mov, mp4 etc. AVCHD requires a more powerful PC to edit (top end quad core or i7)

Thanks, so do the HD Camcorders also support encoding into MPEG2 format, hence allowing a creaking old Duo Core HT processor to deal with them?

[mmace]

I had no problem editing HDV on my old Pentium D (dual core before Core2Duo came out) and just about managed AVCHD but took some time to do simple stuff

the AVCHD camcorders don't encode MPEG2 in HD, only HDV camera's use MPEG2

[MarkNorton1]

Dont want to hijack the thread but my question is on a similar basis, I have the Canon HG20 and have just started using sony vegas pro 8 to edit our wedding video, as i am very new to this i was wondering which format is best to render to, have tried it once so far to a .mxf file which plays back quite well using the VLC media player, however when the camera is panning across a scene it seems a little juddery, is that down to the camcorders ability or just the frames per second that i have chose to render at?

Hope this makes sense, once i have the best rendered version i want to be able to burn to a DVD to play through normal dvd players or my ps3? is this possible, I dont have a bluray burner yet so need to make do until then, and even so how much quality will i loose just using normal dvds?

Thanks for any help you guys can give.

[Ikki]

Mark, I have an HG10 and it can look juddery on pans too. I think that it's because the camera has a CMOS sensor and what you are seeing is called the rolling shutter effect. There is not a lot that can be done other than pan slower.

I run the camera in 25p mode because I found that I was seeing interlacing artifacts, little comb like lines appearing along edges when objects move or you pan in interlaced mode. Using 25P mode certainly cures that issue. I have seen it written that the slower frame rate (compared to the default 50i) can have negative effects but it hasn't been too much of a problem, even with fast moving subjects like skiiers.

The best thing is to try out all the modes and see what works best for you.

[CasDon]

Hey I'm quite happy for the thread to be hijacked if it tells me whether I should go for a mid priced HD (AVCHD) camcorder or a blooming cheap MiniDV.

I can upgrade my RAM on the PC to 4 or potentially 8GB & have been looking at bigger HDD's

However the concern is that it is only a 3Ghz HT Pentium - I don't want to invest in a HD camcorder only to find I can't edit the footage together

Plus it does concern me that all the comments I've seen actually say that SD/HDD High def camcorders don't keep the quality in the transfer to PC & editing the way the AVI files do from MiniDV

OOhh what to do

[Ikki]

Simply transferring data from the camcorder to the PC doesn't affect quality in any way.

4GB of RAM is plenty but a 32 bit OS can't use any more than about 3.5GB, so you should either stick with a 32 bit OS and 3GB max or upgrade to a 64 bit OS if using more RAM. I have found that rendering is definitely faster on a 64 bit OS.

I found a single core processor to be inadequate for editing/processing AVCHD. A quad core set-up will do the job nicely and shouldn't cost too much to upgrade to.

While DV has plus points it's old technology and being phased out now. Nearly all HD camcorders use AVCHD these days. You can easily convert AVCHD to mpeg2 for easier editing on a lower powered system without noticeable quality loss if needed.

[CasDon]

Thanks guys,

So it looks like I have a couple of choices.

1) Buy HD camcorder, upgrade PC - that's out can't afford that at present nor justify it.
2) Buy bargain basement MiniDV while they are still around and go on as before
3) Buy HD Camcorder and convert to MPEG2 to edit.

On this last point on a 3GHz HT process how long is it likely to take to chunter through a few hours of video to convert?
And are there any decent freeware conversion programs?

[Ikki]

I don't know how long it will take to convert from AVCHD to mpeg2 but WinFF is free and simple to use.

WinFF - Free Video Converter

[CasDon]

Thanks for the pointer chaps.

I think the next stage will be to try to get some AVCHD footage and try converting it using one of the programs you've pointed me too

I also may try borrowing one of works Sony 55SE's and see what the footage is like from them compared to my old MiniDV

[A n d r e w]

Both the camcorders you mention in your original post have very small sensors - the Sony has the larger of the two, but only just. Given that your planning on shooting indoors in situations where you can't control the lighting (wedding, graduation), I strongly recommend buying something with a larger sensor - 1/4-inch minimum, preferably larger (some of the Canons have sensors around the 1/3-inch mark). The larger the sensor, the sharper the image indoors. The smaller the sensor, the more noticeably grainy the picture becomes indoors.

[CasDon]

Originally Posted by A n d r e w

Both the camcorders you mention in your original post have very small sensors - the Sony has the larger of the two, but only just. Given that your planning on shooting indoors in situations where you can't control the lighting (wedding, graduation), I strongly recommend buying something with a larger sensor - 1/4-inch minimum, preferably larger (some of the Canons have sensors around the 1/3-inch mark). The larger the sensor, the sharper the image indoors. The smaller the sensor, the more noticeably grainy the picture becomes indoors.

Thanks Andrew - TBH I'm struggling to know what to get, didn't really want to go with Sony as my current one - which is faulty once more has been repaired twice under warranty

I'll take a look at some of the canon's

Cheers