[liamt]

Hi peeps

just bought my first video camera - a Panasonic HDC-SD10.

im looking at doing some editing on friday so wanted some advice if possible.

i have a pretty decent PC (3ghz dual core, 4gb Ram, 400GB HD, Nvidia 8800GTX graphics card 768mb) so it should be enough to do some editing.

i have adobe cs3 master suite at my disposal but i have read that cs3 premiere cant do avchd natively. so i think i need a plugin maybe. although i have a feeling that the panasonic software that comes with the camera can import as a different filetype. im kinda new to HD so not familiar with the formats at the moment.

im also looking at writing the footage to DVD and BR media. the problem being in the UK all the BR media i have found is so expensive. has anyone got a good source of reliable BR media that wont break the bank?

just looking for some general tips if possible. thanks all!

[lurcher]

Have a look here for discs 7dayshop.com - Online Store

Julian

[liamt]

cheers mate, fair bit cheaper than i have found.

are there any issues to look out for on br-media? i have burned many DVDs and i know what brands i like and the disk quality - is BR the same? for example i know verbatim were the dogs nuts initially on dvd - but then they started making 1/2 their disks really cheaply and they became one of the worst for disk reliablity.

i take it most people just use the single layer disks? i ask as i plan to back up by blu-ray collection as i dont want the kids to scratch them. - are most movies single layer too?

[StevieBuck]

I bought my first pack of BD-Rs the other week off amazon. At just over £50 that's about a fiver per disk - without jewel cases of course as it's a cake pack.

Verbatim 43689 BD-R 4x 25GB 10pk Spindle: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

I've burned a couple of disks without any problems, and they've played back on my PC OK. I haven't tried them on my standalone player yet though.

[liamt]

cheers stevie

i am a little bit wary of verbatim after finding out they had 2 distinct quality of dvds, some of which were bloody terrible (the cmc disks - some of the worst dvd media available!)

[maxipax]

Hi,
What do you think to your Panasonic HDC-SD10, are you pleased with it?

[liamt]

the quality at night isnt brilliant but i guess its normal for a camcorder. in the daytime the quality is excellent. very sharp and clear - in fact better than plenty of DVDs i've seen!

the 1080 resolution keeps things nice and sharp too.

im not an expert though (my first camcorder) so dont take my word for it. as i say the only problem has been the fact that in poor light the quality is much worse than in daylight. but the footage taken in the daytime (not sunny btw - this was in wet wales at the weekend!) was amazing. me and the mrs were both stunned at the quality, both running via hdmi to my 42" TV and via the ps3.

[maxipax]

Hi,
Thanks for that, have you used it inside just with like house lights on etc, if so whats thta like? Have just ordered one but use it alot inside with the kids etc, so want it to take ok quality indoors..
thanks for taking the time to reply
regards
max

[liamt]

i used it inside my lounge, but the lighting in my house is mood lighting so its quite dark. quality wasnt brilliant under low light, but normal house lighting should be ok (i just use low level lighting everywhere - not main lights).

enjoy your new toy. i was amazed at how small and light they are!

[maxipax]

Hi,
Thanks for that, one more question if you dont mind. How long does the battery last when using it to film?
Mine should come tomorrow but not sure if I should have paid £200 more and got the sd200..
All the best
Max

[liamt]

the battery lasts about 2 hours. i bought a spare battery for £20 delivered too. the battery lasts enough to fill a 16 GB card (which also handles about 2 hours on the highest settings)

[maxipax]

Hi,
Where did you get the spare battery for £20 ??

thanks
max

[liamt]

i think the place was called batterymill i needed a euro converter though as it comes with american and euro plug on the charger, and it says you need to use their charger for that battery - not the panasonic one. i got an adapter from tesco for about 1£

[mmace]

what type of "dual core" do you have?
I had a 3Ghz dual core (pentium D) with 4Gb and it wasn't fast enough for AVCHD so I had to upgrade to a core i7

[liamt]

2.4 core2 duo running at 3ghz.

core2 duo is a much more powerful processor than a pentium d... which are quite old tech now. dont be fooled by ghz alone. the best analogy i can think of is that 3ghz is the speed you dig a hole, (hz being frequency) but that doesnt take into account the size of the shovel. pentium d shovel is maybe a hand trowel and a core 2 duo is a snow shovel. you still maybe shovel the same times per second but you move more stuff per shovel. ok, thats not a brilliant analogy but you get the idea. ghz should be banned now since amd and intel have changed the way the chips work.

edit: check this out. ive not read it all but confirms my thoughts:
http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php...2869&Itemid=81


i have done some editing in the panasonic import software and it did struggle fullscreen - but windowed it worked fine. plus i use a high resolution on my monitor so thats more intensive.

maybe also due to the graphics card - it cost me ~£300 when i got it - i think many people use on-board or crappy quality graphics cards for editing. my card was top of the line when i got it.

[aerofly2]

Originally Posted by liamt

i have a pretty decent PC (3ghz dual core, 4gb Ram, 400GB HD, Nvidia 8800GTX graphics card 768mb) so it should be enough to do some editing.

I hope you get good results with this setup, I have a new setup which includes:
Intel® Core™2 Quad Q9400 (4 X 2.66GHz)
Nvidea 9800GT

and it still struggles with the rendering

[liamt]

iirc quad core is useless at the moment, as hardly any apps can even use the 2 cores in core duo!

give it time. more and more s/w is being written for multiple core systems. but it doesnt natively support it properly unless its coded in. for example a 4 core processor is no better than a single core for many things, apart from maybe 1 core being used by the OS

what s/w are you using to edit? im going to be using adobe premiere cs3, which i think does use multi cores.

you should be able to overclock your quad core to 3ghz easily with no extra cooling. all intel chips can pretty much take at least 10-15% OC. but do research first... the quads might be different (ive not looked into pc tech much since i bought my system - even though im an IT manager lol)

that little bit extra can sometimes make ALL the difference in games and apps.

of course windows 32 bit can only ever use 3gig of RAM. you need 64 bit to use any more - even though windows tells you it can handle 4gigs. there is a switch you can do to get it to use the 3gig too... as that (iirc) isnt used by default! bloody M$ eh!

what OS do you use btw? im on vista ultimate at the mo, but might go windows 7 64 bit when its out. the release candidate seems pretty good as im using it on a VM at work.

[mmace]

Originally Posted by liamt

core2 duo is a much more powerful processor than a pentium d... which are quite old tech now. dont be fooled by ghz alone. the best analogy i can think of is that 3ghz is the speed you dig a hole, (hz being frequency) but that doesnt take into account the size of the shovel. pentium d shovel is maybe a hand trowel and a core 2 duo is a snow shovel. you still maybe shovel the same times per second but you move more stuff per shovel. ok, thats not a brilliant analogy but you get the idea. ghz should be banned now since amd and intel have changed the way the chips work.

I know all this mate, that's why I asked because all you said was that it was 3ghz dual core which could have meant Pentium D, Core2Duo or AMD. I still think you'll struggle with what you have though

[mmace]

Originally Posted by liamt

iirc quad core is useless at the moment, as hardly any apps can even use the 2 cores in core duo!

got to disagree with you there, most pieces of software I use (for video) use all 8 threads of my quad core i7 (I use CS4 btw)

I really think you will struggle with your Core2Duo

[liamt]

yeah - i think cs3 is limited. on the adobe forums they are all banging on about it only using 1 core at 100% and the second on 20%.

to be honest i have lost faith in adobe. the only product i like it photoshop - i use it ever day at work everything else seems to not work as it should, and they refuse to acknowledge many bugs too! . this includes prem cs3 that cant handle quite a few HD formats, or so i have read. i need to have a play tomorrow and will report back. as i say i have edited HD content in the little panasonic app and that worked fine windowed, but jittered in fullscreen. but have not had time to play with premiere yet.

[ptr1aa]

More cores is better for video editing , and most modern programs will fully use the cpu , just patch it to latest version and you will see , other things you can do to speed up things is update your graphic card drivers , Nvidia and Ati made some plugins for adobe to use the video card processing power.
On Nvidia is called CUDA and on Ati is called Stream , Nvidia's solution is better and can help speed up things A LOT when you use some filters.
Things can get even better , at this stage the programing for using the video card is still basic , well is very complicated to make but basic in what it can do to help CPU tasks , down the road and with the launch of DX11 cards we will see adobe and other video/photo editing software be much much faster , 20-30 times faster when using the video card.
For now updating your software to latest versions is the best thing you can do , and of course overclocking but here depends on the cooling you have and motherboard and experience .

[liamt]

cheers mate, i knew modern GPUs can do a lot of processing, i didnt know there was a way of using this in vid editing. i will look into this.

anyone know how to edit m2ts files in premiere cs3? i tried on friday and nothing was supported