[zeroice]

I finally got it!
As promised i will open a thread for all owners of such cams to exchange their experiences.

I never wrote a full review until now, so my findings will be short and to the point If anyone wants info about this camera, feel free to ask...i'll do my best to find time/test and answer back.

First impressions:
The camera is really well built, lays nicely in the hand probably due to the HDD enclosure. It feels better in the hand than a Panasonic SD9 for example. Built quality is good, feels solid...some may be put off by the "cheap" plastic caps for various jacks. The supplied battery BP807(?) was fully laden in ~2hrs.

Usage:
The HG20 turns on really fast, i would say in less than 2 seconds you are ready to shoot. There is no noise from the zoom rocker (as i read in some online review), the HDD is also very quiet. The LCD screen is big enough, the viewing angle and brightness probably not top of the line, but doesn't affect the job it's there for.

The menu system is very nice, the only downside of the whole thing in my opinion is the joystick. It moves well in all 4 directions, but when you press it...well...it's strange Sounds and feels almost archaic. No menu lag was noticed.

Video/Stills can be recorded to SD and HDD, selectable from the menu. A 2GB Class4 card holds 15min of FXP (17mbps) video...it's nice how the "Card Info" menu item identifies the SD card class and shows free space...progress bars are nicely animated, green Aqua-like.

Testing
Managed to shoot some clips in all modes (24p, 30p and 60i - i have the US model) and watched them on PC/CRT TV. No issues when watching 60i material on a PAL CRT, via a PS3. Just copied over the MTS file to an USB stick, plugged it into the PS3 (40GB), selected "Display All" and they played fine.

I haven't been able to test in optimal light conditions, partly because it's cloudy all the time but i noticed 24p and 30p modes are brighter than 60i. Haven't played much with the manual exposure and shutter settings yet...there's definately room for improvement. The cine mode has the lowest noise in dark environments though...

Frankly there is so much more to test around, i fiddled with it few times, tried all settings and basically forgot what i did and where i started Definately need more structure for future reviews

Still quality is not top of the line, the images are way worse than my Canon Ixus 800 IS...lots of noise in dark areas and the reds are almost taking over when using the flash. For a quick snapshot now and then it's good enough though. You can take pictures while filming, but not at full resolution.

Another nice feature is the quickstart/off mode which gets enabled when you close the LCD w/o turning the camera off. Kind of standby mode, much faster than a "cold start". This standby time is also selectable from the menus.

Hmm, any ideas for something I should test in particular?
Btw, battery life is around 1:20h, accurate to the minute indeed due to (original ) Canon intelligent batteries.

I will post a bit later on with impressions (oh yea, already have some major ones) of editing these MTS monsters on my dualcore machine

PS - Imagemixer 3SE v3 was bundled, supposedly not compatible with Vista x64. Nevertheless i installed it and got 2 bluescreens after the installation. Rebooted, everything fine now. Problem is:

- Imageviewer cannot open the MTS files, says format not supported
- cannot uninstall this d!@# software anymore!

Edit:
let me add some useful links related to this camera:

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/co...&modelid=17382
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...iew-35510.htm#
http://reviews.washingtonpost.com/pr...Canon/HG20.htm
http://www.trustedreviews.com/camcor.../Canon-HG20/p1
http://www.vimeo.com/videos/search:hg21
(HF11, HG20 and HG21 have the same opticals, AVCHD bitrates and performance...only storage medium differs)
http://www.reviewzine.com/canon-hg20...g-user-manual/

Forgot the most important thing: I am VERY happy with the camera, thrilled to test it out more and more...last, but not least, to learn about all its features to help me get the best video in a particular situation!

[zeroice]

Editing the MTS files ...so far mixed impressions.

I have a C2D E8200 Penryn @ 2.66
4GB RAM, Vista SP1 x64
500GB HDD SATA
BFG 8800GT w/latest drivers (CUDA works)

I tried Powerdirector 7 and Tmpgenc 4.0 express, both have CUDA accelerated effects and they work. Overall rendering though is far from realtime...not sluggish, but slow.

Without editing, i bought the Badaboom converter which achieves "insane" speeds (~45FPS) at converting to, say 1280x720. So for pure transcoding, this is the way to go.

Editing however is another story. I personally don't get why bundle some CUDA enabled effects which are rarely used (how many people blur or kaleidoscope their video?) instead of having the whole workflow GPU accelerated? Maybe future patches/products will take care of this.

Haven't tried Vegas 9 trial versions yet, they seem pretty "pro-like", probably with steep learning curves.

Now if i can figure out how to get rid of this Imagemixer software... it simply won't recognize the MTS files and on top of that won't uninstall either...
Later edit: it installs and works fine on x86 Vista SP1. So even if it installs on x64, don't get fooled by it It only works on x86

[zeroice]

Guys,
how do you recommend to do a simple editing -> remove some film parts? I want to preserve the original quality.

I import, say 1920x1080/60i...then remove cut/remove some scenes...how do i save this back with original quality without having to go re-encoding to whatever format/resolution/bitrate the software offers me?

Also, managed to remove Imagemixer the hard way...safe mode, delete files and search&remove registry entries.
Installed Vegas 9.0b trial version last night, will play with it some more today...i noticed there is no output in 1280x720 in the "Sony AVC" format, only 1440x1080 and 1920x1080

[zeroice]

I played more with Vegas 9.0b and i like it more and more.
Rendering times are bad though: for a 34sec 1080 sample, 2 transitions, 1 text overlay, output to WMV11 720p 6mpbs 2pass CBR you need around 5 minutes.

Badaboom does it in 32sec as a comparison, averaging 40FPS. No editing functions available though.

[senu]

Thanks for sharing your experiences, Much appreciated

I think that for now unless there is a plug in , you may have to use badaboom when editing isnt needed , and the likes of Vegas when it is
Simply leave things overnight
This is because a lot on numbercrunching is involved but be aware that Vegas is rerendering edited scenes then reencodong which are separate processes
Vegas is infact one of the least processor hungry Editing software on the market
Even with quad core
AVCHD editing and output is a work in progress, and to do it without reeencoding isnt yet possible. Even with mpeg2 "smart rendering" didnt happen for some time
Until not long ago there was no output to AVCHD as it was meant to be a delivery , not a working format. As for WMV HD Microsoft has not encourage any 3rd party codecs
The need to discourage the creation of HD material domestically seems to have been high on the agenda when the formats were developed

Having said that even going from DV AVI to mpeg2 using variable bitrate and 2 passes is often 0.25 - 0.5X real time, even with the likes of Canopus Procoder which is fast
This results in good quality though

As for specific tests.
It would be low light , fast Panning and say shooting fast moving objects Both in normal, and the P modes
and
AF speed in lower light with the Quick focus turned on and off
The other would be the Zoom control. How tactile is it?
Dont do the tests without actually enjoying to use the camcorder though

[zeroice]

i was really excited about Badaboom 1.1, but it seems it has a problem with my HG20 files

If i use the main profile, it crawls down to 0.5 FPS.
Baseline works ok, ~40FPS.

I contacted Badaboom about the issue, seems i'm not the only one with the same problem. On their forums some guy reported the same thing. He claims it was due to AC3 sound...

Tried the main profile with other material and it works fine.

[zeroice]

posted a nighttime comparison here.
feel free to comment, thanks

Canon HG20 night modes on Vimeo

PS - dished out for a CG-800 charger and a BP-827 battery should be here in a few days.

[zeroice]

reporting back on BP-827, awesome lifetime!
After the first full charge (all batteries charge faster with the CG-800 than in-camera) it reports ~289min :D

Playback time exactly 400min.
As far as the size goes, it's almost double the length of the original battery, meaning it's sticking out about 2.5cm out of the casing. Doesn't bother me as long as i can film more than 4.5hrs now.

[zeroice]

have you noticed that Windows 7 supports AVCHD playback out of the box?
very good quality and speed on my "not so hip anymore" notebook

make sure you copy the files locally, since there are still issues with playing over shares.