About to buy Panasonic HDC-SD9: Advice on handling large AVCHD files

[Niksan]

I'm getting married soon and want to buy a Hi-Def camcorder to use during the wedding ceremony and honeymoon. I like to Panasonic HDC-SD9 but have some basic questions. Please accept my ignorance!

a) I understand that the HDC-SD9 records in AVCHD, which on conversion to AIC in IMovies 8 greatly increases the file size. The harddrive on my Macbook is only 120GB and a converted one-hour AVCHD video is likely to make a serious dent into this. What is the best way to handle this?

b) Should I use the disk utility to make a copy of the SD card and delete the files from the SD card? How do I ressurect this when I need to use the raw footage? Can I play directly from the Disk Copy?

c) Should I convert the large AIC file into another form to save it on my harddrive? What is the best format to reduce file size? How do I do this?

d) Ideally, we want to give our wedding guests a copy of the wedding footage on a standard def DVD. Can we use IDVD to make a DVD from the AIC file? How much footage can be stored on a normal DVD?

e) What programmes can be used to play the AVCHD file? Can I play it back on Quicktime 7.5.5?

Many thanks

[A n d r e w]

Might be worth having a look here, as similar questons have been asked before: Using a Mac and Panasonic HDC-SD9

Originally Posted by Niksan

a) I understand that the HDC-SD9 records in AVCHD, which on conversion to AIC in IMovies 8 greatly increases the file size. The harddrive on my Macbook is only 120GB and a converted one-hour AVCHD video is likely to make a serious dent into this. What is the best way to handle this?

Get yourself a nice big external hardddrive for storing your video, preferably one that connects using firewire, but if you're not editing video everyday then a USB harddrive should be fine for archival use.

b) Should I use the disk utility to make a copy of the SD card and delete the files from the SD card?

Yes. See the link above.

How do I ressurect this when I need to use the raw footage? Can I play directly from the Disk Copy?

Mounting the disk image and opening iMovie is all you need do to reaccess your unedited AVCHD clips, using the disk image method for archival.

c) Should I convert the large AIC file into another form to save it on my harddrive? What is the best format to reduce file size? How do I do this?

Once I've finished editing a movie, I delete the massive AIC files, keeping only the finished product: AIC video simply hogs too much space, and you have the unedited, raw AVCHD files archived as a disk image - just like keeping a tape in a box in the cupboard as an archive.

d) Ideally, we want to give our wedding guests a copy of the wedding footage on a standard def DVD. Can we use IDVD to make a DVD from the AIC file? How much footage can be stored on a normal DVD?

I find iDVD to be a very easy way of making DVDs using movies cut in iMovie, adding menus and music is pretty easy and there are plenty of themes to choose from.

e) What programmes can be used to play the AVCHD file? Can I play it back on Quicktime 7.5.5?

QT won't play the raw .mts AVCHD files. There are products about that will, such as VLC, but they're freeware and not necessarily the most user friendly pieces of software around.
Hope that helps.

[A n d r e w]

Originally Posted by Niksan

d) . . .How much footage can be stored on a normal DVD?

Forgot to answer this one: Up to two hours. See Apple's support page here: iDVD: How Much Video Can I Put on a DVD-R Disc?

Incidentally, in my post linked above, I mention that I've not used iDVD to author DVDs. This has since changed and I'm quite happy to recommend using iDVD. There are other authoring programmes for the Mac, such as Roxio Toast, which I don't have experience of, but they cost money and iDVD does the trick for me. After saving an HD copy of my edited movie, I export another copy as a DV Stream movie at full quality for importing to iDVD, as DVD supports only mpeg2 standard definition.

Good luck!

[Niksan]

Andrew,

Please forgive my ignorance. Could you explain the last sentance of your mesage: After saving an HD copy of my edited movie, I export another copy as a DV Stream movie at full quality for importing to iDVD, as DVD supports only mpeg2 standard definition.

Also, could you give me an idea of file sizes? How much space would one hour footage take up in the disk image, edited HD file and full quality SD for the DVD?

Thanks

[A n d r e w]

Originally Posted by Niksan

Could you explain the last sentance of your mesage: After saving an HD copy of my edited movie, I export another copy as a DV Stream movie at full quality for importing to iDVD, as DVD supports only mpeg2 standard definition.

DVD (as opposed to HD-DVD or Blu-ray) only supports standard definition mpeg2 video, not high definition AVCHD mpeg4. So when you've edited a movie that you want to burn to DVD, your output file needs to be in DV format.

Say you've edited your movie in iMovie '08. When you're done, to make a copy in standard definition for burning to DVD, follow these steps:

1. In the Share menu, select Export Using QuickTime.
2. In the "Save Exported File As ..." box that pops up, give your movie a name, and select Movie to QuickTime Movie in the Export box.
3. Click the Options button.
4. The Movie Settings box pops up. Click the Settings button.
5. Assuming your project is 50i or PAL, Select DV-Pal as your Compression Type, Frame Rate 25 or Current and select Best on the Quality slider (although to fit two hours of video on a DVD you might have to compromise on quality), Scan Mode Interlaced, and Aspect Ratio 16:9. Click OK.
6. Click the Size button in the Movie Settings box.
7. Select 1280 x 720 HD in the Dimensions box (counterintuitive but works for me - other options risk losing the correct 16:9 aspect ratio), and make sure Deinterlace Source Video is not selected (as this ensures better quality video when watching your DVD on a TV set). Click OK.
8. Click the Settings button in the Sound part of the Movie Settings Box. Select AAC as your Format at 48.000 KHz. Click OK.
9. Click OK on the Movie Settings box to close it.
10. Click Save in the Save exported file as ... box to begin the rendering process.

The end result is a file ready to be imported into an iDVD project.

Also, could you give me an idea of file sizes? How much space would one hour footage take up in the disk image, edited HD file and full quality SD for the DVD?

Too many variables here to provide a definitive answer. One hour of raw AVCHD saved as a disk image using the method outlined in the link above = 8GB. One hour of AVCHD converted to AIC = approximately 50GB. The size of a standard definition DV file for importing into an iDVD project will vary depending on the rendering quality you selected at step 5 above. The size of an edited HD movie will depend on what export settings / quality your select when exporting from iMovie, too, but will likely be in the region of 30GB per hour.

[seanski44]

Hi, I bought a Panasonic HDC-SD5 with the same aim.

Just to clarify something - people keep mentioning that DVD doesn't support HD. Well a DVD player won't support HD, but you can use DVD media to store HD. So, for instance, you can make a 'mini' BluRay with DVD media which will then play your AVCHD files in a BluRay or PS3 Player.

I have spent the last two weeks trying to find the ideal way to do this and the following website shows a great way to accomplish this (though fiddly it works)

Elura User - Canon Elura tips and tricks - Playing AVCHD video on a Blu-ray player

The bonus of this is that you can use existing cheap DVD media and you don't need a Bluray burner. You are, however limited to 4ish or 8ish Gigabytes in storage, though for AVCHD Camcorder files this should be enough to be going on with!

(Also, you can back up your AVCHD files to a data DVD and panasonic even have an optional DVD backup drive you can plug into your camcorder to use for this purpose)