Managing AVCHD content (Panasonic HDC-HS9 related)

[BeyondTheGrave]

Hi I was wondering if someone could give me some advice or point me in the right direction here. Number points to keep it coherent!

1) I was transferring the software from our Panasonic HDC-HS9 onto a portable harddrive through iMovie '08 but was only able to rip and store the content as 1080i footage...I was under the impression the camcorder was able to record 1080p. As long as it looks good I don't mind, but was just curious...

2) The footage on the camcorder completely fills it's internal 60GB HDD, but on my external drive, it wasn't even 25% done and it was apparently over the 60GB mark already? Is it stored somewhat compressed on the camcorder?

3) Can anyone recommend better software then iMovie '08 to take the content from my camcorder and to later edit it? It's quite slow... I have been using iMovie because it's the only thing in the house that works with the camcorder (we misplaced whatever came with the camcorder...), but any recommendations for Windows would be ideal.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[marsh1966]

Hi, You really need a quad core pc system to edit avchd properly or it will take forever.
Ray

[A n d r e w]

Originally Posted by marsh1966

Hi, You really need a quad core pc system to edit avchd properly or it will take forever.

The situation is different on Macs - even my Mac mini Core 2 Duo will edit video from my SD9 without a hiccup, because . . .

Originally Posted by BeyondTheGrave

2) The footage on the camcorder completely fills it's internal 60GB HDD, but on my external drive, it wasn't even 25% done and it was apparently over the 60GB mark already?

. . . iMovie converts AVCHD video to an edit-friendly format using the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC). This process effectively decompresses the highly compressed AVCHD video, resulting in the much larger files you've seen. The solution here is, once you've finished editing your movie, to delete these converted, intermediate editing files from your harddrive, and to archive only the much smaller AVCHD files as stored on the HS9's harddrive.

Originally Posted by BeyondTheGrave

1) I was transferring the software from our Panasonic HDC-HS9 onto a portable harddrive through iMovie '08 but was only able to rip and store the content as 1080i footage...I was under the impression the camcorder was able to record 1080p. As long as it looks good I don't mind, but was just curious...

It has a 1080p25 mode, but unless you've gone into the menu and selected it, it'll be shooting in 1080i50. The progressive mode is of dubious merit anyway. If you're videoing anything that moves, stick with 1080i50 (the default mode).

Originally Posted by BeyondTheGrave

3) Can anyone recommend better software then iMovie '08 to take the content from my camcorder and to later edit it? It's quite slow...

It's slow while importing clips because of the conversion process taking place, as described above. My Mac is hardly the world's most highly-specced, but it still imports clips in around 1.5x real time (so a one minute clip takes about 90 seconds to import). PC editing programs which can handle AVHCD natively allow you to more or less just drag and drop the files, but then unless you have a ball-busting processor and graphics card, you'll find the editing process slow and unwieldy. With iMovie, once you've imported the clips, editing should be a breeze.

By the way, does your portable harddrive connect via USB or FireWire? A FireWire connection is faster.

Andrew.