Canon HG10 - is it the right camera

[Goldenchris]

To make things brief.

I am looking to create my personal movies, couple of minutes long, mainly pieces to camera.

I have been researching and believe the canon HG10 to be suitable in terms of price and quality/features etc.

My PC however is a fairly old AMD athalon 3000+ with 1.8ghz and about 1.25 gig of ram. plenty of HD as have a TB.

so would like some advice if possile.

1) is it possible to set up the camera to my PC so that I can see myself on screen to check the setup/framing etc is all ok?

2) having such an old PC, let alone not being a Mac... will I be spending money on camcorder to find I can't actually do what i want with editing and creating a product?

3) if the above are all negative, does anybody have any better ideas?

Thank you in advance, All responces welcomed. Chris.

[alpine101]

Like most LCD camcorders, the HG10 LCD turns round so you can view the shot from the front of the camcorder. But I do not think the AV o/p operates except in playback. You'd have to have an AV input on your PC of course, not via the USB port.
You would have probably to transcode the AVCHD to a simpler format to edit reasonably with your PC. Like many others, I use a 3GHz Q6600 for editing.
Do a search here for more about transcoding.

[senu]

Originally Posted by alpine101

Like most LCD camcorders, the HG10 LCD turns round so you can view the shot from the front of the camcorder. But I do not think the AV o/p operates except in playback. You'd have to have an AV input on your PC of course, not via the USB port.

Very True

You would have probably to transcode the AVCHD to a simpler format to edit reasonably with your PC. Like many others,

Make that definitely
An AMD 3000 will struggle Im afraid

I use a 3GHz Q6600 for editing.

Is this an over clocked 2.6 ( Q6600)?
PS the HG 10 is nice
I used it for 8 week and have a few hrs of footage Im impressed with
It was one of the first to impress me that AVCHD was a good enough to give HDV a run for its money for HD quality in a consumer camcorder
The AVC in Blu Rays is ace

[alpine101]

Originally Posted by senu

Is this an over clocked 2.6 ( Q6600)?
PS the HG 10 is nice
I used it for 8 week and have a few hrs of footage Im impressed with
It was one of the first to impress me that AVCHD was a good enough to give HDV a run for its money for HD quality in a consumer camcorder
The AVC in Blu Rays is ace

Yes, Asus P5K M/B, with the CPU upped a little to 3.01GHz with no issues. I did push it further, but the fan started getting too loud during renders...
Mind you, these days I use remote desktop connection to this PC from my nice cosy fireside laptop except when I really need to see what's going on video-wise , so I suppose the noise doesn't actually matter.