I just bought a Canon HG10 which is a pretty nice consumer High Definition digital camcorder that records the video onto an internal hard drive.
What I did not think of, which I cant believe but it happens to all of us, is that HD camcorders record in AVCHD format which is ahead of its time right now. AVCHD stands for Advanced Video Codec High Definintion and it is basically a format that most High Def Camcorders have adopted to compress the files. The only problem there is just about no software that will make that video be viewable on your personal computer. As icing on the cake, if your main computer is Vista x64 (64 bit), you are really in trouble.
The Canon came with some junk from Corel that did not give me the options I wanted to edit my video. In fact, it would not even install on my 64 bit machine. I hear the only other option for Canon’s is the Pinnacle Suite but they have not ever been a recommendation by me. Just not what I am looking for. Ideally, I would want Adobe’s Premier Elements to work but it wont. I have heard there may be an update so I will keep looking.
My solution:
Good thing I have a brand new MacBook Pro with iLife 08. iMovie took the video off of my camera with no extra software, it just worked the first time. It looks like Apple’s Final Cut and Final Cut Express will also work. Ok, ok, I now see why the movie industry is still on Macs. So now I will import the movie files from the camcorder onto my mac and then transcode them into a format my 64 bit machine reads and then I can just pick and choose quite a bit of software that will work with the mpeg4 codec for example. I think I will go with Premier Elements 4.
Conclusion:
If you run any Windows X64 machine, forget about AVCHD for now unless you want to do what I do. If you own a 32 bit version of Windows, you might want to use the software your camcorder came with and then transcode the files into something else, and then move it to your favorite movie editing program. If you own a Mac, upgrade to iLife 08 and you should be good. For more advanced techniques, try our Final Cut Express. So what is my point in all this? The computer and software industry is still not ready for AVCHD, if you buy a High Definition Camcorder that uses AVCHD, prepare for your favorite video editor not to work and prepare to do some work to get your movie edited.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:09 am
[…] means you must be familiar with how to edit footage filmed with your HG10. Chief Geek found himself unprepared at first, but soon found that for his MacBook pro: “iMovie took the video off of my camera with no extra […]
January 24th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Hiya. I have an HG10 on trial here. I’m a MacBook Pro user. I guess from what you say above that iMovie will now recognise a source plugged into USB port rather than Firewire? This sure wasn’t the case last time I checked - but I’m now excited to get my HG10 up and running.
January 24th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
You got it ivan007, I just about freaked that the HG10 would not work with Windows but I transfer video to my MacBook Pro in iMovie 08 via USB with no problem
January 25th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
i have an HG10 and im using FCE4 with my mac book pro but the footage i imported wouldnt play smoothly. it shows me a message about dropped frames.. i guess my mac doesnt have inough processing power to manage larger amount of footage. i have 1.83 GHz intel core duo with 1GB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM. does anyone know whats the ideal configuration for editing? do i need to increase my memory to be able to edit without having dropped frames?
January 29th, 2008 at 3:31 am
I would suggest minimum of 2 GB or Ram these days for any kind of video editing and multitasking but I am not sure that will fix the issue. You could probably pick up a 2 GB kit for $50 from Crucial.com or outpost.com to try. Also, what software are you using to import the video on the Mac? iMovie 08?
January 29th, 2008 at 11:59 am
im using FCE4 for import but already in preview its kind of jumpy. i will definitely update my RAM to 2GB. i had a look at Crucial.com. its much cheaper than installing it in mac store which i was originally planning. but i wouldnt know how to put it in. bit scared to open up my mac book pro.. i dont want to mess anything..
thanks for reply..
January 29th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Installing Ram is easy. Apple even tells you how with illustrations…
MacBook Pro: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303491
MacBook: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303721
Good Luck!
January 30th, 2008 at 7:19 am
i didnt know is that easy. thanks for that!
February 17th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
For archiving is it possible to leave the footage in the AVCHD format and transfer to an external hard drive and import into imovie later? I’ve read that the apple codec needs 40 gig for 1 hour of footage while the files in AVHDC are about 8 gig per hour?
February 21st, 2008 at 11:23 am
as far as i know thats possible only with windows computers. they natively support AVCHD. with apple this is not possible yet..
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:16 am
correct me if im wrong..
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:28 am
vilajs - I would actually argue the opposite. New Macs with iLife 08 support AVCHD, if you buy a new Mac, it will work. There is nothing in Vista or XP that can read AVCHD that I know of, you will have to buy software to read the format.
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:36 am
Henry Welch - I don’t think so unless you have a pc too and format the drive in Fat32 so both computer can read it. Actually Im not really sure but my Canon HG10 came with a Windows only disc that will copy the raw AVCHD files to your computer so you can back them up or transcode them later. I don’t know if software like this exists for a Mac, if anyone knows, please let us know.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:48 am
i agree. you have to have a software like the one witch came with HG10 to have it stored on pc, but with macs you cant store it as AVCHD file. its compressed to Apple Intermediate Codec, thats why it takes much more space on your hard drive. or are you saying that new macs will play it as a AVCHD file?
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:13 pm
No Macs will not play the file that I know of. I was wrong about storing the files in a Mac. I think I found the directory where the file is stored, you can copy the file to your Mac to store them. Plug in the camcorder into your Mac, in the HG10, open the BDMV folder which is in a folder AVCHD, then stream. The files named .MTS are the video files I assume. One thing you cant do is import the file from your computer to iMovie that I know of. This means you have to move the file back to your camcorder and import the files that way. This is a way to store the file but pointless because you have to import the files to iMove eventually to view them.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Hi,
I had the same problem with my HF-100, that has the even newer 1080×1920 AVCHD format.
I use a tool called VoiltecHD (www.shedworkx.com) to transcode my files from the HF-100 to AVI or WMV format. These files can imported into Premiere Elements 4.0. It works just fine and you do not need a big machine to edit.
May 29th, 2008 at 12:28 am
I made the same mistake–acquired an HG10 thinking I would get ahead of the power curve, but not realizing just how far ahead of the power curve I would be getting.
My solution was Sony’s Vegas Studio Platinum (roughly $100). It reads the MTS files downloaded from the HG10 and transcodes them into any of a variety of (admittedly lower resolution) common A/V formats.
This works for me, because my actual application is to get hour-long videos onto my company’s internal network for viewing by employees.
May 29th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Oh, yeah, with regard to x64, Sony Vegas runs fine as a 32-bit app on Windows XP X64 (I have a Vista-free household).
July 30th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
If you have to transcode, you degrade the video.