Which product would meet my needs?

[William Fleming]

I'm not sure where to post this inquiry as the General Discussion forum seems to be locked.

I record continuously for 2-3 hours on a Canon HG10 with 40 GB hard drive, usually in 2 sections of 1-2 hours each. I then need to be able to distribute, entirely unedited, one or other complete sections of the recording to colleagues for them to play ether on PC or TV (via DVD). The most convenient way to distribute the material for PC would be on a flash drive stick. I can copy directly from camcorder to DVD player/recorder, but the resulting quality is degraded. My computer has 1BG of RAM and a DVD player/recorder. I also have a Samsung DVD player/recorder. Which software package do I need to meet these needs?

The software which comes with the camcorder will only download 2GB files from the camcorder and I don't know how to 'reconnect' the segment files this leaves me with. Will the full version of this software rectify this problem. On playback in the PC I and my colleagues need to be able to fast forward etc, but these controls are greyed out in the version of the software with the camera. Does the full version rectify this problem?

[DVDDoug]

For most people who have a video camera, Video Studio is the best choice.

For people who mostly make DVDs from captured broadcasts, Movie Factory is usually the best choice.

There is a lot of overlap, so I suggest you download the trial versions.

I record continuously for 2-3 hours on a Canon HG10 with 40 GB hard drive,

Some people are having trouble with the files from Sony HD cameras, so make sure to try the trial versions.

...entirely unedited, one or other complete sections of the recording to colleagues for them to play ether on PC or TV (via DVD).

Video Studio is mainly a video editor that can also author & burn DVDs. It can also save your file in a variety of formats.

Movie Factory is a DVD authoring program that can do some editing.

The most convenient way to distribute the material for PC would be on a flash drive stick.

Video Studio should be able to do that.... But, since you are not editing the files, you shouldn't even need a video editor (except for the 2GB problem, or i fyo uwant to convert the format). Depending on the playing-time, HD files can be huge. And, you need to make sure that every user's computer can playback the video format.

I can copy directly from camcorder to DVD player/recorder, but the resulting quality is degraded.

A standard DVD is not High Definition, like your camera. If you need to preserve the full HD quality, you need to make Blu-Ray discs, and all of your viewers will need Blu-Ray players.

For the best standard DVD quality, use a high bitrate. (A bitrate of 6000kbps is "typical" for commercial DVDs. At that bitrate, you can fit 90 minutes of video and Dolby audio on a single-layer DVD.)

The software which comes with the camcorder will only download 2GB files from the camcorder and I don't know how to 'reconnect' the segment files this leaves me with.

That's a bit strange, unless you are running Windows 98. If I recall correctly, the FAT32 file system was limited to 4Gb files. But NTFS has a much higher limit.

You should be ablt to "splice" the segments with Video studio (or any other video editor).

Or, if Windows can "see" the drive in your camera, you may be able to drag-and-drop the files directly from your camera to your computer's hard drive....

Will the full version of this software rectify this problem. On playback in the PC I and my colleagues need to be able to fast forward etc, but these controls are greyed out in the version of the software with the camera. Does the full version rectify this problem?

That sounds like a limitation of the playback software. Are they playing-back a video file with Windows Media Player, or are they playing a DVD with DVD-player software?