HD Camcorder format and VS11+

[robspa48]

I¡¦m planning to switch from my present SD to an HD Camcorder and would appreciate some advice on compatibility and any other issues which should help in guiding my choice: as far as capture is concerned in Vs 11+, does it make any difference between tape (HDV, eg Canon HV30), HDD (eg Canon HG10) or Flash Memory (eg Canon HF10) camcorders? My final output for sharing my videos will be a DVD. My operating system is Vista, please refer to my profile for other details of the laptop I use.
Also, could you suggest any useful thread and general protocols on the forum on using VS11+ with HD Camcorders and Vista (sorry, but I¡¦ve never used VS11 with this operating system in conjunction with HD camcorders) .
Thanks a lot for your help

[Ken Berry]

Unless you are planning to upgrade your computer in the near future, I think you have little choice but to go with the HV30. That uses a mini DV tape cassette and films in high definition HDV/mpeg-2 format via Firewire. Video Studio has been able to edit that since VS10 with no problem. And you can also downconvert in the camera from HDV and capture via Firewire as DV.

If you intend to keep producing standard definition DVDs, though, you could probably stick with your original SD camera. While your DVDs produced from HDV will be good, my one complaint about them is that the take on the high definition shimmer you get when panning horizontally (not vertically or zooming). That is a compression artifact which you don't get when filming SD.

On the other hand, the HDD and Flash cameras you mention, use the AVCHD high definition mpeg-4 format. That gives excellent quality, but what the camera manufacturers don't advertise is the fact that it is just about the most difficult and demanding of formats that anyone editing at home has to deal with. You will need lots of computer resources just to be able to play it smoothly -- and I am not sure that your computer would be able to do that, though it might just squeeze by. Corel says that with VS11.5+, you need at least a Core 2 Duo Intel processor -- and I am not absolutely sure that your AMD X2 is necessarily the same thing. I think, rather, that it is like the older Intel Dual Core processors. With them, you can create proxy files with SmartProxy so that you can edit your AVCHD and then apply the edits, once completed to the original AVCHD. But it is a bit of a pain and slow.

And if your aim is only to produce standard definition DVDs for the forseeable future, it is plainly and simply just not worth the hassle to go the AVCHD route!

All that being said, AVCHD is also pretty plainly the wave of the future -- once the software manufacturers catch up better than they have so far. So if you plan on upgrading your computer and are thinking about buy a Blu-Ray recorder, discs and player sometime soon, you might want to choose an AVCHD model. And then I personally would probably be tempted by a Flash drive model. That is because you can always insert a new Flash card when the current one fills, then download all the video when your get the chance. With a hard drive camera, you are rather stuck if you are out on the road for a long time, filming, and find that that the hard disk has filled and you don't have your computer handy to download the video to make space on the hard drive...

Anyway, hope this helps...

[robspa48]

Thanks Ken for your quick answer. Unfortunately I¡¦ve just upgraded my computer so my next upgrade won¡¦t be before 3 years¡KI thought anyway that my AMD X2 was a quite effective and powerful processor, not really inferior to Intel Core 2 Duo: any other advice on the forum on this matter?
If I get it right, the ideal/unique choice with my material should be capturing by firewire (should HDMI be an alternative?) the HDV/mpeg2 format; you also seem to imply that for later production, should I stay with Standard def DVDs, the video quality/resolution wouldn¡¦t be much better than with my present SD camera? Or, what kind of quality improvement over my present Sd videos should I expect? For further improvement I understand that the only solution (after capture and edit) would be burning to Blue Ray disc instead of standard def DVD, right? Is that possible using the standard CD/DVD recorder of my laptop or specific material is required? Sorry to bother you with quite naives questions but until now my only experience is with SD material.
This is why I was also asking for some VS11+ tutorial you could suggest concerning optimal work flow through the different steps from project properties and capturing to sharing and burning with HD cameras and Vista. Thanks again.

[Ken Berry]

Taking the last bit first, I am sorry but I can't suggest anything by way of a tutorial apart from doing a Google search. I have simply learned the 'hard' way, though in fact, when I bought my HV20 Canon HDV camera, all the processes were by and large the same as for SD video. It just took getting used to the different frame sizes and data rates...

Also sorry to have sounded as though I was raining on your computer parade. I was not intending to. As I also admitted, I don't know much about the AMD series of processors, but I still think the X2 you have is similar to the older Dual Core Intels, and not the more recent Core 2 Duos which have a different architecture, of course, and are faster and/or more efficient in their processing of data. And that really is what matters when talking about AVCHD. Hopefully someone who is more familiar with the AMD processor range, AND with AVCHD will be able to offer a better comment.

I was also not intending to appear to express a personal preference, though obviously I chose the HDV route. AVCHD was definitely around as I only bought my HV20 in March this year. And so I had already seen the hassles people were going through with AVCHD to make up my own mind on the matter. I thought that at the very least the editing technology, not to mention the HD technology, was rather more settled for HDV so that is why I opted for that -- even though I have a Core 2 Quad (and had that too at the time I bought the camera) which can handle AVCHD more or less OK (but still not particularly smoothly when editing...! Playback is fine, though).

As for SD vs HD quality on DVDs, if you think about it, an SD DVD has to comply with international DVD standards AND what a stand-alone DVD player is able to play. The international DVD standard says that you can only have a MAXIMUM combined audio/video data rate of 10,000 kbps. A lot of stand-alone DVD players, however, have difficulty playing a DVD with a video bitrate of much more than 8000 kbps which is why there is a general recommendation for home video to keep more or less to that as a maximum bitrate.

But with HDV, you get not only a larger frame (1440 x 1080 compared to the SD 720 x 576 or 480 for PAL/NTSC) but the data rate for HDV is 25,000 kbps. So there is verrry much higher quality all round. AVCHD has an even larger frame size (1920 x 1080, though it can also be in 1440 x 1080) and for most cameras a maximum bitrate of 18,000 -- though more recently Canon have brought out a camera you might be interested in -- the HF11 -- which has a maximum bitrate of 24,000 kbps, and presents its own difficulties, since so far there are few if any video editing programs, including VS, which seem to be able to handle that bitrate when it comes to AVCHD.

Anyway, to repeat, if you downconvert from high def to standard def, regardless of whether you start with HDV or AVCHD, you have to stick to international DVD standards, and that will be in effect, for maximum quality, a bitrate of around 8000 -- just as it would be if you were using SD video from your SD camera. Now you might have a marginally sharper looking image when you downconvert from HD. But you also have the shimmer I mentioned which is for me a bit of a bummer. So if I personally intended to keep on making standard definition DVDs, I would keep on using my Canon mv930i SD camera which still gives me excellent quality video at 8000 kbps, plus I *don't* get the shimmer...

As for Blu-Ray, no you need a special Blu-Ray burner AND player AND the still ultra expensive discs to be able to use that format. The only alternative is in fact to start off with either HDV or AVCHD, do your edits, then burn your high def in that same format to what is called an AVCHD hybrid disc i.e. using AVCHD format, burned to a quasi Blu-Ray file structure but on an SD DVD. It plays back in magnificent high def BUT (and there's always a 'but'...) while you can burn such a disc with a standard DVD burner, you can only play it back on a Blu-Ray rated player and moreover one which is also rated to play hybrid discs!! The Sony PlayStation 3 is one such player and it does a wonderful job...

One downside of hybrid discs is that if you use the top quality AVCHD settings, you can only fit around 20 minutes of video on a standard DVD. But for me that is no problem since I buy my DVD blanks for around 25 cents each, whereas if I had gone to the expense of buying a Blu-Ray burner, the minimum price I can get Blu-Ray blank discs here in Australia is $25 EACH!!!

[robspa48]

Thanks Ken for the exhaustive reply and clarifications. What about my question on HDMI connection in alternative to firewire?

[tyamada]

Thanks Ken for the exhaustive reply and clarifications. What about my question on HDMI connection in alternative to firewire?

Here is some information on an HDMI capture card, I'm not sure if they make one for a laptop. There was some discussion on HDMI capture in the Media Studio Pro section, do a search on HDMI.
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/produc ... /software/

[robspa48]

Sorry, my question was: I do have an HDMI port on my laptop and I guess there is an HDMI output in an HD Camera; is there any possibility or advantage in connecting the camera and the laptop for capture through these 2 ports rather than through firewire (may be this is a stupid question...).
thanks anyway

[Ken Berry]

I think it will depend on whether your computer's HDMI is bi-directional. I think you will find that the camera HDMI port is uni-directional (OUT). So if your computer port is similar, it could also be OUT and thus could not accept and IN signal from the camera. But with that being said, I know nothing about HDMI ports on computers, apart from the fact that I thought they were there mainly for OUT purposes i.e. connecting the computer directly to a HDTV to play a HD movie direct from the computer...