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Hi,

I got this wonderfull little (waterproof) pocket camera FT1 made by Panasonic.
It also goes around with name TS1 (in north America).

It can record 1280x720 movies (with zooming) in both AVCHD Lite and MJPEG format.

The quality seems to be very good in both formats, but editing the AVCHD Lite really needs powerfull computer. My measly old Pentium 4 running 2.8GHz is nowhere near enough for the work.

So I ended up doing the movie recording in MJPEG format which takes up more space but it is a lot easier to edit.

Corel VideoStudio 12 pro recognizes files ok and lets you crop/edit them easily. Transitions work ok too.

To export the movies I used MPEG-2 format. Reason for this, is that I think this format would/should/must be supported in future with different playback devices. I could be wrong and I am more than greatfull to get hints on what export format should be used...???

I did some recording underwater/abovewater and saw a lot of blockiness with lover speed encoding.

So after some experiments, I ended up doing the exporting in following format:

MPEG files
24 bits, 1280 x 720, 30 fps
Frame-based
(MPEG-2), 16:9
Quality 90%
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 12000 kbps)
Audio data rate: 96 kbps
MPEG audio layer 2, 32 KHz, Mono

This gave good results for the water bubbles/splashes/etc and filesize went down from MJPEG 450MB to MPEG-2 170MB. So it took 37% from original file sizes.

If anyone else has experience with this wonderfull little camera, please share!

To export the movies I used MPEG-2 format. Reason for this, is that I think this format would/should/must be supported in future with different playback devices.

Yes. MPEG-2 is used on DVDs, so it's probably the most-standardized format. (However, there are specific resolution, framerate & bitrate requirements, as well as audio requirements, for DVD-compatible MPEG-2.)

Currently, I'd say that an actual DVD is probably the most "future proof" format, but you'd have to reduce your resolution and bitrate. Realistically, all 3 of these formats are probably going to be around for awhile.

I believe MPEG-2 is more efficient than MJPEG, and AVCHD is more efficient than either. By "more efficient", I mean that you get better quality for a given file-size/bitrate. But, the more efficient, more compressed, formats tend to be the most difficult to edit or convert.

If you are going to burn a DVD, then as DVDDoug has explained, you will need to change some of the properties of your mpeg-2 file to meet international DVD standards. If you are in an NTSC zone, you would need a frame size of 720 x 480, and if in PAL 720 x 576. The combined video and audio bitrate would need to be under 10,000 kbps, and since many stand-alone DVD players have difficulty with bitrates over 8000, then set the video bitrate for that.

If you intend distributing your video on the internet, then you would need to consider one of the mpeg-4 formats (including DivX/XVid which are mpeg-4 but use the AVI extension); or even .wmv. Both DivX and Wmv have high definition formats which should be able to accomodate your original frame size and bitrate.

Thanks guys for comments,

I do not intend to burn these on the DVD. The files are stored on different servers around the house. I use pc to play these files on lcd hd-tv. Or play then on pc directly.

The issue is that these files are 16x9 (1280x720), and I would like to keep as much of this resolution as possible. So that the playback on widescreen tv would be better quality than 'plain old' PAL.

The selected bitrate 12Mbps is above supported DVD standard, but I was hoping that future devices could handle this. Who knows what happens, everything seems to be changing quite rapidly in digital media world. I hope that there are systems/players/software in 20-30 years time that can still play these 'old' formats.

Well of course there are 'devices' which can burn these at their original quality, and they are called Blu-Ray! Not cheap at the moment, however, either for the burner or the discs, though prices are falling fairly rapidly.

I burn my own high definition video to standard DVDs but as hybrid AVCHD discs -- can only fit around 20 minutes using the highest quality setting on a single layer DVD, but given that I pay less than 25 cents for a DVD as opposed to $25 for a Blu-Ray disc, I am prepared to make the sacrifice for a while.

Other than that, I keep all my edited high def stored on my computer or external hard drives, and have my computer networked to my PlayStation 3, which in turn is connected to my HDTV. I can thus play the video directly from computer to HDTV in all its original glory.