Recording back to HDV camcorder (Canon HV20)

cantinoro · Post by **cantinoro** » Sat May 23, 2009 12:38 am

I just purchased VS pro 12 and have this question: When I choose to record my edited HV20 footage back to the camcorder, it doesn't smart render/mpeg optimize. It ultimately records to the HV20 and looks great, but obviously takes a lot longer. It does seem to samrt render when I just create a video file. But right now my only HD source is to pla back on camcorder. Also, I noticed that when I place the footage into the time line, it doesn't change the project settings to match the clip, even though I have show message... checked under preferences. Is this normal behavior for HDV footage, particularly the smart render part?

Thanks

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sat May 23, 2009 12:52 am

I am afraid it is. And that is because the camera actually records its HDV in transport stream mpeg-2 format (I also have an HV20). But when it downloads to the computer, it is converted to program stream. So any editing or recoding within Video Studio will use SmartRender as it is still in program stream format. But when you want to export it to the camera again, it has to be converted back to transport stream for the camera to be able to recognise it. So in fact you are converting to a new format and SmartRender never applies in such a situation.

And you can't set Project Properties to match either for HDV or AVCHD video. I don't know why, but that is the case. However, it does not matter since you are capturing HDV and leaving it in that format, then exporting as HDV. And though you are going from transport stream to program stream and back to transport stream, the program knows that in the simple fact that you are exporting to camera. So it does not need to be told by Project Properties anyway.

I am also intrigued to learn that you used X2 successfully to export back to the HV20. I am other Canon HDV camera users have had no luck with either VS11 or 12 for export back to camera. The problem has been known since HDV first appeared as a format. VS10 was the first version which could handle HDV, and export to camera didn't work with Canon cameras then either. However, Ulead/Corel brought out a patch which made VS10 work, but for some reason, they did not seem to include the code of that patch in subsequent versions of VS. So I personally use the patched version of VS10 to export back to my HV20...

cantinoro · Post by **cantinoro** » Sat May 23, 2009 2:27 am

Thanks for the response. As for exporting back to the HV20, it didn't export back until I downloaded a vs 12 patch from the Corel website. So either the patch helped, or I'm just lucky.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sat May 23, 2009 7:06 am

That's a potentially good tip. I confess I haven't tried the process since applying the same VS12 patch. I just continue to use VS10 as I know that one works!!