dumb question about burning HD

[Cozzie]

Hi all,

I'm looking at buying a Canon HF20 camcorder and have been speaking to a few people as well as seeking info from this forum (thanks again). Today, I spoke with a salesman at an electronics store about getting files from the camcorder to the laptop (I've had trouble with this in the past with mini DVDs and want to make sure it won't be a problem with flash memory). I was assured that its a simple case of copying the file from the camcorder to the laptop via a USB cable that comes with the camera, then importing from the local disk into PE7 for editing and burning.

The discussion then progressed to editing and burning from PE7. I mainly take family video from camping, holidays, birthdays etc and burn it to DVD & send to relatives in far flung places. I was discussing this with the salesman today and he said that HD can't be burned to DVD (well, only slots of around 20 mins or so. My DVDs are usually around an hour compilation). If I want to continue to burn hour long compilations, I'd need to buy an external Bluray burner & burn to Bluray disk (which are pretty expensive compared to DVD & most of my relos don't have bluray players).

Based on this discussion, it seems that if I buy the HD camera my options are to either burn short, 20 min, clips to DVD, buy a Bluray burner & burn longer clips, but this is expensive & relo's can't read them, OR, set the camcorder to record in standard definition & burn longer length movies to DVD as I have been. If this is true (that's the dumb question), I guess this would be my preferred option until the price of bluray comes down and my kin get more with the times.

I hate to sound stupid with such a fundamental question, but are these my options?

Thanks,
Cozzie.

[Steve Grisetti]

These are not stupid questions at all, Cozzie. But your experience is just another reason why you should ask these kinds of questions here instead of at Best Buy. We'll give you the RIGHT answers.

AVCHD, as we've discussed in another thread, is very intensive to edit, and it takes a pretty powerful computer to do it. That's its chief liability. Otherwise, it's a format with many advantages and is likely the future of hi-def video. Downloading it from camcorder to your hard drive is simple, and it can be done over USB. The difference between this and traditional video capture is that you're not streaming video in and picking what you want. Instead, you grab the video in blocks -- just like moving files from hard drive to hard drive -- and it downloads to your computer for editing.

You can, of course, create a standard DVD from AVCHD footage. And when downsampled to standard DV, you certainly burn the same length of video to a DVD as you could from a miniDV. It just won't be in hi-def. It should look great nonetheless though!

Where the salesman is getting confused is that he's assuming you want to keep the video in hi-def when you burn it to your DVD. And, true, if you did you could put less than 20 minutes of video on a standard DVD (which holds only about 1/5 the data of a BluRay disc). But I don't think that's your goal, is it? After all, if you did that, you'd need a BluRay disc player to play it!

So rest assured that you'll get very good results with the HF20 and, assuming your system is powerful enough to work with the files, you should get great looking DVD footage from it.

[Bobby]

Another aspect to consider Cozzie.

After creating my DVD library of family video dating back to 1984, I find that I am going back to look at the early ones and that they were pretty crude, editing-wise. I was using Pinnacle Studio at the time (ugghhh). I see now that I want to re-do them. Since I kept all the input files, this is just a matter of sitting down and doing the work.

The point being is that what is important is that you capture to your hard drive in HD. For a while I was downconverting in the camera (HV30) and creating standard DVDs. But I realized that the files I was saving were SD not HD. So I changed my workflow and started downloading HD MPEG files. I still create SD DVDs for the family, but know that if I ever want to go back and re-do them when Blu-Ray (or hopefully its less expensive successor) becomes popular I will have HD source files to work with.

Don't record in SD.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Another aspect to consider Cozzie..........Don't record in SD.

A point well made Bobby.

[Cozzie]

Thanks fellas,

Finally, I feel comfortable to move forward. I'll buy the camera shortly and let you know how I go. I'm thinking that I'll record in HD (I have a new high end laptop for editing) and burn in SD for now and when HD media becomes more reasonably priced, I'll probably go back through and re-burn in HD.

Thanks again for all your help with all of my problems and questions over the last few months. I really do appreciate the patience and support I've received from these forums. Without a doubt, I would never have got this far without your help.

Thanks to all,
Cozzie.

[Bobby]

You're welcome Cozzie.

On the subject of HD, the alternative that is getting much more popular is using devices that either stream or attach an external USB hard drive to your TV via HDMI, such as the Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player. There are some fora here that discuss it. Using one of these boxes you create HD content and then plug in or stream to your TV, giving you full HD. This doesn't solve the problem of distributing content to relatives, etc. without Blu-Ray, but it might enable HD for your own use.

So again you could start with HD, create HD projects for your own use, and then write standard DVDs from the same project for your relatives.

[Bob]

FYI, here's a review of the WD HD Media Player: http://techreport.com/articles.x/16565

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

And here's some info on another product:

http://www.hdx1080.com/

Also have a look (Google) at the Popcorn Hour.