Canon HF20 - any thoughts?

[Cozzie]

Hello everyone,

Due to recent issues I've been experiencing with my old Sony mini-dvd camcorder, even after a heap of generous help from the good people from this website, I've decided to replace the camera with a high definition camcorder.

I've asked around at a few retail stores about brands and media and done a bit of research on the net. For the most part, I've been told:

* Sony & Canon are two of the top brands, with probably most advice leaning towards Canon (I've also read some good stuff re: canon in general on this site)

* Mini-dvd media is hard to find and should be avoided at all costs 'for a number of reasons' (i can probably vouch for that myself given my recent 'entertaining' few months of failed issue resolution).

* Hard Disk media is a bit touchy (ie not robust, should be handled with care) and is probably on the way out.

* Flash memory is probably the way the industry is moving, with many cameras now having a combination of on-board flash memory and a slot for an SD Card.

I'd be interested to see if anyone has any views on this, but based on this advice (and my less-than-over-the-top budget - around $1,500 Austalian), I've been directed by a few retailers to the Canon HF20.

I've looked for a few reviews of this camera on the net and have found differing comments, so I was wondering if anyone here has any views on this camera? The model I'm looking at has 32Mb onboard and an SD slot (for a second 32Mb?)

Thanks in advance for any comments.

Cozzie.

[Steve Grisetti]

I'd probably agree with you on most of these points, Cozzie -- although, in all honesty, I'm not at all happy with the industry trend of abandoning tape-based video (which has a lot of advantages).

The one thing that I and I lot of others find frustrating is that the AVCHD system (the hi-def system used by all major hard drive and flash memory camcorders) is a little too advanced for its own good. As you know if you've monitored these boards, AVCHD video requires a lot of power to work with, and most people who are editing it happily are using at least a quad core processor with 4 gigabytes of RAM.

A few years from now, when that kind of power is standard, it won't matter anymore. But, for the typical under-$1000 computer user, that means that AVCHD is nearly impossible to work with using most major PC-based video editing programs.

[Bobby]

When I bought my latest camera last year I agonized over what to get. I ended up buying the HV30 and am quite happy with it and have no problem editing its HDV->MPEG2 files on my PC - although to confess it is a fairly high end unit.

One question about storage cards is how many you need and how much they are going to cost. You have to have enough cards to do your shoot, and if you are going out for any length of time you will need to also bring a notebook or something similar to upload your cards and clean them out for the next day. Tapes are cheap and plentiful, and also probably the most reliable as long as you don't leave them in the sun or magnetize them. The major downside of tapes is that you have to read them in in real time - i.e. to get an hour's worth of video from a tape you need to play it for an hour.

Tough call, but pay attention to what Steve says about performance. Another option might be to buy a cheap SD unit for now and see where the industry goes.

[Paul LS]

Regarding Canon or Sony... I have a Sony HDV and a Sony AVCHD camcorder. They are both very good but in future I dont think I would buy Sony again. Reason being is that you can only use Sony batteries... not generic batteries. As you probably know generic batteries are much cheaper. Sony has placed a chip in their high definition camcorder batteries that talks to the camcorder. If the battery does not have the chip the camcorder will not turn on. This seems unfair practice to me... and so I wont buy another Sony camcorder.

[Bobby]

Paul, you are being protected from the problems of those cheaper batteries - who knows, if you buy one of them your camera may explode! Sony is just extending a big helping hand to you and you shouldn't bite the hand that, that, well whatever...

I hate that too. Canon and I have been very happy with each other these days.

[Chuck Engels]

I just bought an HV40, that should tell you where I stand in all of this

[peggig]

AVCHD video requires a lot of power to work with, and most people who are editing it happily are using at least a quad core processor with 4 gigabytes of RAM.

A few years from now, when that kind of power is standard, it won't matter anymore.

Truly, won't it matter? I'm also having a big dilemma trying to decide between a flash-based and mini-DV camera. I have a quad proc system with 4 GB of RAM, but is that really sufficient to make an AVCHD camera viable for someone who edits a lot, using copious amounts of transitions and effects?

For anybody who only makes minor edits, it seems the flash-memory camera is clearly the way to go. But, for those whose projects are very editing-intensive, is AVCHD practical, even with a quad core system? That's what I'm trying to determine.

I really want a flash based camera, but I don't want to spend 20 hours exporting a one-hour program that took me forever to edit. Am I being overly pessimistic? Should I stop worrying and get the camera I want, or will I regret it later?

And why are the HV* cameras so expensive now? Five months ago, you could get an HV40 for ~$550; now the cheapest one from an authorized Canon dealer is 760!! Is that because people who do lots of editing are buying them up, out of concern that they'll stop being available soon?

[Bobby]

You don't see much AVCHD work around here because people are, I think, somewhat scared of the format and all it entails, especially the performance aspects and compression quality issues. So you are probably not going to get a lot of quantitative feedback on this issue.

Personally, having anything less than snappy editing would drive me crazy. Any time you even have to THINK about proxy editing as a way around performance problems concerns me.

I am not sure about the pricing issues with the HV* products, but a ballpark cost for them has always been around US$750 to $900. B&H has both the '30 and '40 right now for the same price, US$799 for the NTSC version and that seems like a pretty stable price. I think I paid $750 for mine.

All I can tell you is that I am quite comfortable with my camera (HV30) and using tapes. I bought a pile of tapes, a couple of spare batteries, and I am good to go. I don't know where the future will go but I am not too concerned about it right now. I am much more concerned at the current time about going Blu-Ray or streaming for high definition content.

[Chuck Engels]

We have closely watched the price of the HV20 and HV30 here as we gave one away in our video contest this year.

The VH30 got down as low as about $500 at one point but with the announcement of the HV40 the price went back up to the $800 range.
Not sure why but do know that these are great cameras and people love them. The HV40 wasn't around 5 months ago, it was just released in June at $1000, it has come down to $800 since then and all of the HV cameras are in the same price range. They are all basically the same camera, and yes, people are buying them up like crazy. There isn't another consumer DV Tape HDV camcorder that comes close to this one in price and or quality.

[jackfalbey]

There is a ton of discussion about editing AVCHD on the dvinfo.net forums... the general consensus is that AVCHD is a capture-oriented format and should be converted to an intermediate codec like Cineform or ProRes for any editing other than the most basic.

[peggig]

The VH30 got down as low as about $500 at one point but with the announcement of the HV40 the price went back up to the $800 range.

I think of the HV30/40 as basically the same camera. As far as I can tell, the only difference is the HV40 has "native" 24P, instead of a conversion. I guess most people don't care much, since they're selling for the same price with and without it.

If I could get either for < $600 from an authorized dealer (Canon is very picky about honoring warrantees), I'd buy it. But I can't see spending $800 for the same item that was selling for $500 less than a year ago. On the other hand, I can't see buying an AVCHD camcorder if exporting is going to take anywhere from 5.5 to 20+ times as long as it takes for DV-AVI, even with a quad processor and 4 GB of RAM.

I know Canon usually comes out with a bunch of rebates in October, but they never seem to include consumer camcorders. Anybody have any suggestions? I'm undecided, but definitely need to buy something within the next month or so.

[jackfalbey]

On the other hand, I can't see buying an AVCHD camcorder if exporting is going to take anywhere from 5.5 to 20+ times as long as it takes for DV-AVI, even with a quad processor and 4 GB of RAM.

That's why conversion to an intermediate codec is the key. AVCHD is heavily compressed, and trying to edit in AVCHD is extremely taxing on any PC, even a state-of-the-art one. Converting to a visually-lossless codec like Cineform's AVI, for example, reduces the compression so that any reasonably modern PC can edit it with ease. An added benefit is that the color space is expanded from 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 which allows more leeway when editing. There's no reason to shy away from AVCHD camcorders as long as you convert the video before editing.

I've tested editing raw AVCHD files from a Panasonic HMC150 (converted with NeoScene to Cineform's AVI codec) on my old Dell 8400 (5 years old) with Premiere Elements 3.0 and it ran very smooth and fast just like DV-AVI.

[Paul LS]

Yes, converting to an intermediate codec is a solution... and I do this depending on what I am going to be doing with the video. However, converting to an intermediate codec kind of defeats the advantage of capturing to a hard/flash drive... ie the speed of getting the video onto your computer. With the added conversion time converting to an intermediate codec you might as well capture in HDV to tape.

[peggig]

How long does the conversion take? Is it really lossless? Where can you get the Cineform AVI codec? Does PE7 recognize it?

Paul, even if it takes as much time to convert as it does to capture from HDV, there are still other advantages to a flash memory camera, like not having to change media as often, and not having any moving parts in the camera that are likely to be a point of failure. Also, mini-DV tapes will be obsolete in a few years, and then what does one do with all one's video that's archived on tape? At some point, it will be necessary to transfer them to a hard disk (hopefully, before one's mini-DV camera dies and there are no replacements available). At that point, one is likely to have hundreds of hours of video archived on tape, and it will be a daunting task to capture it all to hard disk.

It's looking like flash memory is going to be the medium of the foreseeable future. I'm very reluctant to hitch my wagon to a dying horse, as it were. If the conversion is truly lossless, and takes no more time than capture from a mini-DV camera, that seems like an excellent solution! Expanding the color space after the video has already been captured is a little late, but it's a valid point that it may retain more color information when editing, so it seems like an all around win.

Unless there's something I'm missing, this sounds like the kind of workaround I've been hoping to find. Am I missing anything? Are there any gotchas I should know about before placing my order?

[Paul LS]

I use a Cineform codec with Sony Vegas (comes with it), however if you want to buy it the cheapest version is Neoscene at $129. Works with Premiere Elements without issue: http://www.cineform.com/neoscene/

There also some free codecs you could use at intermediates such the Lagarith codec: http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html

The conversion is pretty much lossless, note the file sizes are significantely larger than AVCHD... another advantage is that once converted you can export/import a number of cycles without lossing quality... not like AVCHD where after one export/import you will see the start of degradation.