Sony HDR-XR200V help

[John Callahan]

Hi,

For the weekend a friend is loaning me his camcorder HDR-XR200V.

The instructions and software it came with seems straight foward. My test files were recorded in HD FH 1920x1080 I transfered them per the directions ect. My burn to disk with AVCHD was just ok did required my blu ray player to play.
The SD burn to disk with the same file not so good my pan shot looked like the hills were rolling. My quick test to youtube was poor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jVwgw2HIec It did not even offer the HD option.

Any quick tips for this camera set up and software transfer and editing. I have PE7 and Nero 9..and the sony software disk the camera had. While waiting ( possible HV40 )to make up my mind for what camera to buy I wanted to test this hard drive system I sure like the tapeless and the 8-10 battery it has but can I get it to behave for quaility DVD output.

Thanks

John

[Paul LS]

Did you use the AVCHD project preset? Sounds like a field order issue with your standard DVD, I should have thought that by using the AVCHD project preset it would have taken get of that though.

[John Callahan]

Paul,

Are you refering to the project preset PE7? I just assumed that the sony camera software that offered the AVCHD creation to DVD would work the same. How does one know what codec's are working when you have multi editing programs loaded such as PE7 - Premier Pro - Nero - and now Sony specific for the camera. How do I handle this. What is your recommeded way to import and software to use.

Thanks
John

[Paul LS]

Yes, I was refering to the project preset in PE7. So when you burn to DVD with the Sony software that came with the camcorder you also get bad quality? I guess if you compare it to the quality you get with your Blu-ray dsiv you would be somewhat disappointed.

Having multiple codecs on your computer from multiple video editors can make it difficult to know which one is used. If you are exporting to AVI you can go in and select the codec, however I believe PE7 will always use it's Mainconcept codec for MPEG and DVD creation.. For example if you go into the Share window and select MPEG, when you go into Advanced it states the codec used is the Mainconcept MPEG one. With Gspot you can set the "merit" of codecs, changing the merit from preferred to do not use. But I am not sure how video editors interact with the merit values of the codecs.

The way I work with AVCHD is to use the Sony Motion Browser software that came with my camcorder to get the video off the camcorder and then import into PE7 using Get Media from Files and Folders. In this way I use the Sony software to catalog my videos. Regarding software to use I may be an idea to do a few trials... try burning a DVD (DVD-RW) with PE7, Nero and the Sony software and compare them. I have heard that Nero gives good quality when burning high definition material to DVD.

[John Callahan]

Hello,

The sony manual says you must have directx installed on your computer so I reinstalled it and the quality output to disk from the Sony Camcorder was much much better with the Sony browser options to burn. WOW !!. I did not create HD yet because of no HD burning. The option AVCHD to disk for higher quaility and playing it on my blue ray was very nice. And the option to create AVCHD to Standard to disk for any DVD player was much much better quailty from last year with PE7 or Nero 8 with Cannon HV30. I wounder why in my case such a great improvement over the PE7 / HV30 tape output to DVD results. Do you think its the Sony camera AVCHD formating, and or the codec's / software Sony provided. My DVD results with the Sony HDR-XR200v camera and Sony browser is HD quailty when I compare to my DVD video creations I did with PE7 and HV30. I must be doing something wrong.

I will test PE7 with the AVCHD formating this week maybe I will get the same results as Sony. But I'm confused about my tape editing out put to DVD experience.

My only guess is I did not edit, my import transfer was USB to PC hard drive with Sony Browser.



Thanks