Arrrgh! Here we go again!

[Bobby]

I just hate it!

I am old enough and financially secure enough to buy the toys I want. I just hate it when I can't arrive at a decision!

I am currently using a Sony Digital8 unit. It works well, albeit a bit heavy compared to newer units. The two drawbacks are: 1) not HD and 2) not using a "standard" medium. Every time I take yet another Digital8 tape, I agonize that I am adding yet another tape to my pile of non-standard media. I worry that some time in the longer term future I may not be able to read them at all.

Since I am getting back into the hobby, i decided to take a good look at the HV20 or HV30. I opened up camcorderinfo.com and looked at the HV30 review by David Kender (quoted I believe elsewhere in this section) that essentially said that tape is dead.

If so, there is no need to move to miniDV because that is yet again another "standard" that will not give me the sense of security (i.e. being able to read the media) in the future. What would give me a sense of security is any "file" based system - something that I can put on a DVD or miniDVD or hard drive or memory card, that I can archive and transfer as you would any file in the future.

At this point, I would be inclined to stay with the Digital8 unit, its tapes are no less standard or compatible than miniDV in the future. But I still have to ask:

1) Is Kender all wet? Is a switch to miniDV tape the correct way to go, despite what he claims?

2) How bad, in fact, is the compression and other file format issues when using an camcorder with internal hard drive or miniDVD, etc.? I am really just a home user, and actually I am fairly pleased with the results I get with the Digital8 in widescreen mode anyhow - do I even really need HD?

On the other hand, will I be sorry in the future for not having taken HD footage, even though I will not be upgrading my system to HD (i.e. getting a Blu-Ray player for the main TV, making sure my kids have one, getting a Blu-Ray burner for the PC, etc.) for a while yet until the prices come down.

Sorry for an old man's rant! Any input?

Thanks, Bob

[Steve Grisetti]

We seem to have this same discussion every couple of weeks, Bob.

MiniDV is far from dead. And, even some years from now, when they stop making miniDV camcorders, you will still be able to buy tapes. So, if you're looking for something smaller and more technologically advanced than that D8, a $250-400 miniDV would be a great second gun.

And, when miniDV does go away, it's certainly not going to give way to short-sighted media like hard drive and DVD camcorders. At least not standard video models.

HDV is clearly the next big wave and, particularly for consumers, that means recording to the same miniDV tapes. Those Canon models you mentioned are fast becoming the prosumer industry standards, and probably signal the trend for at least the next decade.

What will replace tape? Who knows? But it will likely be something hard to predict and impossible to shop for now. So I wouldn't sweat it.

[Bobby]

Yes, Steve - I have read the posts. I thought this might be a different slant with the D8 usage. I think you and I are the only D8 users out there!

I don't want a low-end SD miniDV unit just to start using miniDV - I would rather stay with what I have.

But the questions are: Will I regret not switching to HD ASAP, even though I have no plans to upgrade my setup to HD capability for perhaps 6-12 months?

Is the quality of HD hard drives units really that bad? I mean this subjectively, not by looking at the specs. What do active users of HD hard drive units really see in terms of quality and in terms of editability?

Bob

[Ken Jarstad]

I think the board hickupped - so my reply follows below.

[Ken Jarstad]

Bob, I am so incredibly happy with my HV20. I was scurrying around at first, trying to find a hi-def editing solution. But I decided to relax, continue downconverting my HDV footage to DV and editing and producing standard-def DVDs with my trusty and reliable PrEl v2 until more folks get hi-def equipment. The video quality looks to me like I am using a prosumer DV camcorder.

Most folks I know are still using std-def 4:3 TVs and probably will until the TVs die. The upconverting DVD players do such a marvelous job of displaying commercial DVDs and home-made DVDs that many folks won't even be motivated to upgrade soon. And since all my footage now is in HDV I will always have a hi-def source to go back to someday. It truely is, for me, a technology solution that for once is the best of both worlds. Since I like the silver body I would recommend getting one of the remaining HV20s at a bargain price.

And no doubt, DVC tape will be around for many years. However, I just received a promotional email from Canon and it seems they have a new sibling for the HV20/30 that uses flash memory (and HDAVC). The HF10 may be what many folks here have been waiting for. I tend to be very conservative these days about adopting new tech - until all the bugs are worked out. (Maybe I'll try Vista six months after SP1 comes out!) But this may be THE thing. I just found out that the satellite TV outfits have changed from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, with an AVC program stream, so I think we are going to have to get used to an even more compressed video future. Best wishes and good luck!

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=177&modelid=16186&WT.mc_id=EM0801CG01021&cmpgn=cn&Lead.LeadID=16557293&Lead.Email=ken_jarstad%40bigfoot.com&LTYP=FRIENDS&Lead.FirstName=Kenneth&CollateralRequest.CollateralRequestID=6661CR1000319667

[Bobby]

Thanks Ken. Yes, I have had my eye on the HF10 - it looks interesting. With 16GB internal, you are covered for basic quick clips, or you can use SDHC. I see a 16GB SDHC at newegg for about $80. Get a couple of those and you should be ready - according to Canon you get 2 hours and 5 minutes on 16GB in FXP mode, which says it is full 1920x1080 HD. Then pick up a couple of 1TB external hard drives for long term storage, and you are off and running. Or, store the files on Blu-Ray when you get the capability to burn 'em.

The issue then is AVCHD, and I will start researching that.

Thanks, Bob

[Paul LS]

AVCHD has come a long way since it was first implemented in camcorders. The latest camcorders have very little, if any, motion artifacts which was a problem with earlier cams. And with both HDV and AVCHD you need to be carefull with panning... fast pans in either format do not look good.

I have both the SONY HC1 a HDV MPEG2 camcorder recording to tape and the SONY CX7 an AVCHD model recording to Memory Stick Pro flash memory cards. The quality from both is superb, the AVCHD cam wins out in low light as it uses newer CMOS technology sensor than the HC1. I can see no difference in the quality between the two models, albeit the HC1 has full manual control and the CX7s manual control is limited. As the CX7 is very small and as the convience of recording to flash media is huge I tend to use it the majority of the time.

One down side is editing and playback. For example just to playback the AVCHD clips in the supplied Motion Picture Browser it takes 70/80% of the CPU resources of an AMD dual core 3800. However using Cyberlink PowerDVD player that utilizes the video acceleration of my video cards GPU the CPU usage drops to 4%.

Likewise with editing, I use Sony Vegas Pro 8, but virtually all consumer editors, apart from Abobe PE4/PPro, handle AVCHD. You really need a fast processor to handle the highly compressed format... a fast two core or a quad core. I use the Q6600 Intel quad core processor... and Vegas is able to fully utilize all four cores at 100% when rendering.

[Bobby]

Thanks Paul - good info.

So at this point it is beginning to sound like a workflow question to me.

My primary issue is storage. Since my work is non-commercial and mostly just family, I don't necessarily have to process 100% of what I shoot. In fact when I look back at old tape I have taken I find that a small percentage actually gets used in the DVDs I generate. But I do want to be able to go back into my library to find clips for the latest project. So going from flash to online terabyte storage or perhaps HD DVDs would be OK.

An example would be the first full PE4 project I just completed. I do a first year video for each of my grandchildren. The one I just did required me to find clips within four different D8 tapes. Or, for example, if I was doing a DVD of my grandson's football career, I would have to go back and access multiple tapes. Having random access storage rather than linear tape would be a boon in this mode.

If I choose to stay with PE, then I would have to find an application that does handle AVCHD at least enough to find the clips I was interested in and export them to whatever HD format PE will accept. But if AVCHD is going to be that popular, I assume that Adobe is going to have to offer support at some time.

What does PE4 accept? I see that .avc and .264 are on the list of supported files.

Thanks, Bob

[Paul LS]

"What does PE4 accept? I see that .avc and .264 are on the list of supported files."

Yes it supports those formats but not specifically AVCHD. Robert Johnston has exported AVCHD from Nero 7 and has been able to import it into PE4. But if you are re-rendering in Nero it would be better to export as HDV MPEG2 which PE4 handles without issue and uses far fewer resources than working with AVCHD.

[RJ Johnston]

For the record, TsRemux will remux an AVCHD (with no recompression) that you transfer from a camcorder, and possibly let you add it to PE 4.0.

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/TsRemux

I have a .m2ts file that I downloaded from the internet, but PE4 rejected it. After I ran it through TsRemux, PE4 accepted it. Editing it was very painful, so I created a HD 1440x1080 project preset with an editing mode where rendered previews are only 360x270. I'll have to upload that preset.

Then I had to buy professional CoreAVC codec to play back AVCHDs in Windows Media Player. That lets me play it back very smoothly, compared to Nero Video Decoder codec. Not very expensive for CoreAVC. CPU usage went from 100% with Nero Video Decoder codec to about 80% with the CoreAVC codec.