Flash format is tempting *no more!*

[Spot]

Just went crazy and bought a nice HV40. Decided that just couldn't go against all the opinions here!
Thanks Muvipix..... can't wait to get it home!
JB

Hi All,
trying to make sense of the current market to replace my old (nearly 8yrs) JVC DV Camera.

I have read heaps of posts here and elsewhere warning about the pitfalls of buying a Flash based AVCHD camcorder like the Canon HF10 or similar because of the resource impact on my PC.
Problem I have at the moment is that to go HD and DV tape it seems I'm looking at the HV40 (can't find any HV30s) and that is a fair bit more $$.
So.... one more time.... how much heartache am I in for if I go for one of the Flash based cameras? (please be honest!)

My current editing PC is nothing flashy:

Core2 Duo E6300 1.8G but running at 2.4G
4G ram
Various 7300rpm HDs
Vista 32bit (consequently can't see all my ram)
Nvidia 9600GT Video
Adobe PREL3 & PPRO CS4
Cheers
JohnB

[Paul LS]

Well John, I have been using a flash based AVCHD camcorder for almost two years now along with my old HDV camcorder. I guess the HV40 will probably be one of the last tape based consumer high definition machines... this year 95%+ of all high definition camcorders have been flash based. And I expect that to be 100% next year so there will be little choice other than going up to prosumer.

In my opinion Flash camcorders are great for there small size and convience in use. However, editing AVCHD does really suck even on my quad core machine... you really need a new Intel i7 processor to get really smooth performance. I have tried various programs but all suffer from lack luster performance. Straight previewing of the timeline is reasonable, however as soon as you add any effect you are back to a crawl. So basically I have decided why give myself all this pain, so now I convert the footage to something more friendly. Either 50Mbps HDV MPEG2, Canopus HQ or Cineform... dependant on the editor I am using and the amount of work I am going to do with the clips. HDV MPEG2 works great in Premiere Elements and the file sizes are pretty small... one generation of editing gives excellent results. If I am going to do multiple imports/exports or combine projects I use the AVI formats... much bigger file sizes but dont lose quality on multiple generations of export/import.

So all that time I save by dragging and dropping my video clips to my hard drive is now lost in conversion...

[Spot]

Thanks for this Paul.
Don't read much detail about people doing the conversion from AVCHD before editing.
So here is a question:
If you record full HD on AVCHD (a compressed format) and then convert to a lossless format (some form of avi) how does this final quality compare to say a captured clip from a SD DV tape camera?
If the AVCHD looks fantastic straight to a HD TV from the camera, will a captured, converted, edited output be just as impressive?

JB

[Paul LS]

If you record full HD on AVCHD (a compressed format) and then convert to a lossless format (some form of avi) how does this final quality compare to say a captured clip from a SD DV tape camera?

Are you refering to down converting the AVCHD to standard definition and comparing this to a SD DV tape? If so I can not really help as I work exclusively in high definition these days. However I would imagine the quality would be better than a SD DV tape... certainly this is true with HDV MPEG2, as the quality of AVCHD is just as good as HDV MPEG2 (just more compressed using a different codec) it should be the same.

If the AVCHD looks fantastic straight to a HD TV from the camera, will a captured, converted, edited output be just as impressive?

I edit in high definition and view my exported videos on my HDTV. The quality is very good, infact after colour correction etc it looks better than the original captured video. There is little (not noticeable to my eye) degradation in terms of blockiness or distortion. But I try to ensure this by converting to high quality "intermediate" files that i work with.

Here is a program that will batch convert AVCHD to high quality, high bit rate HDV MPEG2 files for editing: http://www.newbluefx.com/avchd-upshift.html

[Bobby]

Hi Spot. I am sure you will love the HV-40 as much as I do my '30. Make sure you check into the forum

http://www.hv20.com

which has loads of info for for '20, '30, and '40 users.

I agree with the belief that consumer tape is going to die sometime in the future, and perhaps the pros not too far after that. But you will always be able to get tapes, they are so ubiquitous.

The issue becomes one of archival. I have loads of VHS tapes that I took back in the '80s, Hi8 and Digital8 after that. I still have a VHS deck and a Digital 8 camcorder (that can read Hi8) and so I can go back and get anything if need be from the archived tapes themselves. But how long are those units going to work? So my work of the past few years has been digitizing and creating DVDs of all of that stuff. But I keep all the original captured AVI files just in case so hopefully I won't need to go back to the tapes if I ever need additional content or for a re-mix, etc.

The point being: It doesn't matter what format - you end up (or should end up) with files on hard drives anyhow. That is the only secure and permanent archival technique. Shoot tape now for the capacity, low medium price, and ease of editing and see what tomorrow brings.

[Spot]

Hey Bobby,
Thanks for the web-site I'll check it out. I have also been archiving all my DV stuff on to hard drive. Once Blu-Ray is a little more affordable I'll think about using that as a backup also.

Thanks Paul for the detail again on AVCHD. I decided against that road after much thought... just went with the flow for now.

cheers
JB

[Bobby]

...Once Blu-Ray is a little more affordable I'll think about using that as a backup also...

I have been getting quite negative on Blu-Ray lately. But even if the blank disc prices drop and you want to pay $200 for the writer for your PC, you can still only archive a couple of hours of video (as AVI files) on a Blu-Ray disc and the disc is still subject to loss, scratching, etc.

Many of us have just been buying redundant external hard drives and one of us (I forgot) actually keeps one in a safe deposit box at his bank. I would recommend using external hard drives instead.

[Spot]

mmm good call on the optical media. I have in fact just purchased a second external HD to backup on to. The only thing I'm thinking of with DVD/BR is as an extra backup stored off site.
Nothing like a double backup strategy!!
Probably grab some double sided DVDs for now.
Cheers
JB