Hi,
I'm thinking about buying a Canon HG10. I'm coming from an old Sony Hi-8 camcorder. I definately want a Hard Drive camcorder, and I want DVD quality video. I also want to be able to write to single layer DVD-r and have it play in standard DVD players (for my relatives). Here are a few questions:

1. With the AVCHD format, is it possible to write directly to a DVD-r, or is a special DVD type needed?
2. If you can write directly to a DVD-r, how much (recorder time) can fit on a single DVD-r at the highest quality setting?
3. When you convert from AVCHD to the format for regular DVD players:
a. How long does it take
b. How much quality is lost (does it look worse than a standard 480p DVD movie)?
4. Do standard definition camcorders take DVD movie (480p) quality video (if so, I may not need a hi-def camcorder anyway)?


Keep in mind, my main goals are:
1. Film at least DVD (480p) quality video.
2. Convert to single layer DVD-r for standard DVD players, while maintaining video quality, with as little hassle as possible (read easy).


Thanks

A friend of mine just bought a Sony SD camera (DCRxxx45 or something similar). It is a hard drive camera. She is very non-technical. I don't think she will be backing it up to a computer so I tested out the "write the video to a DVD" feature called One Touch Disk Burn.

While the battery was charging up, I installed the software and rebooted my PC. I filmed a few shots and plugged the camera into the PC (USB). The software started up and give me a few big fat buttons on the screen (i.e, copy to computer, One Touch Disk Burn, etc). I hit the Burn feature.

It worked flawlessly, it told me to drop a DVD into my burner, then it got started. The disk plays just like a DVD, with a simple menu. The video quality was mediocre, but then 1) I filmed indoors, and 2) I am spoiled my my HG10 HD camera.

I would highly recommend one of these hard drive cameras to anyone who can live with less-than-HD quality. HD is quite a hassle right now. I haven't tried re-encoding to a standard DVD, but I believe it takes quite some time.

For the record, I love my HD camera. I have a complete system (NAS, PS3, Ethernet) in order to view my video with ease. I don't know too many people who will go to these measures (ok, lots on these forums). I think a lot of regular consumers are jumping into HD cameras and being disappointed.

I have a HG10 and I think the quality is fantastic especially when viewed on a HD TV/LCD @ 1080/x

The file format produced by the HG10 is m2ts or something like that so it needs to be converted, you can drag and drop the files from the HG10 direct to a folder on your computer, you can rename the extension to *.wmv and it will play on WMP!

Personally I use Corel VS11.5 to grab the video direct from the camera whilst attached to the computer and then edit, add titles, sound etc and then save to a multitude of formats from HD Blu-ray to low quality VCD format.

What you choose will depend on your conversion choice but a 3 to 4 minute shoot will be about 300 meg DVD.

With VS you can copy straight from the HG10 to burn on the fly to a DVD/CD but I have not tried that.

Thanks for the replies. What is VS?

Visual Studio

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1175714228558

Thanks.

The file format produced by the HG10 is m2ts or something like that so it needs to be converted, you can drag and drop the files from the HG10 direct to a folder on your computer, you can rename the extension to *.wmv and it will play on WMP!

you are using standard decoders? you don't need any specific decoder (e.g. CoreAVC) installed?
i'll have to try this. is the quality through WMP good?

The file format produced by the HG10 is m2ts or something like that so it needs to be converted, you can drag and drop the files from the HG10 direct to a folder on your computer, you can rename the extension to *.wmv and it will play on WMP!
It is pretty lame to rename MTS/M2TS to WMV, these are different containers. Why not associating MTS and M2TS with WMP? If you don't have proper codec, renaming won't help anyway.

My experience with the HG10 is as follows:

Picture quality is stunning when viewed in its true format..when converted to standard DVD it still looks good, but nothing like its true format....
Editing can be a headache if you have a older computer, a single core P4 3 is not going to cut it...a Core2 Duo 2.4 or better is the bare minimum if you intend the edit your AVCHD footage..Doing just a 5 minute Video using Pinnacle burning to a DVD with a AVCHD file at 100% quality required nearly 20 to 25 minutes with my Vista 64Bit Q6600 Quadcore setup, I was getting no more than 15 to 20 FPS during the editing process, thats with 4 cores going 100%, on my other system using XPPro and a E6600 2.4 Core 2 Duo I got around 5 to 7 FPS... Pinnacle Ultimate does a very good job working with AVCHD files..As does Vegas 8 Pro, even Nero 8 will handle it ....It comes with a basic Corel software package that will burn your footage to a dvd for playback in your basic DVD player...You can fit only about 30 Minutes of AVCHD footage on a 4.7 DVD at 100% quality , 1 hour on a dual layer DVD disk .... If you have a Bluray player or a PS3 or HD player you can burn your AVCHD files to a standard 4.7 or Dual layer DVD and watch them without any video loss at all....

Thanks Warriorking. You answered the rest of my questions. I guess I should have told everyone that I have:
Q6600 @ 3.2GHz (overclocked)
4GB of PC6400
8800GT

and a PS3

So I knew my hardware could handle it. I just wanted to know if it was worth the extra hassle. You've shown me that it will be.

Thanks

If you have a Bluray player or a PS3 or HD player you can burn your AVCHD files to a standard 4.7 or Dual layer DVD and watch them without any video loss at all....

You mean a regular DVD player won't play that? I have a BD player, but don't have a BD burner. So how would I play it back w/ best quality?

You mean a regular DVD player won't play that? I have a BD player, but don't have a BD burner. So how would I play it back w/ best quality?

Burn the AVCHD files to a standard 4.5G DVD. It will play fine in your Bluray player.

Burn the AVCHD files to a standard 4.5G DVD. It will play fine in your Bluray player.

Thanks! If I get an HV30 instead though, I can still burn the m2t to a 4.5G DVD and the BD player will read it, is that right?

Just wondering which camera to get, since I have a BD player for playback.

Check out this rain video from an HV30. I think I'm going with an HV30 for slightly better motion & low-light performance. Can an HG10 look this good, I'm not sure?

http://vimeo.com/431500

This one is also incredible

http://vimeo.com/717956

Thanks! If I get an HV30 instead though, I can still burn the m2t to a 4.5G DVD and the BD player will read it, is that right?
No.

No.

Ok, I guess I was thinking of the 360 and PS3, which can read an m2t file burned on a DVD. or you can burn a DiVX HD file on a DVD, I think most BD players will read that.

edit: don't think m2t file works on 360, just PS3.

Ok, I guess I was thinking of the 360 and PS3, which can read an m2t file burned on a DVD. or you can burn a DiVX HD file on a DVD, I think most BD players will read that.

edit: don't think m2t file works on 360, just PS3.
You can easily remux MPEG-2 m2t into format supported by Blu-ray and burn it as a Blu-ray disk. You can burn it as an HD DVD disk as well. This is not a big deal but still requires some work, you cannot just dump raw files on a disk and expect a player to play them.

You can easily remux MPEG-2 m2t into format supported by Blu-ray and burn it as a Blu-ray disk. You can burn it as an HD DVD disk as well. This is not a big deal but still requires some work, you cannot just dump raw files on a disk and expect a player to play them.

People say you can burn the raw data files to a DVD and the PS3 will read them, but only the PS3 as far as I know.

That is correct, you can burn the AVCHD files straight to a DVD and the PS3 and most Bluray players will play them fine...

That is correct, you can burn the AVCHD files straight to a DVD and the PS3 and most Bluray players will play them fine...
AVCHD files -- yes, MPEG-2 M2T files -- no. Also, not all Blu-ray players play bare AVCHD files.