I recently shot some HDV footage and was amazed how good it looked on our 720p projector. I have Core2Duo Mac and imported the 1080i footage, plugged in the projector to the DVI port and was really disappointed. What happened to the 3 dimensional quality of 1080!! I was watching the original uncut 1080 import.

Could it be that Apple's HDV to AIC conversion (the only way to edit the video without having the HDV native $1200 Final Cut Pro) reduces the quality THAT much?

I played a 2 minute clip: HV30 through component 1 and the 2GB AIC Quicktime (.MOV) file through DVI. This allowed for a true A/B. The MOV file looked ok. It'd make you say "nice video" but switch to the HV30 source and you'd say "wow, THAT is hi-def!"

As much as I love to edit our videos into mini movies, I may just have to go back to 1998 when I played video uncut. It looks THAT MUCH BETTER.

So question: whether its HDV tapes or AVCHD SD cards, what are some solutions for playback in the video's native format?

So question: whether its HDV tapes or AVCHD SD cards, what are some solutions for playback in the video's native format?

For me, I use PS3. Actually, it was after my purchase of PS3, and realizing its amazing HD playback quality and flexibility that I began to think about buying a HD camcorder. PS3 can give you flawless AVCHD playback. You can just remove the SD card, plug it in and start playing.

I played a 2 minute clip: HV30 through component 1 and the 2GB AIC Quicktime (.MOV) file through DVI.

You converted to MOV and that was a mistake. The trick to editing, is to avoid as many conversions/edits as possible because with each one you lose quality.

With HDV (and now avchd with a few programs) you can do some simple edits (straight cuts) and then "smart render" (render without rencoding) to disk for close to exact duplicate quality.

With the PS3 you can even STRAIGHT COPY your HDV or avchd to disk, play that back and not lose any quality at all.

But DO NOT convert these files over to something else if you don't have to. If you input a M2T for example, then you want to try and output a M2T (or at least an mpeg since that is what HDV is).

I use VideoRedo to do simple cuts and edits. it does not reencode. Put on DvD and watch on a PS3.

Or...author HDDVD folders...put on DVD...watch in HDDVD player.

Hi,

On a similar point, I have a new AVCHD camcorder and although I might get best quality by viewing my videos at home on my Blu-ray/PS3/HDDVD player (which I do not have yet!), I was also hoping to share what I produce with colleagues in standard DVD format. Should I record in standard format? If not, what is the best method, software and settings to use to produce a shareable DVD that will play in a standard player with the least loss of quality?

Clearly, I am a newbie and will really appreciate any advice.

Thanks
Mike

Hi,

On a similar point, I have a new AVCHD camcorder and although I might get best quality by viewing my videos at home on my Blu-ray/PS3/HDDVD player (which I do not have yet!), I was also hoping to share what I produce with colleagues in standard DVD format. Should I record in standard format? If not, what is the best method, software and settings to use to produce a shareable DVD that will play in a standard player with the least loss of quality?

Clearly, I am a newbie and will really appreciate any advice.

Thanks
Mike

Definitely don't record in standard format! There are many ways to convert your HD footage to SD after shooting, so don't waste your time shooting in SD. Because not only will you have defeated the purpose of having a HD camcorder, you will also be stuck with SD footage.

There are a couple of ways to take your AVCHD footage and transfer it into a watchable DVD that you can share with your colleagues. Probably the best way in terms of quality is to use a video editing program that will take your AVCHD footage and convert it to DVD-spec MPEG-2 format, from which you can burn a DVD with a DVD-burner using that same video editing software or a separate DVD creator software.

I just bought my first AVCHD camcorder (Panasonic HDC-HS100) and have been having so much fun shooting and watching my footage that I haven't had time to investigate which are the latest and greatest video editing software for AVCHD. However, from previous experience with video editing and working with HD formats, no doubt you'll need a very powerful computer with a lot of RAM, and still, this process will take a lot of time just in the encoding process (i.e. hours and hours). Also, sometimes the encoding goes bad or you choose a wrong setting, and you might have to do everything over. So for a self-described "newbie", this may not be the best option.

A much simpler way is to buy a DVD-recorder. I have one myself and it's great. Basically you hook up your AVCHD camcorder to the DVD-recorder via the RCA (yellow, white, red) jacks, and just hit "play" on the camcorder and "record" on the DVD-recorder and off you go! Just hit "stop" when you want to stop recording, and because the DVD-recorder will allow you to record and stop as many times as you want up until you use all the space in the DVD-R, you can also use it as a sort of primitive online editing tool.

The drawback to this method is that the quality coming from the camcorder is reduced to RCA quality, and it won't look as good as if you were to use a video editing program. If your camcorder has a SVHS output and your DVD recorder has it as an input, that would offer you marginably better video quality. For DV and HDV camcorders, you can also use the Firewire (IEEE 1394) port if your DVD recorder has one, and that would offer the best quality of all, but I don't believe any AVCHD camcorders on the market now offers this connection (usually just USB 2.0).

Hope this info helps! In short, the easiest way to convert your AVCHD footage to standard DVD is to just purchase a DVD recorder and dub your footage that way. It may not be as nice looking as using a video editing program, but it will definitely save you a lot of headaches and time, especially if you are a newbie.

Going back to what the OP was discussing, I have to concur that the PS3 is definitely the best HD camcorder footage playback device, bar none. Besides burning a DVD to view this footage, I think a better way is to invest in a external HDD to store your video footage, and to hook it up to the PS3 by USB 2.0.

Personally, I just bought a 500 GB HDD for exactly this purpose and it's great! I can easily watch all my AVCHD footage which is stored on the HDD on the PS3 in perfect quality without any problems!!!

HDV is a little bit trickier. Besides my Panasonic HDC-HS100, I also have a Sony HDR-HC7 HDV camcorder. The reason that it's tricky is because the PS3 requires any external HDD to be formatted in FAT32. The problem with FAT32 is that it has a limit of 4 GB for any one file. As we all know, an hour of HDV footage can easily be over 10 GB.

So for all the HDV tapes that I've captured, I haven't been able to transfer it to my FAT32 HDD for my PS3. Instead, I have needed to "break up" the individual HDV MPEG-2 files into files less than 4 GB using a video editing program. This is very time-consuming and not really worth it, so right now, if I want to watch my HDV footage, I just hook up my HDV camcorder to my display device via HDMI and watch the tapes. Old school and not as flexible in terms of skipping through the footage, but saves a lot of time with the video encoding.

Hopefully, Sony will have a firmware patch in the future so that the PS3 is compatible with NTFS and therefore eliminate this 4 GB file size problem, but I doubt that will ever happen. So I'm just going to wait, perhaps later on I'll invest in a HTPC that is dedicated to playing these HD clips off a NTFS HDD on my display device in my living room. :D

Hi KyaDawn,

thank you for your swift and very helpful reply. It looks like a new computer and editing software are called for (for my SR12). I don't intend to be a noob for too long and want to get just enough of a grasp on the techie side of things to allow me to be creative in my movie making. It seems that video demands a fair bit of expertise in both the technical and the creative side of things?

Looking through the threads, most people seem to be using Vegas Pro but I wondered if this would be too demanding for a newcomer? I am happy to learn but wonder if there is a similar easier to use program that I could get started with quickly...Or would my learning time be better spent getting straight into Vegas Pro?

Thanks a lot
Mike

Looking through the threads, most people seem to be using Vegas Pro but I wondered if this would be too demanding for a newcomer?

I myself would not recommend Vegas Pro for newcomers. Depending on your needs, some lower priced software package like Ulead VideoStudio, which actually is quite powerful, may be all you need. You should download a trial software, edit a few video, get a feel of how much time you want to spend on video editing before deciding on spending so much money. And to be honest, since Vegas Pro still does not have smart rendering, I would rather use other programs at this point.

So for all the HDV tapes that I've captured, I haven't been able to transfer it to my FAT32 HDD for my PS3. Instead, I have needed to "break up" the individual HDV MPEG-2 files into files less than 4 GB using a video editing program. This is very time-consuming and not really worth it, so right now, if I want to watch my HDV footage, I just hook up my HDV camcorder to my display device via HDMI and watch the tapes.

There are other options. You can try streaming from your PC or NAS (with media server installed). Or use dual layer DVD for footage < 9GB.

I recently shot some HDV footage and was amazed how good it looked on our 720p projector. I have Core2Duo Mac and imported the 1080i footage, plugged in the projector to the DVI port and was really disappointed. What happened to the 3 dimensional quality of 1080!! I was watching the original uncut 1080 import.

Could it be that Apple's HDV to AIC conversion (the only way to edit the video without having the HDV native $1200 Final Cut Pro) reduces the quality THAT much?

I played a 2 minute clip: HV30 through component 1 and the 2GB AIC Quicktime (.MOV) file through DVI. This allowed for a true A/B. The MOV file looked ok. It'd make you say "nice video" but switch to the HV30 source and you'd say "wow, THAT is hi-def!"

As much as I love to edit our videos into mini movies, I may just have to go back to 1998 when I played video uncut. It looks THAT MUCH BETTER.

So question: whether its HDV tapes or AVCHD SD cards, what are some solutions for playback in the video's native format?

The answer is yes, you just need an HD playback device, and the best one is a PS3.
But your question really is: " can you edit the hell out of the original footage and it still looks identical in PQ? to the original" that answer is definate yes for HDV, and perhaps for AVCHD.
I use Sony Vegas 8 to edit HDV and as long as I keep the output still in HDV the PQ looks the same. In fact the result always looks much better because of added effect. Now my home video can really look like movies on the big projection screen.
If you just want to cut and paste HDV,but completely redo the audio tracks then Womble is the best software. It doesn't touch your HDV but adds new audio.
If you just want to cut and paste HDV footages then VideoRedo is the most convenient.
Most of video software let you edit HDV in native form. And then you just need to author it either into BD or HDDVD format and playback in a BD or HDDVD player. In PS3's case it will even play the raw .mpg or .ts files without authoring.
As for AVCHD since few software processes it in its native format, the PQ is likely to suffer a bit during extensive editing.

There are other options. You can try streaming from your PC or NAS (with media server installed). Or use dual layer DVD for footage < 9GB.

Yes, I've tried streaming from my PC but my wireless connection is not fast enough to support it at a smooth bitrate. So perhaps if I tried a wired connection, it might work, but it's not practical in my house right now.

I haven't thought of using dual layer DVDs, but I remember those as being very expensive (perhaps they have come down in price?), but 9GB still won't fit an entire HDV tape, unfortunately. :(

In any case, I have a LOT of HDV tapes so I'm not going to burn a dual layer DVD for each one. I'm already busy trying to capture all the tapes as sooner or later, they are going to develop drop-outs so want that perfect digital copy before it's too late.

I'm sure later on the PS3 or another device that will come along will support NTFS HDDs or I will just have to invest in a HTPC set-up which is fine for me, as I expect to have all my camcorder footage (as well as videos taken from my digital cameras) in HDD(s) and easily accesible.

Yes, I've tried streaming from my PC but my wireless connection is not fast enough to support it at a smooth bitrate. So perhaps if I tried a wired connection, it might work, but it's not practical in my house right now.

I haven't thought of using dual layer DVDs, but I remember those as being very expensive (perhaps they have come down in price?), but 9GB still won't fit an entire HDV tape, unfortunately. :(

In any case, I have a LOT of HDV tapes so I'm not going to burn a dual layer DVD for each one. I'm already busy trying to capture all the tapes as sooner or later, they are going to develop drop-outs so want that perfect digital copy before it's too late.

I'm sure later on the PS3 or another device that will come along will support NTFS HDDs or I will just have to invest in a HTPC set-up which is fine for me, as I expect to have all my camcorder footage (as well as videos taken from my digital cameras) in HDD(s) and easily accesible.

I have a suggestion for you: perhaps you can use VideoRedo to organize your HDV tapes.
I have the same situation with dozens of HVD tapes, a PS3 and an old PC (7yr old). What I do is dump several tapes onto the PC at a time and then import them to VedioRedo to make a big file, and then I simply export .ts files in 22min chunks which translate to 4.6GB files. All of those 4.6GB files are burned onto DVDs(4.7GB) as data files. With DVD at 10cent a piece the process is cheap and effecient. Those DVDs with .ts raw video files on them can be played perfectly on PS3, can be retrieved for further editing anytime and can serve as a digital backup to the original tapes. After I finish transfering all the tapes to DVDs I would erase the files on harddrives. I figure the chance of losing copies in both tapes and DVDs is pretty slim.

Yes, I've tried streaming from my PC but my wireless connection is not fast enough to support it at a smooth bitrate. So perhaps if I tried a wired connection, it might work, but it's not practical in my house right now.

This is the setup which works for me. I set up a second wireless router to connect a NAS external hard drive and PS3 by wire. And the routers are set up as a WDS network (very simple to do with Linksys GL router and Tomato firmware). So the streaming from NAS to PS3 is by wire (via second router) and there is no issue even with 1080p media. The wireless transfer of my video footage from my PC to the NAS may take a while; but once transferred, I can then access all the videos from my PS3 with a few button press of the remote controller. Much cheaper than setting up a HTPC, and more convenient than burning discs.