The "Official" Canon Vixia HF10 / HF100 Owner's Thread - Page 100

Hi, I apologize for my novice-ness on this. I just got an HF100 yesterday and charged it overnight so I haven't had a chance to test it out. This is my first camcorder ever but w/ an upcoming baby, I have to have one and the HD and flash memory were appealing. Anyhoo, one thing I noticed, while rotating the camcorder in my hand, is that there is a sound,kind of like a marble rolling back and forth, from inside the camcorder. I thought it might be an exterior latch or something making the noise but I didn't see anything. It's a fairly faint sound but it was still a concern like something may be loose inside. I haven't put the memory card in yet so I don't know if that was the cause. Does everyone's camera do this?

I am also going to get a new PC. I'm probably not going to be doing much of any editing of the videos. I would like to be able to watch them on my PC in their full HD glory unless the cost is prohibitive. What should I look for in the PC (quad core, video card, ram, HD LCD)?

Last question, I can pop the card in my PS3 and play the videos correct? I read this elsewhere but I want to confirm.

Thanks in advance!

I've been using Nero 8 (Nero Vision 5) to author AVCHD disks for almost a year now and have no issues other than an occasional crash of NV5. I use Pixela to copy the files from the SD card to a folder on my computer. In the destination directory Pixela creates subdirectories by date for each shooting day and combines and renames each time-contiguous clip set into a single file named for the date and time for the start of the clip down to the exact second that the clip begins and with an .m2ts extension. I've had no problem at all using Nero Vision 5 to import those files with the .m2ts extension onto an AVCHD format DVD - it usually takes me around an hour to go from the memory card to a finished DVD with about 10-20 minutes devoted to reading the files off the card with Pixela and then importing them into an AVCHD format project in Nero Vision. I then spend another 10 to 60 minutes trimming the video if that's necessary, another 10 to 20 minutes designing menus (or more if I can't make up my mind) and then about 20 minutes burning a new DVD. Nero support is not what it used to be and I have avoided upgrading to Nero 9 based on installation horror stories and negative reviews. I had similar issues with the installation of Nero 8 but after I got rid of all their autoloading bloatware I was able to use Nero Vision to author DVDs with no real issues. So the tech that told you that you couldn't use .m2ts files is likely insane. Why they would remove such a feature is beyond me - I think there are others on this forum who routinely use Nero 9. I know for a fact that Nero 8 produces AVCHD DVDs with Smart-rendering very efficiently. But one caveat - I don't know if they ever fixed this but you can't write AVCHD format to a hard drive folder - you have to write it to a DVD - for some idiotic reason they do not populate or name the AVCHD control files correctly when they write an AVCHD DVD to a hard drive folder. They write directly to disk correctly and I have no issues playing the resulting disks at 1080p through my PS3 onto an HDTV - but the image they create if you write directly to a hard drive folder is botched up. Whether they fixed that in Nero 9 I don't know.

OK bought Adobe Premiere Elements 7 tonight so I could render my videos. I rendered my first video and when I tried to play it I got a nv4_disp.dll BSOD and had to restart my system. What do I do now?

The sound you are hearing is normal and is from the image stabilizer mechanism.
And yes, you can play the AVCHD video straight from the memory card via the SD slot on the PS3. Your second question regarding the specs for editing I cannot answer.
Enjoy you camcorder!

Okay,
I've got the same camcorder and the same Blu Ray player, the Panasonic BD-35. I use a Mac, so I've used Toast Titanium with the HD plugin to burn the AVCHD video off the SD card unto a DVD-R that plays back on the BD-35. You can also use the SD slot on your BD-35 to play back the video you have recorded for quick viewing

Ahahlberg, whenever I try trimming clips in Nero Vision, it seems that the portions that are edited are not smart-rendered, so I lose quality. Do you have this issue?

However, in Pixela, when I trim/split/rearrange clips, the whole thing is always 100% smart rendered. This is why I favor Pixela for editing. It is the ONLY product that produces 100% perfect quality output. Even Sony Pro 8 converts AVCHD to their Sony AVCHD, so there is loss of quality.

I was on the phone with the guy for 45 mins (they only charged me for 10). He had me on hold several times as he conferred with others and we emailed some tests back and forth. After it was all said and done, they couldn't figure it out other than that the trial version that I had was possibly messed up or there was some kind of unexplainable bug. We both just basically gave up.

You and I shoot the same stuff (club volleyball) and you helped me a bunch on this post by sharing how you shoot a day of matches. I am using Pixela to load onto my computer and to burn the discs. They are nothing fancy but they are titled and I can create a disc for each match. The disc has the games on the menu with date/time stamp. AVCHD is quick and when I make a regular DVD, I burn at least two matches on a disc by starting before bed and letting it burn into the night because as you know, it takes forever. Thus far, as long as I do a good job of starting and stopping at the beginning of games when filming, I am pretty satisfied.

I presume that at some point I am going to want to do more editing (highlight videos and such). I haven't explored what Pixela can do, but from reading posts on this site, looks to be pretty bad. I am a bit gun shy with regard to Nero 9.0 based upon my last experience, but your comments give me confidence to possibly try again later.

Thanks

Is New World Video Direct legitimate? They advertise the WD H37C at $120; has anyone made this purchase?

Thanks

Well I'd be leery of Nero 9.0 - I've read too much about the installation being difficult due to the bloatware that comes with it. I had to deal with similar issues with Nero 7 and Nero 8 - Ahead software, the authors, decided they needed to take over your machine with lots of startup programs and taking over all your media files. It took hours to disable all of that junk - but one disabled it works pretty well - but it's the memories of that experience and the many bad reviews I've read that keep me from gambling on Nero 9 - as you know we're in the middle of the club season and I don't need any problems in my workflow. BTW - I'll be at the Colorado Crossroads JNQ tournament next weekend in Denver shooting my daughter's 17-1 team - if you're going to be there we can exchange experiences over a cup of coffee! I've been playing with lens arrangements and am reasonably happy with what I have now. Also, you may want to look at [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_0O_RgYx5g&feature=related"] for an example of the content of the kind of video you'll need to produce for college volleyball recruiting to send to coaches - the format seems to be what most coaches want to see.

I'll have to check on my settings - no amount of trimming I've done in recent history has had any effect on the rendering time - which has been nil - a few seconds of claiming its transcoding and then it start writing to disk. The only time I hit any long delays is when I'm downconverting to standard DVD - then it takes 2 to 3 hours to downconvert a one to two hour set of clips. You might check your AVCHD video options - Quality set to "High Quality", Sample format "Interlaced", Encoding Mode "High Quality (2-Pass VBR)" and Audio Format "Automatic". Don't remember for sure now since I first chose these settings last May or June but I can edit the clips like crazy and add menus and transitions and the only rendering it does is for the menus - the time devoted to "transcoding" the clips is in the seconds not hours - and they play fine on my 61" HDTV through a PS3 with no difference in apparent quality from the original memory card to the finished DVD. I'll look for any other settings I may have changed from the defaults - I do vaguely remember playing with some settings but am not sure what else I may have changed - I know I reacted to Nero's greyed out statement in the AVCHD that said that the bit rate would be 14000 kbits/sec - and played with some parameters to try and change it. And when I did make a change then it did start rerendering so I put it back to what I described above and it doesn't rerender. So try the settings I gave and if you're doing anything different in the AVCHD Video options that might be the cause.

Like many of the quoted low price stores this operation tends to bait and switch. You'll get an e-mail saying there's some clarification needed on your order and giving you a toll-free number to call. When you call you'll get a bait-and-switch pitch. But the guy I talked to, Maurice, turned out to be fairly flexible and after some e-mail and phone calls back and forth I wound up buying what I wanted for a fair price - I was looking for a Canon filter/lens adapter I could use on my new Canon A590 IS point-and-shoot and I wound up with one that's sturdier than the Canon part, fits as well, and with some adapter rings I need for roughly the same price as the official Canon price others wanted to charge. On the whole, there are a lot of bait-and-switch operations out there with low-ball advertised prices. If you are patient you can wind up with what you wanted for a fair price but if you don't like negotiating then you're better off to stick with people like Amazon or Newegg or Buy.com than to work with some of these bait-and-switch operations. NWV Direct turned out to be less hostile and more reasonable than most of them. But if the price looks too good to be true, i.e. 20% below what Amazon will sell it for directly (not through their "Marketplace"), it usually is.

Thanks,

We actually live in Naperville, IL. I mentioned my brother's Steakhouse in Castle Rock because I saw you were from CS. My brother lives in Monument. Good luck in the tournament though. My daughter is on a 13-1 team so we are a few years behind you.

I took your advice and bought a wide angle lens. I went out the night before I needed it and bought the only one that Best Buy had (Sun Pak .5x) $39. The place we normally play has a mezzanine that you can film from that works great with a normal lens. However, we played the last two weekends at a place with tight quarters and the wide angle was a must. Although the lens was very cheap, it seems to work ok, as long as I don't touch the zoom. I have yet to shoot anything without the wide angle with this new camera so I don't really know if I am losing any quality. I also bought a very cheap Sunpak UV lens. Do you think the UV lens quality matters at all?

One purchase I am very happy with is the BP 827 battery. It gets me close to 5 hours. Sticks out the back a long way, but I only use it on a tripod so who cares.

As I mentioned, I am a real novice, so I am feeling good about being able to store the videos on my PC and burn very simple AVCHD and standard DVDs. We had power league on Satuday, came home, watched the video on the PS3, loaded it into Pixela, burned the AVCHDs discs first and then the regular DVD through the night.

Pixela does not seem to be discussed favorably on this site, but I thought I would play around with it a bit to see what it can do for me.

You have given me great advice and I would appreciate any other thoughts you have.

Thanks

Keep me posted on how that BP-827 works out - it wasn't available when I started out and the stories about the non-Canon batteries not reminding you of how much power was left kept me from buying any of them. I have the original 809 and two 819s which pretty much guarantees me the ability to shoot one day of matches - just have to remember to recharge all the batteries overnight to be ready for the next day at these 3-day affairs like Crossroads and the other JNQ tournaments around the country. I've never tried Pixela because I don't have any DVD-R discs - I've always used +R. I think my original reasoning years ago for not using -R disks is that you couldn't set the book type and some older DVD players wouldn't play them - probably not much of an issue these days but I had a Sony DVD player that would not play -Rs recorded on a computer - but it would play +R because you could force the Book Type I think. Anyway - if I ever buy any -R disks I'll give Pixela a try - but I'm well-trained in Nero 8's foibles and am reluctant to try much else - and it will write on any media type! But as you're finding out - if it works for what you need - a disk where you can have each set have a title and you can put information on the screen about who you were playing, when you were playing, and even the scores of each set then what else do you really need. I don't know if I mentioned it before but I have an Epson R320 StylusPhoto printer that prints directly on DVDs and CDs including the 8cm variety - when I'm making copies for other people I use inkjet printable blanks so I can put details on the disk label surface - including a disclaimer that the AVCHD disks only play on Hi-Def equipment. I've also used paper DVD labels but those can be risky - if they ever peel off inside a player they can gum up the works - hasn't happened to any that I've done so far but I've heard rumors. If you ever think about doing that, buying DVD label sheets to apply to your disks I can give you some tips and relay some experiences that may save you some time and trouble! Hope your daughter continues to enjoy volleyball - keeping her active in sports sets a lifelong habit that will carry her through no matter what she does. And another thing to think about is Martial Arts training - not really so much for the ability to fend off an attacker although that's important - it's also about learning respect for your teachers and for those who have gone before you. I credit that part of my daughter's life for making her a model student. I've never taken any martial arts training but I've watched my son and daughter go through it and it has helped them to have confidence and respect for others. But I'm getting off topic! Have a nice day!

With the ever dropping price of flash memory does it even make sense to consider the HF10 over the HF100? I'm thinking of picking one of these up soon.

Thanks, ahahlberg. I will give it a shot. I have been able to trim multiple separate MTS clips and then burn out multiple separate files with what looks like 100% quality. But how do I take multiple clips and make one MTS clip with Nero (with no quality loss)?

You mention doing a 2-pass encode, but I heard that a 2-pass encode does not allow for smart rendering.

Can you go through your basic workflow?

Nope. Flash memory is much cheaper to purchase separately from the camera. And it is much quicker and easier to transfer video from the camera to your computer by removing the card and inserting into your computer's card reader.

After using Pixela ImageMixer 3 to assemble a DVD from some HF100 clips, I inserted a blank DVD-R, clicked 'write', and after a few hrs of processing get a status popup saying 'DVD create failed'. Grrr...
Before clicking 'OK' to close the box, I searched around and found the entire DVD file structure was sitting in a folder called:
'C:\\Documents and Settings\\\\Local Settings\\Temp\\TempPath\\VIDEO_TS', where is your Windows account name (Administrator, etc).
I copied these files (they weren't locked) to a different directory, and then used DVDShrink to burn them to the DVD. Lo & behold, I get a DVD with a nice set of titled menus & everything played just fine. IM3 apparently dies just as it tries to write to the DVD.
Clicking the IM3 fail msg 'OK' deletes all of the DVD files in the above directory and you're left with nothing, so don't click that OK' too fast!
The next time, I let IM3 start the DVD processing, then I ejected the blank DVD-R (IM3 never checks it again). This just ensures the failure above would happen predictably, and I again copied & used DVDShrink (writing to a DVD+R!). I tried making a 6 Gb DVD with IM3 and then letting DVDShrink compress it; IM3 didn't allow it. Just make multiple 4 Gb DVD file sets with IM3 and re-author with DVDShrink, Nero, or another authoring SW. Good luck

I had the same reaction "Won't 2-pass VBR require more processing?" but I think the answer may be that the format coming off the camera is already VBR and thus, when Nero checks the original clips it's looking to see what needs to be done - does it need to change the aspect ratio, does it need to change from fixed rate to VBR - sort of a checklist of what's going to be done during the transcoding/final render process - and as long as you select parameters that are the same as the camera is already producing then when he starts to process the final render he finds that the clips already meet that criteria. I've actually described my normal workflow http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=2864 using Nero in an earlier post but your question raises a point I overlooked. When you first start a project you have to be sure to specify the largest disk size, in this case DVD-9. Nero will look at the clips you want to use and decide if their native format will fit the specified disk size - and if not he'll pop up a panel asking if you want to adjust the clips to fit the disk - this is a red flag exercise - if you say yes the first thing he'll do is lower the resolution of the smallest clips first until the size of the clips falls below the specified disk size. And the only feedback you'll get that he did this is that instead of 1920x1080 your clips will get changed to 1440x1080. And if that happens then he has to newly transcode your clips - so instead of a quick hour or so to go from camera to DVD you wind up with one of those overnight re-renders. You can always change the disk size later if all your clips will fit a standard DVD - but that's usually less than 1/2 hour of 1920x1080 video. In my case, what I shoot always takes between 40 minutes and an hour - but every once in a while I forget to set the disk size first to DVD-9 and I'll get that one innocent-looking window that tells me the clips are too big and would I like to adjust them to fit - if you say yes because you're in a hurry you can get all the way to the render phase and find out it's going to be 9 to 13 hours before you'll get a disk - and it'll be at 1440x1080 not the 1920x1080 you were looking for.

Got carried away and forgot to answer the first part of your question. To make one clip out of multiple clips is pretty straightforward - BUT - it is one of the quirky things about Nero. But first - to make sure I understand your problem, are you asking if you can combine clips that were imported as separate items and get one video track out without chapter marks so that the resulting disk consists of one and only one item? I'll have to repeat a remark I made earlier about Nero Vision 5 - it cannot write an AVCHD hard disk image that's actually burnable to a DVD - but it does create the necessary .MTS files - so if what you're asking for is to combine multiple clips into one .mts file then it will do that albeit through a back door. And whether you can load that file back onto the camera and play it is an experiment I've never tried. I do know that Nero Vision 5 will not build a valid control file set for an AVCHD disk into a hard drive folder so the disk image is useless for anything but stealing the .mts file and using it somewhere else. Nero Showtime will play the clip but the rest of the AVCHD fileset is useless - now maybe they fixed that in Nero 9's version of Nero Vision - assumed to be version 6.
In any case, gluing together multiple videos into a single video is simple but quirky. assuming you have multiple clips all listed separately in the first working menu, i.e. where you wind up after saying you want to make an AVCHD disk and then importing the clips from the card of the IMXlibrary - you start with the second clip, assuming you want the first one to be the only surviving clip, you edit that clip and with the whole clip selected - or whatever edited portion you want, and you select the "Cut" icon and then click next which takes you out of the edit mode. If you had selected the whole clip he'll tell you he's going to delete the whole track/clip - that's OK - the track/clip you want is in the edit buffer - now edit the first clip and when it's up in the editor then paste the clip - and here's where it's been quirky for me - no matter how I've tried to position the time line he seems to always add the new clip at the beginning rather than the end - maybe I'm missing something but I've just gotten used to it - the good news is that the inserted clip (or even clips if you cut multiple segments to paste) are all now highlighted - if you switch to the storyboard mode you'll see the pasted clips highlighted to the left of whatever clips were already there - just click on any one of the new clips and drag them down the timeline to the right until you're positioned after the last old clip - and voila - you have added that clip (or set of clips) to the first video. Keep doing that process until you've accumulated all the clips you want onto the one track. Delete any tracks left you aren't going to use and your done with the "assemble" phase. If you want chapter marks then go thru that process. Now depending on how long (in time) a set of clips you're talking about you could still wind up with multiple files because there's a file size limit of some kind in the UDF format.

Now there's another method for doing this if all you want to do is get one file for all the video clips - I've only done this a few times for AVCHD stuff but if just make a disk - almost regardless of what tool you use - pixela or Nero - and then start a new project in Nero Vision and Import the disk - he'll create a folder under Nero Vision's normal data directory for ImportedVideo that will consist of a name associated with today's date and in the folder will be one MTS file containing all the video on the disk - no menus - no chapter marks - just the video - and it will be called 0001.mts.
Now there are probably other ways using Nero Recode as well but I've never tried them. It may be that the easiest way is what I just described - just burn a disk with the clips you want and then import that disk into a new project - and the mere act of importing it converts the whole thing into a single contiguous track - you don't even have to finish the project - once the import is complete you'll have one MTS file sitting on your hard drive. But if you wind up without smart rendering. i.e. he wants to take hours to transcode - then you're changing something - like the output resolution - which can sneak up on you - see one of my recent posts about setting the disk size to DVD-9 when you start the project - Nero will downsize the clips after a relatively innocent message asking you to approve his downsizing when he thinks the clips are bigger than the current disk size will hold - and he defaults to DVD-5 - which is about 1/2 hour of FXP mode video.
Don't know if this long-winded dissertation actually answers your original question - hope it was close!

Great! I'll give it a shot. Thanks!

I am considering either the HF100 or if reviews are good, springing for the 200.
Anyway, I'll be filming a lot of youth sports, primarily baseball, but some basketball, wrestling and soccer as well.
Do any of you use wide angle lenses? Are they worth it? If so, which one and where did you get it?

Thanks in advance.

I just picked up an open-box HF100 from Brandmart. I'll charge it up tonight and put it through its paces tomorrow.

Given that it's an Open-box item, what can I check out to ensure that everythings working OK, apart from the obvious?

... one other thing. I have a PS3 but it doesn't have a SD slot, just a couple of USB ones. Can I take the SD card from the HF100 and pop it into the a memory card reader and then hook the card reader to the USB port of the PS3 and watch my recordings that way?

Yes, I do it all the time, works fantastic!

I didn't know that they made PS3's that does not have an SD slot. I have an 80GB PS3 purchased in Nov 2007 and it has an SD slot on the front. One annoying thing about watching my movies this way is if I have a lot of clips, there's no way to get an index of all of the clips to pick the clip you want to see. It starts from the beginning and you have to hit the ">>" for skip each clip. It would also help if from the first clip, I can hit the "<<" button to loop around to the last clip, but that doesn't work.

Yup, I bought the 40GB unit about the same time as you did. On the 40GB model, they dropped the SD slot and the chip that gave backwards compatibility with PS2 games. At the time, I couldn't see really needing the stuff I was giving up, but then again you can never have too many I/O options.

So I just read a bunch of pages on this thread and I was hoping someone can let me know if I've got this right. I'm planning on buying the HF100 b/c I can't justify the additional cost for the HF S100 or the HF200. I will primarily use this to take vids of our twins due in a couple of weeks and maybe some of my hockey games. So what I want to do is first get a 37 to (37 or other dia) step up ring so that I don't wear out the threads on the HF100 by changing out filters. I would get a circular polarizer, a UV, and a ND 4x or higher filters (either Tiffen, Hoya, or B+W). If I get a wide angle lens, I'd have to get filters that fit the lens (so not necessarily 37mm). Lastly, I may get a lens hood. Do I pretty much have this info correct? Thanks!

You missed a couple of things, IMO;

1. A/some SDHC cards (not point in having all that kit and having nothing to record on....)
2. DVD -Rs (for buring your AVCHD DVDs)
3. A tripod of some sorts.

Seggers

Thanks Seggers! I guess I shouldn't have seemed so naive. Yeah, an SD card/reader and burner were the necessities. I was hoping to have gotten the accessories part right. Anyway, regarding low light recording, would an external light be necessary? By low light, I'm thinking say shooting at night in the backyard or something. Thanks!

I'm wondering if anybody has tried Corel Video Studio Pro X2 and if so, what they think about it. I currently use Ulead Video Studio 11, and it works fairly well for me, although there are some things it could do better. I can get Corel Video Studio Pro X2 for an upgrade price of $50 and was wondering whether it is worth it. I'm interested in your opinion if you've used it, and particularly interested if you've upgraded from Video Studio 11.

Thanks.