The "Official" Canon Vixia HF10 / HF100 Owner's Thread - Page 116

I have a step up ring to a 52mm polarizer filter with a 52mm wide angle lens on the end and it works fine. Not sure if this set up would work with the canon wide angle lens.

What is everyone's consensus on the best editing software or workflow for the hf100? I have tried the following, and each has it's own particular problems. I am willing to render to AVCHD or to Bluray as long as I get quality that is visually identical to the source.

VSX2 introduces stutters at cuts.
Power Director 7 has bad render quality.
Nero 8 has bad render quality.
Lagarith to Vegas Movie Studio has less than great render quality. (I assume this would be similar to Neoscene to Vegas).
Pixela Imagemaker has great quality but is a very basic editor.

Has anyone tried any product or workflow that gives him excellent quality in a solid editor? Thanks.

Thanks!

I have a version of Power Producer that came with my LG BD burner. Not used it too often. What I do use is Ulead's Movie Factory 6 with HD add on pack. Full range of disc type (including HD DVD, whatever that was ), decent editing suite (although the clips I shot don't tend to get too edited) and smart rendering (doesn't try to redo clips that weren't touched).

I think the version number has changed. I only use Pixela to get clips off the card.

Seggers

An issue to consider when using multiple things hanging off the lens is the thickness and quality of the threads. There's not a lot of 'meat' to the thin filters and not all of them have the best quality metal being used. Be aware that the weight and extended lengths being tacked-on can put a lot of stress on the threads. If you're careful it's no big deal.

OK, good point... thanks!

I used Nero 8 with my HF100 from May of 2008 until moving to Nero 9 in September of 2009. In neither case do I experience anything like "bad render quality" so I'm curious how you are defining that. What is the resolution of your source material and what resolution are you trying to produce? I have had no render issues with Nero 8 or 9 taking FXP mode footage using the "Smart Render" option to produce AVCHD disks which when viewed A-B to the SDHC card show no difference on a 60" HDTV at 1080i. I also frequently do downconversions to 720x480 of the original FXP footage and have seen no artifacting. So I'm curious to know more details of what you're trying to do and how you perceive it to understand where any problems might exist. I've also used Power Producer 4 and the ImageMixer 3 products to produce 1:1 copies and I see no artifacting or rendering issues there since as far as I can tell - there is no re-rendering taking place - the proccesses take only a few minutes longer than straight file copies onto DVD indicating that no transcoding changes are taking place. So how about a little more background on exactly what you're trying to do and why you think its not coming out well?

I'm probably overlooking something simple, but I'm trying to connect my camcorder to my laptop for the first time to move files over. I just installed pixela, but I can't get my laptop to recognize the camcorder so I can't open or move any files. Do I need to have the camcorder on a transfer setting? I hope it's not a faulty camcorder . . .

Thank you!

I forgot to say i have an HF10

^^^^^^^^
First things first. Once you've installed Pixela, reboot.
Next, have you got Haali codec installed (as in via a codec pack)? If so, go disable it. Pixela and Haali don't play nice.
Next up, what OS are you using? Vista 64 is known to not like Pixela period.
CPU, RAM, disk space, all good, right?
Can you get your stuff onto a SDHC card?
Do you have a USB2 SDHC card reader? They're faster than a straight USB connection and you can still use Pixela.
Have you tried the Cam elsewhere?

That should do it for now.

Seggers

Thanks for the suggestions. I already rebooted after installing Pixela and I dont think there's any issue with the program. Plenty of memory for the program to run as well. I think the video is stored on the internal memory, but i haven't tried moving it to the SD card yet. I do have a card reader in my laptop. How would i move items from internal to the memory card?

I still can't get the computer to recognize it even has anything plugged in. nothing new shows up under "my computer" but i do get a "safely remove hardware option at the bottom right of my screen. I 've tried both my laptop and desktop so I think this is a problem with the camcorder.

Thanks for asking. I am recording at FXP in 30p and I would like to render to the same AVCHD format as the source. I am also fine rendering to bluray or something else if I can preserve the quality.

I agree that Pixela DOES make a perfect render, which is why I don't understand why I can't get that quality with any other product. This is the product I use now.

I've tried Nero 8 with many different settings, and I always get slightly degraded quality. (Please keep in mind that I am doing some minor trimming and splitting of clips. Perhaps the quality would be better if I didn't edit any clips.) For example a finely detailed object in the rendered file is slightly pixelated compared to the source MTS file. One thing I've noticed is that the allowable bit rate in Nero 8 is only 14k/sec whereas the Canon files are 17k/sec. This fact alone would suggest that I wouldn't be able to get identical quality. Can you tell me what settings you use? Thanks.

Hey guys, what if you simply want to take a bunch of MTS files and throw them onto a DVD. No editing, no effects -- just grab a few random .mts files and burn them to a DVD.

What would be the absolute easiest way to do this?

Thanks...

I think Pixela would be best.

Do you mean the software that came with the HF100? Mine is ImageMixer 3 SE ver 1.0.

Yes, I haven't tried burning a dvd with it, but others have said it works well for simple stuff like that. You want to make an AVCHD DVD, right?

Not sure if I care what "type" of DVD it is, as long as I can put the disc in a DVD player and watch the video.

I just installed the software and tried it. Everything seemed to work fine until it was time to save the file to a DVD. It attempted to create a M2TS file, but then gave an error message (something about not being able to do it).

Very frustrating. All I wanna do is get some video onto a DVD. Shouldn't be this difficult.

Of course, having read some of the instructions, you tried to burn this DVD using a '-'r type blank?

Because that's all Pixela will burn to. '-'r and not the '+'.

Seggers

It's a Taiyo Yuden Premium 8x DVD-R

Well, that seems to be the right kind of DVD. Although I'm not sure where a M2TS file would come into the picture, as DVD is VOB only.

Did you have enough room on the HDD to render the file, did you try to put too much onto the DVD?

The actual error message would also help.

I have only used Pixela once to produce a DVD, but I do remember it being fairly easy to do.

If you're only after producing DVDs (as opposed to AVCHD DVDs), then Canon does make a card reader that will spit out a DVD at the end. Not sure of the cost though.

Seggers

Previously, I used Pixela to transfer movies off of my HF100 (well, the SD card) when my desktop was running Windows XP. Now I am running Windows 7 64 bit and would like to transfer movies using Pixela again. After I checked Pixela's web page, it seemed that the publisher is working on a solution for the bundled version of Pixela with Windows 7, as well as the 64-bit structure. Has anyone any news and/or suggestion regarding this issue. I am sure I am not the only person who has an HD camcorder bundled with Pixela and using Win 7 64 bit.

Thanks in advance!

I have W7 Ultimate 64 on my PC. Pixela worked like a charm (the version straight out of the box, I didn't try the ipdate). Got the files down off the card (after remembering to move the home folder....) and was able to run them no worries.

Then I fired up Ulead Movie Facotry 6 and burnt 5 DVDs in very short order.

Seggers

I noticed the same thing about the bitrate - that it says 14K kbits/sec - yet it's obvious from the amount of time involved in the so-called transcoding that no real transcoding is taking place - so I've always viewed that as probably erroneous as long as Smart Encoding is set to automatic. So, in order, here's what I have set in Nero 8 under Video Options: under the General tab - Nero Smart Encoding set to Automatic, under the AVCHD tab Quality - High Quality, Sample Format - interlaced, Encoding Mode: High Quality (2-pass VBR).

Now I'm mostly shooting Volleyball matches so I run in 60i mode rather than 30p mode in order to capture movement and maybe that's where the problem lies - what I'm doing works because I'm shooting 60i and the Smart Encoding just passes the stuff through - but maybe when they see 30p the Smart Encoding tries to make it 60i - other people on this forum have commented that they think Canon actually produces only a 60i stream and lays 30p frames or 24p frames into that format - not sure what that really means so you'll have to check elsewhere in this forum where people talk about the various framerates and how to use them. But the key for determining if Nero is altering your video is to look for the Smart Encoding label to show up during the transcoding phase - if you see it then he shouldn't be altering your video - but if you don't then it should be taking a longer time to render and it is doing something to your video - and if that's the case then you may have to consider shooting 60i or checking that your settings are set like mine are. I do know that shooting 30p and 24p gets you significantly better low light performance - where low light really means almost any indoor work not in a well-lit studio. I shoot in mostly well-lit gymnasiums and when I shoot birthday parties or other indoor work I do switch to 30p and don't think I've seen any problems so far. But these cameras do have to be adjusted to work in low light. Next time I shoot under normal indoors condition is a non-sunlit room I'll verify that I don't see anything out of the ordinary on the disks. Good Luck - and I hope this helps!

Hi I was wondering if you think that a data recovery company or a software program can recover data from a fully initialized memory card that hasn't been recorded on since initializing it.

I had footage on an external hard drive that crashed. I had backups on my computer but installed Windows 7 so I had reformatted my hard drive. For the time being the footage on the external hard drive had the only copies of the footage. The hard drive appears to have had a mechanical failure and the data was determined unrecoverable. My last hope is that perhaps footage could be recovered from the memory card since it hasn't been used since initializing it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks for the reply. Now I have to find where I put the installation CD to install Pixela

Mine was in the box.

Seggers

I am working with Sony Vegas Platinum 9.0 and I am trying to figure out what is the best file type to render out. If I select Sony AVC, I don't see any selection that outputs it as an MTS (like my original) or M2TS eventhough it shows Sony AVC as mp4, m2ts, or avc). If I go with AVCHD it outputs an mp4, but will not play on the PS3. If I do wmv at 1080 it will play on a PS3. Then there is avc. Then there is avi as well. What is the best format to output for the future? Rendering times take forever and I would hate to render out for one file and somehow it is just obsolete or something 5 years from now and I have to convert everything.

Thanks

Hello guys does anyone know about macs, I have just bought a Canon HF 100. I am having a problem finding the video on my imac.
I have used other camcorders with this mac no problem I just drag the mp4 out of a file on the desktop but with the HF100 I get one desktop file called canon and in that is a folder called private and in that 2 other folders with not a trace of any recorded video. can anyone help me find my video?

flux101,

You'll find the movie files under either the Canon internal memory or SDHC memory card mounted folder \\AVCHD\\BDMV\\STREAM\\*.MTS.

Thanks,
I have found them but I'm really unfamiliar with this .MTS format and it wont work with Aftereffects or Final cut. Is there a way i can convert them to something more usable without losing any quality?
My software disk was missing from my camera box, (they are sending me out one) is a converter of some kind included in this disc? Thanks for the help!

I have the same problem as others here with ImageMixer and Windows 7 64 bits. I get the autoplay dialog when I connect the cam and I can see Canon HF10 with Removeable storage under it in windows explorer. ImageMixer do not detect the camera.
I can copy the files from the memory card, but how can I copy the moves from the internal memory without using ImageMixer?

I have installed ImageMixer and rebootet without any results.