Canon HF20 / HF200 Official Owner's Thread - Page 8

I bought this cable from amazon for £5.99 incl delivery to connect to Sharp LCD and works perfect no problems.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/2-5m-Profess...0551047&sr=8-6

I'll be getting a Nippon Labs Premium mini hdmi tomorrow at some point. $13 from newegg. I know it's not as cheap as some of the others but I just tacked it on a larger purchase so it would be under one bill.

Anyways, I'll report any problems or not with that one.

i bought a ngear one from ncix.com and have no problems.

I've read through this thread a bit but just to clarify - you can get the files off the H200 camera without loading canon's software, correct? Just plug the memory card into your PC using an appropriate reader?

Thanks!

I own the HF20 and want to purchase an 8 or 16GB SD card. Could someone tell me which SD card you have used with the HF20 with success?

Thanks

yes you can. I'm still figuring out how to handle them (archive, transfer to DVD/bluRay etc.) I think i will try this method for archiving;

http://www.avchduser.com/articles/avchd_to_bluray.jsp

This is the one I just ordered. It works great with the HF20.

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-SDSDHV...0719303&sr=8-4

Thanks! I will be putting them on my file server and managing them thu Windows 7 Media Center (which has native support for AVCHD).

Thanks

I just bought the 200 and am thinking of returning it for the hf20. Does anyone know if the 20 has an internal solid state drive? or is it the same tech as the sdhc?

second, I have ran into the class 10 problem too. One of the reasons I may switch since I can get the 20 for the same price as the 200 with 32gb of memory cards.

With the 20 can you direct which is primary recording media? internal or card?

One last. how would you update the 200's firmware. I am guessing that would be a take it in option since the usb is one way?

The HF200 has no internal memory and uses SD/SDHC flash cards. The HF20 has a 32gb internal memory. Not sure about which slot it defaults to for recording or if you can tell it which slot you want.

(Skipping the other questions because Edgecrusher already addressed them.)

The HF20 defaults to the Internal memory, but defaults can quickly be set to either Internal or Memory Card for both Movies AND Photos individually.
Ie.- you could set the Internal as default for Movies, and the Mem Card as default for Photos, or both to the Memory card., both to Internal mem., etc., etc.

A Firmware update would probably be from the Canon site; that was the method of delivering it for the 5D MarkII, etc. You just navigate to the product in question, like the Vixia HF200, and then go to the "Drivers and Downloads" tab to see if there is a Firmware Update:
Canon Vixia HF200 Page, "Drivers and Downloads" tab

Forgive me if the below question has already been asked, but I can't seem to find the answer to it anywhere. My son uses our camcorder for making stop-motion movies (our Panasonic will output the live video signal to his stop-motion software via the USB port). Will the HF200 output the live signal via the USB port?

I recently bought an HF20 whilst on holiday in Florida and used it to shot typical beach holiday type stuff plus some night and low light (i.e. in a restaurant etc). Following a quick flick through the manual I ended up shooting everything in MXP(24Mbps) mode at 24Fps to obtain what I thought should provide best quality as I had no way of viewing the footage on a TV until I got home (as it happened I got pretty good results apart from some dodgy panning which I realise now, gets a bit jittery at 24Fps). This is a fantastic camcorder and I wondered why all the reviews I read seem to harp on about the poor low light performance as I thought it was pretty good.

When I eventually got the camcorder connected to my home TV (Sharp LC46x20e 1080P LCD TV) via composite RCA connection I was quite impressed in general but was particularly pleased with the low light performance especially considering all the reviews who appear to slate the HF20 poor low light performance.

I found connecting to the Sharp TV via HDMI most of the well lit/daytime footage looked stunning and I was absolutely knocked out with the quality but I think the low light stuff looks worse than in SD (ie via composite).

The problem in my opinion is not sharpness or graininess (its low light so as expected) but is what I can best describe as sparklies all over the screen. Even in a reasonably well lit restaurant scene anything dark gets splattered with white/silver dots (i.e. appears as silver pixels). Focus is still sharp and even the colour is acceptable under such conditions but the sparklies really spoil the footage. I also took some still photos and the dots are there also in the photos but not in such high numbers.

I am assuming that this is normal and that I don't have a faulty camcorder.

In my opinion the performance under normal lighting is so good that for me this is a minor issue. I guess in lieu of some way of correcting this at editing stage (any suggestions welcome here) then on the odd occasion it bothers me I will probably just save any affected footage as SD as it looks better to me in SD.

Anyone else noticed this?

FWIW, monoprice.com has 6 ft mini-HDMI to HDMI cables back in stock and on for $5.58. I just picked one up today as I didn't like connecting over component.

Canon already emailed me back to inform me there will be no firmware update for the hf200. I see on the site it states that class 10 cards can not be used for hi def recording with the hf20 or 200.

The media software that comes with the 200 really sucks.

I can't export to dvd from camera even though it has that option. Message says media can not be used when I try. I am using dvd+r disks.

Is there a decent 3rd party editing suite. I am used to Premiere though my version does not support hd.

I loved my sony cam as it recorded in avi. Universally recognized. Hate the propriatory files.

It's not proprietary, it's the HD standard.

Is not .MTS only a canon file?

.MTS is the general file extension for all AVCHD cams.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD

Is there a review online that compares either the HF20 or 200 to similarly priced camcorders? I keep coming back to the same ol complaint about recording HD in low light, but I also keep coming back to the HF20 (and not 200 because of the SDHC version 10). Searching/googleing only leads me to other forums with the same sparse amounts of useful feedback.

So what settings are you guys using in lower light?

Say like a living room that's medium lit at night.

Francois shared his day/night settings earlier in this thread, and I've found his to work best so far; (I'm still experimenting.)

Francois' night/low-light setting is essentially: TV mode @ 1/30 shutter speed, and PF30 frame rate.

What you are seeing is noise; that is not good performance under low light. I had the HF200 but returned it because of the low light performance issue. To see what good low light performance is, you may want to check out videos on vimeo for the HF200 as well as the Sony CX/ XR 500 series camcorders as well as Sanyo FH1 & HD2000

I also picked up a Kodak 16gb SDHC card that works as well.

You returned the HF200 (same as my HF20 apart from mem) due to poor low light performance, when you tested the HF200 did you see the sparklies on full HD 1080P TV or were you just unhappy with the graininess, what TV did you use with it and how was it connected (HDMI or Component)

What did you buy to replace it with and did the sparklies go away?

Are you saying it is only the canon HF20/200 that will produce these sparklies or will any digital camcorder exhibit this if you go beyond its low light capabilities?

I am not interested if Sony or Sanyo camcorders are slightly better here or there I am interested in this specific effect of what looks like dead pixels on this specific camcorder as I want to ascertain if this is a fault with my HF20 or TV or is considered normal.

Just to clarify I am not talking about graininess, I am talking about silver/whit dots (like dead pixels) in very low lighting, for example under normal living room lighting with lots of dark/black furnishings in the shot (move into the kitchen under florescent strip light and the problem goes away).


This effect is not seen on my laptop, is not seen on my Samsung LE27T5 LCD TV connected via component in, it's only seen when connected to Sharp 46in HD LCD via HDMI.

BTW, I have viewed the footage you mentioned on vimeo to "see what good low light footage is" and in my opinion my low light footage would look as good as anything here if I put it on vimeo and viewed it on my laptop as the sparklies are only present when connected directly to the TV via HDMI, in fact some of the examples on vimeo such as the Sanyo FH1 low light (foosball) footage look well lit to me proving nothing.

So I just tried these settings and tbh, they're are pretty brutal looking. Maybe my room was to lit at the time for these settings?

Might just have to settle with cinema and dimness.

I just ordered a HF200 today, however I was looking at memory cards for it and am still deciding.

At the moment I have a 32gb class 4 kingston SDHC card that I use for a Zoom Q3, is there any noticeable difference if I use this card or buy a Class 6 one when shooting in 24

No picture quality difference whatsoever. The class number is a speed rating. Nothing more. And the HF200 can easily record to a Class 4 card at its highest quality settings.

Can anyone here tell me how to playback from the camera on the TV without data from the camera also being shown.

I've found the setting "output onscreen display" that determines if the data is shown in the video mode, but I can't find the equivalent that stops it in playback mode.

Surely there must be a way to view video already on the SD card straight from the camera without the data, yes?