Canon HF20 / HF200 Official Owner's Thread - Page 13

Non-linear editor. Just about every video editing program is an NLE, even Windows Movie Maker, although I wouldn't recommend trying to use that to edit video from this camera.

Yes it would seem that way. 120 degree stereo is the way to record in most circumstances. I've had the Canon DM-100 on my HF200 camcorder for several months now. It really is a fine mic. I feel it is sometimes hard to realize just how good it is, because the built in Mic on the HF200 is so awesome right out the box. I notice when I'm recording inside with some loud music playing, it is hard to hear much of an upgrade when recording with or without the DM-100 Microphone. Both sound great. Where the DM-100 shines is when recording outside with the wind sock on in a mildly gusty to windy day. It does an awesome job of cutting wind distortion and still recording the sounds you are trying to hear. Love the mic, it fits so nicely on the camcorder without looking too big or goofey. And it feeds right off the camera battery without having to carry an external battery. It also shows an icon on the hf200 screen so you know it is working. Nice for recording people's voices too. If you're picky about audio then I highly recommend purchassing this Mic. If you're not, then the built-in HF200 mic is still pretty darn good and can do most jobs. I would rate the Dm-100 4 out of 5 stars. And again, the only reason the rating is not higher is because the on-board mic is so good.

Sorry all. I forgot my "in-depth" review. Let me make this quick and painless and to the point. So if anyone even cares, here we go; Don't buy this POS lenz. For starters, this lenz has a Macro attachment that threads to it, and then attaches to the camcorder lens. The wide angle lenz itself, will not thread to your camcorder, you must attach the macro first. So having this macro attached cuts back on your wide angle and makes it about a .70 instead of the advertised .45. And then there's the Vignetting. When zoomed out to the widest angle, you will immediately notice when rewatching the footage, that there are 4 black corners where the lenz is showing up in the footage. You won't notice it when recording or watching footage on the HF200's screen, So you will have plenty of chance like I did to ruin all kinds of footage and then watch in horror as you see the black tube very noticeably displaying on your screen. So the only way to get rid of the black edges in your picture is to zoom a little ways forward every time before recording. So once again, first the Macro attachment cuts about half your wide angle lenz, and now you have to zoom in a ways to lose the black edges, effectively eliminating pretty much any wide angle effect of this lens, so now your just shooting through a really cheap piece of glass for the heck of it.

Now I had the super idea to have my dad help me shear off the outside edge of the lenz. To elliminate the black edges of the lenz that were getting picked up on the recordings of the video. Makes sense right? Well, we grinded the edge completely off. I was then excited to see my newly shot footage that would not have the outside dark edges. NOPE!! Edges were still there, that communicated to me that the dark edges were coming from inside the lenz, had nothing to do with picking up the outside edges. Now in all the grinding, we accidently scrathed the front glass, Oh well, the lens is a complete peice of junk that does more harm to your footage than good. Into the garbage it went. Good riddance.

Now if any of you know of any decent wide-angle lenz at a decent price, please let me know, I'm still looking...

Aren't we all.

Thanks, yeah I understood the 90 and 120, but was very confused about shotgun mode and what the difference between stereo and mono is.

So shotgun is a VERY narrow passage? I thought it would be wide spread thats weird.

Whats the difference between stereo and mono?




EDIT: And refering to the post above mine, the Canon may be the most exspensive wide angle for the camera, but I am very impressed by it (I wish it was a little bit wider though), but honestly $150 isnt much for a wide angle lens, I might just see it as cheap because I came from the hobby of photography where I dropped almost a grand on a lens, which was a "budget choice" for a telephoto.

I got the same Zeikos wide-angle lens. It looks professionally made and very nice on the outside. However, the vignetting negates the usefulness of having a wide angle lens in the first place. You can get a little bit more angle if you zoom in just right, but it's not worth it. I bought a pack that also included a cheap teleconverter which does add slightly to the range but without focus, and a set of 3 filters that actually do their job pretty well surprisingly. Also came with a tiny table tripod, overally probably not worth the money but I knew I was taking a chance.

This is a great thread. Thanks folks.
One quick question from the newbie :-
What is the best available free pc player to play .mts files? I am transfering directly using usb reader to computer.
Any suggestions to play these .mts files in computer?

TIA.
bob.

GOM player is pretty good! I like it!

Media Player Classic is my favorite, but you'll need all the proper codecs, too. This is the pack that I always install: http://www.cccp-project.net/

Also, it would be better to know your computer setup. Some of the newer video cards can do the decoding for you for playback, and take the load off your processor.

Also, if you don't want to deal with codecs and just have it all take care of, VLC Player is one of the best.

After months of trying to figure it out. I was between a hf200 and hf20. Of course I go in today to best buy to purchase a hf20 for 699, on sale , and i get there and there is a open box hf21 for 729. apparently the guy returned it 1 hour after buying it for someone. anyway, looks perfect. Do you guys think its worth the price (believe 999 most places after checking tonight) and practical to have 64 gb hard drive? I presume this is the only thing different about this camera. good news is it is an open box item so i get 14 days and can use it and return with NO restocking fee if i dont like.

For that price, yes I would say it's worth it if you're definitely getting from a retail store. However you can get the HF20 from B&H for 654 right now (or HF200 for 549). I got it from there, very good site, no annoying scam calls.

VLC is useless on my laptop for mxp clips, Mirillis Splash Light works great for me,

it's free here http://www.mirillis.com/splash.html

VLC is useless on my laptop for mxp clips, Mirillis Splash Light works great for me,

it's free here http://www.mirillis.com/splash.html

Oops, sorry for the duplication

Sounds like that definitely takes advantage of video card hardware decoding, if you've got a supported video card, definitely try an option like that.

Does Windows Live Movie Maker support the .mts files created by an HF200? I've read in some places that it does, but I haven't found that to be the case for me. I'd really like to find a cheap or free solution to editing my videos, but WLMM is not working for me.

Any ideas or help would be appreciated. Thanks.

It did look nice on the outside, before it ended up in it's rightfull place known as a garbage can. Have you tried any other wide angle lens? There are so many out, many cheap and some not so cheap like those made by Raynox. Still considerably cheaper then Canon. Surely someone out there has tried a few of these. They can't all be as bad as the Zeikos we bought. Let's get some reviews going...

I know that. It was plugged in. I did a clean install on my macbook and it shows up now. It would work fine on my G5 also. It had something to do with my macbook after installing VM fusion and windows 7. Fixed now.

I downloaded the latest version last night to test and it successfully opened and played through an MTS file from the camera. It's not the best, but it does open it.

Like most problems out there, this "batch" 60i->24p workflow problem has been solved by someone else on the internet. It takes some setup, but Coert Vonk designed a flow that works for any NLE that supports proxies. He outlines the manual process here:
http://www.coertvonk.com/technology/...re-pro-cs3-486

He also automated it for batch applications. It had a couple kinks in it, but with his help I was able to get it working. Here's the thread over at HV20: http://www.hv20.com/showthread.php?p...d=1#post285294

I have about 80 small mts files that I need converted to 24p for editing, so this is perfect. Just let it run overnight

Interesting workaround, but on my set-up I have no problems with the full files in Premiere. I may edit the script to just output the lossless to do the 24p conversion and work with that.

Hello All,
I'm looking to understand why my WS format HDD camcorder (not the one related to this forum) doesn't seem to come out WS on my DVR when imported over USB.
General informatio too about what resolution I should expect. I'm coming from a Panasonic HDD device. I set the camcorder for WS and it replays that way on the LCD but when xferred to my Philips 3585 it looks 4:3.
Can you tell me that when you transfer WS recordings they stay WS in your DVR/PC/tv/whatever?

Thanks. Mike

This thread is for an HD camcorder the principles are 100% different. I'd imagine it has to do with the way DV is stored, more specifically the pixel aspect ratio, and there may just be a compatibility issue.

how do you put filters on these? the filters i have, have inside threads on them. is there a ring that need to be taken off?

Do you do anything special when you import and edit 24p content into Premiere Pro (I'm using CS4)? I disabled frame blending, but that didn't have much effect- scrubbing and playback is still very tough on my with a Core 2 Duo 3.16 GHz and 8 GB of DDR2 in Windows 7 64-bit. I'd much rather edit the full-res files if I could.

And yes, editing the script is very easy. There are two for loops with jumps. Just remove the "REM" for the jump for the proxy and it will only create hi-res full files.

Hi! It is normal to have a noise from a small object loose inside the camera when you shake it?

Could you give me the steps you took to open and play the .mts file? I re-installed WLMM and tried it again. No luck, just crashed again. Is there a trick to getting this to work? When I added a .mts file to WLMM, I grabbed a file from my hard drive and not directly from the camera.

Also, are you running Windows 7 32 or 64 bit?

My filters have male threads and thread right onto the lens.


It's probably the lens cover.

Yes it will rattle with an internal noise when shut off. When turned on there should not be any rattle. There are two theories for the noise (the lense cover mechanism and the optical stabilization system).

I don't do anything special, but I actually haven't worked with many 24p files. I'd really like to get AviSynth input working in CS4, bypassing re-encoding (even if it is lossless). I have a Phenom II 3.2 Ghz quad-core, but yours should be fine for editing these I would think, plenty of RAM. The video card is more important that most people think, the memory in it can hold the buffer, what video card do you have?


All I did was open the file from my hard drive and there it was. I'm running Windows 7 64-bit. However, I've found just about every iteration of MM to be unstable and very picky about drivers.

I wonder if the key is the quad-core. I can play the content for about 5 seconds, and then it just chokes as if it can't keep up. Both both of my cores are 100% saturated- the 8 GB of RAM, while it can get heavily utilized, never peaks out at 100%. I have a GTX260 video card.