The Official Panasonic HDC-HS/SD/TM700 Owners thread - Page 9

Anybody looking for batteries for these Camcorders?

Check this URL:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1255646

I use Vegas Movie Studio 9.0 and it handles the 1080/60p video just fine. It doesn't have a preset to output back to 60p, but you can do a custom output to 60p WMV for sure. It's quite good in WMP.

There is an issue with both Vegas and Vegas Movie Studio and memory issues. I had to modify the dll files in Vegas MS to get it to do multiple clips without crashing. Here's a link on how to do this.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/...ssageID=697122

Vegas and VMS just don't have a direct Panasonic 1080/60p preset to selectively render only transitions without reencoding completely. I'm hoping this might happen, but I won't hold my breath as Sony probably doesn't want Panasonic to have any further success with this cam

Cheers,
Pete

Interesting to hear you can get 60p output from Vegas Movie Studio. I've also heard that the "Vegas Movie Studio Platinum" ($100) works ok with TM700 files.

My trial of the cheaper, plain "Movie Studio" showed only 1080i presets. I gave up at that point, since I know when I use the 1080i preset in the full Vegas Pro 9 program and export a full-quality still JPEG or PNG, it gives me jagged edges on diagonals and the exact same setup with the 1080p preset gives me frames with clean edges, so I believe Vegas 9 is actually throwing away half your video resolution if you use a 1080i preset on the timeline. At least that is what I found exporting still frames- I didn't try a 60p video export from a 1080i timeline with 60p assets.

Yup, this was part of the 'misinformation campaign' by some here on AVS. It got really annoying to see people who should have known better and were previously told the facts, to conveniently 'forget' the facts.

As for the pro reviewers, it may have been simple ignorance on their part and not being familiar with editing solutions.

I am I am!!! )) Thanks for the info! If it works with HS700 it has to work with TM/00 as well. I'm glad that finally someone tried 3rd party (more or less no-name) batteries. I'm actually looking at eBay, so I've found this one for example. It's half the price of ones you bought.. but i'll wait till I get camcorder first. But I'm very glad that 3rd party batteries have no issues with HS700/TM700..

Please note, Panasonic upgraded their integrated battery chip (revenue protection :-) with the TR700 model. Very few 3rd party batteries work with it, although they work with older camcorder models. So far the battery CanisMajoris found is the only one reported to work- there are a lot reported NOT to work.

So has anyone figured out a good way to slow zoom out from 18x without the video shaking. I find that even on a tripod, I see some visible wobbling when the zoom lever is activated. Both OIS options are not helping on the TM700 to prevent this; unlike the Canon HF M31, when mounted on the same tripod zoomed from 15x (or even 60x digital), there was much less / no noticeable wobbling. Going to an even bigger tripod is not an option. Any good tip from others here?

"Any good tip from others here?"

Since you dislike the TM700, I suggest using your beloved Canon... or find a camera that you can be happy with.

I have no problem with using a tripod with my TM700..

Rick

I've ended up doing mostly 8-10 hour time-lapse since I got this camera and the bottom doesn't even get warm. The upper right side of the unit gets slightly warmer than room temperature just as it does during regular recording.


Not for the vast majority of owners it isn't.

Sure -

1. Buy a good quality, sturdy tripod
2. Turn off the OIS as everyone has suggested
3. Enjoy

or

1. Learn to put up with the inferior Canon video
2. Sell the Panasonic to someone who will appreciate it
3. Enjoy

I'd suggest the second course since you don't seem to like anything about this camera and most of your complaints seem to be unique or unit-specific. Panasonic isn't going to re-engineer this camera for you, so use your Canon and enjoy life.

- Turn off the OIS;
- hang a heavy bag on the center of the tripod to give it more stability;
- use the remote control (can it slowly zoom out?)

Picked up a 700 yesterday(was going to go for the Sony 550) after reading these threads went with Panasonic. Is anyone else having issues with Sony Movie Studio Platinum HD not recognizing the camera? The Panny HD Writer software reads it but would prefer the Sony editing software. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
At this point I'm using the usb plug-in
Regards,
Don

Any disavantage going for a TM vs a SD model ?
Which type do you guys prefer and why?

I think that the internal memory is not so versatile ... ex: putting the SD card on my Plasma TX-46G10E

Thanks.

If you are going to get an SD card anyway, you will end up with IM+SD=more memory. The other advantage is that u can convert 60p video to AVCHD in-camera by copying from internal to SD card. I would go for TM, more versatile in the end.

1st tank you for your reply.

My point is that with the price diference between the TM model and the SD model, I can get an SD card and still save some money.

To clarify my point ... when I made that question was having in mind not the 700 series (TM700/SD700) but the 60 (TM60/SD60) that I'm thinking of buying. The IM of the TM60 is 16GB, and the cost of an 16GB SD card is smaller compared to the IM price diference over the SD60.

That feature you reefer .... passing from IM -> SD card in the TM/SD60 series also applies?

(sorry guys for the off-topic, but I didn't find any thread talking about IM vs SD card)

Don, since Sony tends to be so proprietary with almost everything they make, it wouldn't surprise me if it won't recognize the Panasonic. I use PMB from an old Sony digicam I used to have, and at least that recognizes my Panasonic GH1 DSLR.

Another idea to move the control ring smoothly without bumping the camera: get a large-size plastic cable tie, and clamp it around the control ring. Use a big enough tie that there is a long end sticking out. Now, this long end is a lever which you can move very accurately and gently without much disturbance to the camera.

You can see a demonstration of this technique used for focusing a lens here:
http://vimeo.com/2662016

at the end of the video, he actually mentions my website (although with an interesting Dutch pronunciation http://bealecorner.org/red/test-patterns/index.html

Now that is a great tip, not only for zooming and unzooming but for focusing as well. I will have to rig something up using a zip tie. Otherwise, will head to a bike shop to try and find one of those tie rips. Thanks jbeale. Very interesting, and great website too

Well, if you are thinking about TM60/SD60 it does not matter at all. They don't record 1080p/60p anyway so converting in-camera to 1080i does not matter.

Thanks Ken for the reply and I was afraid about that. Been a long time user of the Vegas product and was curious if a change would now be required for this unit. Now to decide whether its worth keeping or just send back...

Nice tip!!! Kind of like a poor mans follow focus. I have some 18" heavy zip ties and I left the sharp end quite long and it dampens the any movemnt you might give on a Canon T2i and 5dmkII.

Haven't needed it on the TM700 yet, but that's a cool idea for when you're hand holding it on long zoom and need to do manual focus through some brush or such. The AFAE button on the touch screen works great for that, but not when zoomed in a long way hand held.

Cheers,
Pete

Hey, just did some more shooting with the TM700. During a few handheld scenes (outdoors) with normal ISO on and during the slowest unzoom speed from 18x, I noticed a few times where there was jittering at about the 15x-12x zone. At first I thought it might be just hand shake but after reviewing the video many times, I am wondering if this is because it's in the digital zone 13x-18x. Anyone else noticed this? It was difficult to see at native resolution on a computer monitor but at 1920x1200 full size at 24 inches, it is very evident. Hard to describe, almost like the video footage is moving vibrating / jittering independent of the video player. Anyone else see this before?

During playback in Nero Showtime using the Control-D expand-window function to view the pixels 4x life-size (just because I can... :-) I can see some sort of jittery artifacts even without digital zoom. They are hard to see viewed normal size. If you're talking about motions about 1 pixel size or less, I think that is to be expected with any kind of digital zoom, even if there was no stabilization function going on. There will always be a kind of spatial quantization noise due to the digital rescaling, which will shift and become jitter as you change the digital scale factor (adjust a digital zoom). My advice is don't worry too much about it.

So when you say you can expand the playback to 4x life-size, what resolution are you going from and to? And do you mean that this kind of jittering is only happening in the digital zoom range? If so, I should try turning it off and stick to 12x and see if it still happens. In 1 particular scene, there was a lot of this jittering, enough for users to think it was actually bad camera shake. I will have to keep testing without digital zoom and hope it does not show up again. I guess I have never seen this before either on a 2010 Canon or an older 3CCD MiniDV Panny as digital zoom is never enabled in these. Just read so much good things about the 18x digital zoom of the TM700, thought I would use that as a default. Image quality is quite good, I will just have to test and live with 12x for now and hope this jittering does not come back. Wish me luck!

Thanks jbeale and btw, glad I am not the only one who can see this type of jittering.

OK then, I'm a HDC-TM700K owner, and I have tried just about every editing tool I can get my hands on, none with complete success. Could you please clarify what are the 1080p60 editing options, that meet the following needs:

1. Completely smooth preview during editing, while really displaying 60 progressive frames. Ideally without pre-rendering the entire video track. Needing to pre-render transitions and the video adjustments is fine though.
2. Ability to do simple cuts, and transitions/fades etc between the video segments (this should be an easy one for most editing tools)
3. Ability to do levels and color (or WB) adjustment to the video track, and preview this smoothly, I'm OK if this needs to be pre-rendered for preview.
4. Ability to output 1080p60 in a format compatible with Windows Media Center.
5. Ability to see the audio wave form, and to easily remove the fan noise from quiet segments. Yes I do get an objectionable level of fan noise, yes it's annoying to me on unedited tracks, I don't want to debate about the fan but just deal with it in editing.
6. That I can do the above without a Core i7. Because I think all of the above is actually achieveable on CS4 or CS5 Premiere Pro if I upgrade to a Core-i7, but not on my Core 2 Quad 3.6GHz.

Even beyond editing, I can't even playback smoothly except through Panny's HD Writer AE software, where it does work flawlessly.

I have tried so many editing options that it's ridiculous:

CS4 - can't smoothly preview, only displays the MPEG I-Frames, which gives me 12fps. Crashes when I add transitions. If I switch the previews to uncompressed formats it takes up 16GB/Minute of disk space and runs into an IO issue, I suspect in the interconnect between the CPU and chipset, ultimately it's not smooth.

CS5-Trial - Marginally better, but still not smooth in preview, especially during transitions and fades, but at least it doesn't crash. Notably, I only have the Trial edition, so would love to hear if the full version includes more useful codecs that make this actually work properly.

I've tried coversion to MP4 files using Adobe Media Encoder, basically no difference from the results above.

I've loaded the K-lite and Splash-lite codecs and players. No improvement in playback, and no improvement in editing.

I downloaded a trial version of Vegas - worse than Premiere.

I think I looked for Pinnacle support, but either I couldn't download a trial, or they didn't claim to support the 1080p60 so I never actually tried it.

This week I downloaded Edius Neo 2.5 Trial. WOW, now that looks promising. It is the first real editing application (HD Writer AE excluded) I've seen be able to load a 1080p60 file and play it smoothly. HOWEVER, although it's loading and playing the 1080p60 file, based on the timeline time-counter display that only ever goes up to frame 29 it looks suspiciously like it's not playing all 60 frames. I wonder if it's playing the 60p by dropping every other frame and playing it as a 30p segment. It is interesting that if I put both 1080i60 and 1080p60 on the same timeline, the CPU demands for the 1080p is higher, so it's clearly doing more work, but what concerns me is the frame counter only ever goes to 29 per second with both file formats. What kills Neo2.5 for me is the lack of 1080p60 output, and very weak audio editing features, I couldn't figure out how to see the audio wave form, and it didn't look at all easy to remove the fan noise. I imagine Edius 5.x is better on the audio, but it's still not got 1080p60 output, I'm still doubtful that it's actually displaying 1080p60 in preview, and it is more expensive than the educational discount I can get on CS5.

At this point I've almost resigned myself to one of two paths:
1. Record in 1080p60, convert to 1080i HA through the camera, and edit that (which works just fine on pretty much any editing solution). or,
2. Buy a high end Core-i7, I figure with CPU, motherboard, and 12GB that's around $1200. Plus possibly CS5 for another $450. Argh, this $815 camcorder suddenly got awfully expensive.

So Ken (or anyone else) you're saying it's so easy to edit 60P and doesn't require premium hardware, with my needs as stated above, what options do you think I could use, because I'm all out of ideas.

Roland.

I don't think I have any useful advice on those two items. I use Vegas 9e to edit 1080p on a 2.8 GHz quad-core (the slowest available, I think; not overclocked. I tried some modest overclocks but it wasn't stable). Files often do not play back smoothly on the timeline, although sometimes it does (that is it looks smooth, and actually reports 59.94 fps playback); I'm not sure what changes between smooth and not smooth clips. I can hear fan noise when I do a test and try to hear it, but honestly I've never noticed fan noise on real footage, so I haven't investigated that part.

I'm used to editing on underpowered machines- ever since cutting Hi8 footage imported as MJPEG with my Matrox Rainbow Runner- so I've been OK with editing even without seeing all 59.94 fps.

Cineform Neoscene program (~120$) converts 50\\60p M2TS files of Panasonic HS\\TM700 to fast, lossless AVI or MOV files that have much better performance in an NLE. I have tried recently this utility and these avi-files play smoothly on my 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo PC whereas native M2TS files from camcorder play with interrupts even in Splash lite player. I will try these converted files in CS5 in the nearest future.

The converted Cineform AVI file is several times larger then the original m2ts-file from Panasonic. But HDDs are cheap now.

As for me, the main question for now: what is the best codec for export M2TS 50\\60p files from Premiere? I think embedded Mainconcept H.264 codec is not an ideal today.

And what is the universal hardware player that can play now both original m2ts and exported from Premiere H264-file with maximum quality?

The problem with 1080/60p output to WMV with VMS 9.0 is that you don't get 5.1 surround - only stereo.

Just to confirm the memory issue, I was unable at any time to render my projects to Sony AVCHD (any 60i resolution) until I hacked the DLL's in VMS 9.0 with the information from that provided link (did this a month ago.)

I've just noticed that Sony released VMS HD 10 this week and have pretty good upgrade pricing from VMS 9.0 (I think the upgrade is ~$44.00) and was hoping it had a 1080/60p preset.
I was wondering if you or anyone else have tried it out with 1080/60p clips. I noticed that it has nVidia CUDA GPU support for helping with rendering... Too bad I have an ATI 4850

I am close to jumping on the deal - I guess maybe I'll have to be the guinea pig!

I just downloaded the Cineform Neoscene codec trial, and conversion utility. After converting the MTS files, at "high" quality (there's only 3 options) the MTS files were converted to AVI files at a range of 206 to 317Mbps i.e. ~10x larger in size than the original 1080p60 MTS files. (A rather demanding range of 92GB/hour to 143GB/hour on my initial four test files, but still manageable)

FINALLY, now I can play the unedited (albeit converted) 60P files in Windows Media Center on my Core2Quad@3.6GHz. The CPU averages around 48% utilization, with spikes as high as 62%, so this should work on pretty much any Core2Quad.

Also, by installing the Neo Player (this is a free tool, not just a trial) on my other PC that I have hooked up to my HDTV, it's a slower Core2Duo@3.33. It can't quite play the files entirely smoothly. However, the player has two options:
1. Full Quality or 2. Full Speed. In the Full speed version it trades off quality for ensuring the frame rate stays constant at 60p. Using the Full Speed option on the player, I am able to get great quality, full frame rate, 60P to play on this Core2Duo machine. Yeee Ha! I couldn't see the quality degredation, so it's very close to full quality too, with a slower processor it might be noticable.

So, with a $129 cost, this sounds like a final solution to getting playback to work in Windows Media Center (Holy Grail Part 1 for me).

Now, the next issue is, how do I edit in CS4. Cineform is now an option in the output formats, so that's great, it's obviously installed in Premiere. However, it doesn't seem to do the slightest bit of good when previewing the Cineform created AVI files in my project, this is quite disappointing, and actually crashed Premiere for me, and I'm wondering if there is a configuration setting I'm missing, or perhaps project setup I did incorrectly, as clearly this is what Cineform is supposed to do and they claim CS4 support.

Has anyone successfully used CineForm 60P AVI files in Premiere?

Thanks, Roland.

&fs=1&hd=1" width="858" height="508">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&fs=1&hd=1" />PG9iamVjdCB3aWR0aD0iMTI4MCIgaGVpZ2h0PSI3NDUiPjxwYXJhbSBuYW1lPSJtb3ZpZSIgdmFsdWU9Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cueW91dHViZS5jb20vdi9MX1dnQjl1eno5RSZhbXA7aGw9ZW5fVVMmYW1wO2ZzPTEmYW1wO2hkPTEiPjwvcGFyYW0+PHBhcmFtIG5hbWU9ImFsbG93RnVsbFNjcmVlbiIgdmFsdWU9InRydWUiPjwvcGFyYW0+PHBhcmFtIG5hbWU9ImFsbG93c2NyaXB0YWNjZXNzIiB2YWx1ZT0iYWx3YXlzIj48L3BhcmFtPjxlbWJlZCBzcmM9Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cueW91dHViZS5jb20vdi9MX1dnQjl1eno5RSZhbXA7aGw9ZW5fVVMmYW1wO2ZzPTEmYW1wO2hkPTEiIHR5cGU9ImFwcGxpY2F0aW9uL3gtc2hvY2t3YXZlLWZsYXNoIiBhbGxvd3NjcmlwdGFjY2Vzcz0iYWx3YXlzIiBhbGxvd2Z1bGxzY3JlZW49InRydWUiIHdpZHRoPSIxMjgwIiBoZWlnaHQ9Ijc0NSI+PC9lbWJlZD48L29iamVjdD4=">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=