The Official Panasonic HDC-TM900 Owners Thread - Page 44

I use the higher end lens (VW-W4607) from Panasonic for my TM900. Users reviews seem to show it is the better lens. Granted it is more money, but might be worth looking into before you pull the trigger.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/681989-REG/Panasonic_VW_W4607H.html

It is a better lens, but it doesn't fit in your pocket as well.

Bill

I have purchased a 46mm 0.45x wide angle + 12.5x macro lens + CPL filter from ebay for £12.
Very satisfied with the picture quality & performance just what I have been looking for some time.
No vignetting at the corners. Please note no Zooming!
Here is the link to a test video showing Normal Wide, 0.45x Wide & 0.45x Close-Up.
http://vimeo.com/22207732
Link to YouTube(the whole video is with the wide angle attached).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV2_hDb5x4E

Back around post #1281 I complained that my computer had partitions I didn't want.

It has been a month since this post. I got the easeus tool, read the instructions, backed up the important files and gave it a try.

It worked great at getting rid of the partition on the HDD.

Then I tried it on the SSD C: drive where the system files are. Disaster! It looked like it was working fine until an error message popped up. From that point it would not boot by itself or with restore disks. It has been in for "warranty repair" for a week. I get it back tomorrow. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I expect I will be rebuilding all my software.

Bill

I have the Panasonic HDCTM900. How do I import the movies I record to my iMac or iMovie? It doesn't recognize the format???

Buy Adobe Premier Elements 11. It runs on a Mac or PC and has no trouble with AVCHD from a TM900.

Bill

Check out this link:
http://www.aunsoft.com/guide/

If you want to stick to Apple products, Final Cut Pro will actually import natively if you record to the SD card (yes, I have done it for several projects). A few notes about that though:

1. Don't mix AVCHD and 1080p60 on the card, FCP will only see one of the two. I forget which.
2. If you are doing 24p, you will need to Import the file, select the clip, go to the Inspector, select Settings view, and check Deinterlace. When you make a Project, manually set it to 23.98fps. All this will force FCP to do the pulldown from 60i to 24p
3. If you want to make a 1080p Blu-ray or AVCHD disk with 1080p60 footage, you will need to manually set the project timeline to 29.97p or Export to Compressor and bringdown the frame rate there. The built-in Share will do a 720p60 disk with a 1080p60 Project timeline.

If you want to use iMovie, go buy ClipWrap.

You don't do any of that in Adobe Premier Elements version 11.

1. In version 11 you can use 1080p60 and mix it with other formats on the timeline if you wish, including other AVCHD formats.
2. When you share or create output, 24p is a choice, even if you started with 1080p60. And, there are "old fashioned movie" effects if 24p doesn't do it for you.
3. Blu-Ray and AVCHD disks are created directly within PrE11 as a simple menu choice in the "Share" section.

You don't need any re-wrap or conversion tools at all.

Premier Elements 11 is always under $100 and sometimes as low as $50.

Bill

I have no doubt that APE is a great piece of software. Just giving advice from my experience is all

Is there a way of preventing this Camcorder from recording in 4GB bits? I have three 4GB "clips" I need to somehow merge and put onto Blu-Ray.

I currently have Corel VideoStudio Pro and find it not very user friendly. Would going with Adobe Premier Elements 11 for the TM900 be worth it?

HDWriter is the software that came with the camera and, in my experience, should do that for you.

Bill

I like PrE11 a lot.. What do you want to do that your existing software won't do?

Bill

Thanks. Do you compress the video first or just write it to Blu-Ray Disc right from the Camcorder?

It's interface is not user friendly. I'll keep at it and see if I can't get it to import video from the Camcorder.

No. I don't understand what you mean by "compression". You use HDWriter to transfer the clips to your computer and then use it to combine them. Once combined, you can use HDWriter to burn a Blu-Ray if you have a Blu-Ray burner.

What part is unfriendly?

Hiya, I have just purchase the TM900, but really worried as I want to use this mainly for uploading videos on YouTube, but I have the PAL version not the NTSC version, because of the 50p figure I will be using, I am worried my videos will be choppy, as it isn't the 60p version. Should I be worried?

Sorry in advance for not reading back through the whole thread.

Cheers

James

50p vs 60p difference will not be noticeable, especially in streaming video.

Sorry if this is a daft question

On the top part of the lens on my camera Leica lens I can see a strip of perspex which looks like a built in light source.

However I've never managed to work out how to switch it on.

Can anyone tell me how to manually switch it on (if it is indeed a light source)

And if not, can anyone tell me the best setting for low light / nighttime shooting? The camera is great apart from night shooting, I can never select a good setting

are you thinking of the flash? its used for the camera/photo mode

Hi there,
I'm just a newie to the forum. I apologise for the length of this post. It's a complicated problem. I have a lovely TM900 which I've had for a year and love. I used HD Writer AE 3.0 to edit my first large chunk of video. It worked perfectly. I had about 30Gb and I created 3 large files and burnt them to 6 dvds to play on blu ray. avchd. As expected the clips were queued and the software told me when to put in the next dvd. It worked perfectly. The queue system is great.

Here's my problem. The second time I went to create some home movies (sorry about the non-technical terms), I created smaller files, about 5 of them, to make them more manageable. Again I intended to write them to dvds to play on the blue ray. They were avchd again. Everything was fine, until the 2nd DVD queued stopped at 'copying image to disc', and would not copy.

This has happened over and over again. I've tried everything to get the queue to keep going past the 2nd DVD.
It writes the first dvd fine, prompts me to put the second dvd in, converts it, creates it, but will not copy the image past 5% on the second dvd.
Here's the bizarre thing - If I then put the second clip in as first in the queue, and the third as second etc....the dvds will all write just fine, prompting and writing them in order. This made me think something was wrong with the first clip. So I remade it from scratch, including reimporting it from the camera. It didn't help.

Here's another bizarre thing. I thought this was a one off occurrence. So I re imported ALL the clips from the camera, re edited them, incase something was corrupt. Re created the movie clips and tried to remake the dvds. This would rule out corrupt file problems. But the same thing happened. The process stopped 5% through the last stage of the 'copying image to disc' of the 2nd dvd.

So I uninstalled HD writer, rebooted, reinstalled, rebooted. But the same thing happened. So I'm thinking it's something to do with my PC. It's a quad core, and has a lot of power. No problems there.
So I installed HD writer on my HP laptop to check. If it worked on my laptop, then it was a problem with my PC. I was absolutely stunned when the same thing happened. After importing the clips using an external hard drive, I tried to write them to DVD, but the queue once agains topped at the second dvd. And this on another computer???!!! But why did it work on my PC the first time?

So I remade the clips. I made them all smaller, so that perhaps the join between one dvd and the next was in a different place (if you know what I mean...my clips are not exactly 4.7Gb like a dvd, they are sometimes more, sometimes less, ...this is why this queue system is so good, it seamlessly joins them.) But again, it made no difference, it would not copy past the second dvd, exactly the same place.

Next I gave up trying to queue them. I copied the first clip to a dvd on it's own, then restarted the queue putting the 2nd clip in first place, and the 3rd in second eetc. The queue worked perfectly. I thought it was
going to be different that it was just a quirk for this, my second attempt at editing, somethign glitchy wrong somewhere.

I was horrified when after importing and editing my 3rd lot, and making movies to write to dvds it has happened again. The second dvd will not fully write. I get an error message saying something "An error occurred while the disc images were being copied."

I just can't deal with it anymore. I've spend a hundred hours on this. I quite like HD writer, it's all I need, but aaaagggh. I want to queue my videos.

Panasonic customer service in Sydney here were not interested. They told me things like "empty my cache". blegh

Perhaps its a software conflict (on both my laptop and my pc????) and why didn't it conflict the first time I used the software.????
I have other dvd stuff on, dvd shrink, nero, windows live movie maker, windows dvde maker, itunes, media player, panasonic photo fun studio, canon movie edit task, quiktime, skype....I can't think what would conflict with it?

If anyone can help I would be so grateful.
I do have a Pinnacle programme (not installed) don't know if I should use that instead, or even if I can. Or perhaps sony vegas is easy to use with Tm900. I'd prefer to just sort this above problem out and use HDW.

Anyone. help!!! with thanks, Jenny.

I don't have any solutions for you. I use HDWriterAE for extracting the files and doing some simple edits. I then use 3rd party software with some experience in DVD-Writing, like Nero to write the files to DVD.

[QUOTEI then use 3rd party software with some experience in DVD-Writing, like Nero to write the files to DVD.][/QUOTE]

So does Nero queue up the clips one after the other and tell you when to put another DVD in, without having to do the individual movies on separate dvds?
And does Nero do AVCHD?

I guess I could try that.

It's just that the whole editing system used to work, dvd writing and all, and now only the editing does, with the queue writing to dvd stuffing everything up. Why??

Has anyone had problems with conflicts with other software? Microsoft silverlight, itunes, ....??
I'm trying to think of what I installed between one edit and another. I'm in the process of uninstalling a bunch of software.

Jenny:mad:

I am looking for the "Service Manual", not the op manual, for the TM900...does anyone know where to download it from??

As Per post 1313 - I am having trouble with HD Writer, copying the videos to disc.

There's a glitch somewhere, I wonder if anyone else has experienced this.

The software won't copy the image to the disc of the 2nd dvd in the queue. It stops at the same place every time.
If I change the order of the video clips (which I don't want to do.) ...the queue works, the 2nd dvd copies just fine, and so it does not seem to be a software conflict, but anyway I still uninstalled a bunch of software that may have had an impact. It didn't. So not a software conflict problem.

What is going on? I experience the same problem on a laptop as initially I thought it may have been the computer.

This seems to be a glitch within the HD writer software, even though I've uniinstalled it and reinstalled a few times.

I want to know if anyone else has had queueing problems, or copying image to disc problems. I feel it has something to do with the first video clip in the queue (this happened the last bunch of edits to the 2nd dvd in queue too...but not the first bunch of edits, which all copied fine)

Could it be something to do with a title glitch, a fade or something? could it be something to do with the length of the clips...is there some length of clip that the software doesn't like?
It's just so annoying. The only way I can make the video copy work is to put them out of order....which won't do for a home video meant to be chronological!

bsprague or others,

Any idea on timing for the next iteration/release of Premier Elements? I'm thinking about picking this up but would rather wait a few months if a newer version is imminent.

The last two Premier Elements versions released toward the end of September. 11 was an important release because they moved a mess of tiny buttons off the over cluttered main screen to neatly organized menus and tabs. It also included the last bits for 1080p60 support like the tm900 makes. Also a new and improved slow motion tool was added.

An advantage of buying mid product year is that a mass of support becomes available. muvipix.com has a good and free 8 part tutorial program, lynda.com has one that costs a little but is more thorough and Adobe themselves have put up many of their own video tutorials on "Adobe TV", as well as the Premier Elements YouTube Channel. To add to that there are a lot of amateur produced tutorials as well. If you wait and get a release when it's brand new, you don't have that level of help.

I started with 9, upgraded to 10 and now 11 to chase the elusive AVCHD support. Now that it is fully there in 11, they are going to have to provide something really "amazing" to get me to upgrade again. With version 11 I now finally have a terrific match to my 3 cameras.

Last Christmas it was on sale for $45.

Bill

PS: I follow the Adobe sponsored Premier Elements user forum. Version 11 seems very stable with the exception of older computers trying to do 1080p, odd video drivers and (sometimes) Windows 8. Adobe certifies use with 8, but there are not enough people that have it or understand it to help when there is even a minor issue.
Edited by bsprague - 3/16/13 at 12:13pm

Knew I could count on you Always so helpful here...

That's good info...I see it for $75 or so now...not bad. Assume you don't use HD Writer at all any longer?
Edited by STR3T - 3/16/13 at 3:24pm