[Nightcargo]

I usually get frustrated with these kinds on posts when I see them in my areas of expertise (computers/displays/motorcycles) but after days of researching I'm still not sure what is what as far as formats/exporting/editing and everything else. Enough of the anti-flaming clause.


I have a CanonHFS10 camera and I want to make movies of my daughter, wife and hobbies. Right now I have to use the junk ImageMixer3 software that came with the camera to get the video from the camera to the computer. Since IM3 crashes every 2 minutes I export the video to an MPG-2 file so I can work with Microsoft Movie Maker and I have been having success with the microsoft program adding stills,audio and video to make some ok movies.


The problems:


when I export the videos are only 720x480


I feel like I have to do twice the work (pulling video from cam, then convert to edit)


What format does my camera encode. The videos show .mts as an extension. I thought this thing shot in AVCHD or is that just what it can convert to?


The Fix?


Could Sony Vegas 9 or some other software allow me to pull video from the camera and edit from there bypassing ImageMixer3.


I read the SVega9.0 specs and it shows both .mts and AVCHD as exceptable formats but don't know if the IM3 is still needed by the Canon!


Thanks!

 

[guy80]

.MTS is avchd & the native format the camera shot the footage in.


Regarding another editor, I always import my movies onto a drive on my PC to speed up the process (reading over USB to the camera is a bottle neck). Using another program you do not have to convert the file format (& shouldn't if you want to keep the quality; obviously transcoding will be ok [i.e. neoscene]).


It seems most the camera are capable of being mounted without launching the IM3 software. Some have issues with this method, I assume a driver conflict for the ones that do.


Sony software seems preferred, but I dislike the interface. I tend to favor Magix Pro X interface, & plan to try Adobe's software (waiting to see if they update to CS5 in their video editing software) & hope to learn After Effects.

 

[xfws]

Nightcargo, all the video editors Adobe, Sony, Magix, Pinnacle, etc. have free trials you can download.


Always try before you buy.


See which one works the best/how much you want to spend.

 

[Nightcargo]

Thanks for the reply guys. I have tried some trial versions of software in the past and found they were so dumbed down that you could not see the true capabilities. Hopefully this will be different.