Going Tapeless 5

GOING TAPE-LESS... Reviews & Questions

by Ned Cordery

Some AVCHD cameras

Panasonic AVCCAM AG-HMC70 camera.

The Panasonic AVCCAM AG-HMC70 is a bit of a fake. A very basic camera dressed up in a shoulder mount enclosure for those event videographers who want to make a statement. “Look at the size of mine!” Priced around $1,800, has 2 XLR audio connections as its pro bits.	The Panasonic AVCCAM AG-HMC150 seems to be the goods. Fully featured manual controls, 3 x 1/3 CCDs. A lens that starts at a real wide angle. An acquisition rate at the high end of the AVCHD standard, 21 mbps. With a street price around $3,500 this is a lot of camera for the money, not inexpensive but very capable. Good reports so far, but early days.	The Canon Vixia HF S10 (and HF S100) is a professional camera pretending to be a consumer camera. A single CMOS chip; but over 1/2 inch in diameter. Superb Canon optics, full manual control with recording at 24 mbps make this the pro’s B roll camera. $1,200.

If you are wondering where all the other AVCHD cameras are then Sony have used their proprietary Memory Stick rather than the universal SDHC card. There’s always someone who signs up to a standard and then decides to make their own version of it. Panasonic consumer division seem to have lost the plot and come out with a range of hybrids. HDD plus SDHC and no three chip equivalent of the SD HC100. Plus, of course all those missing viewfinders, JVC have one SDHC card only camera aimed squarely at the consumer. Limited manual controls, no mic/headphone sockets, no viewfinder.

Some Questions and answers re AVCHD

From Wayne Kensel Two questions re AVCHD recording

How long does the movie maker reuse the same solid state storage stick?

The storage device is an SDHC card which can be reused a large number of times. I don’t know what the limit is but it is certainly hundreds. After the SDHC card is filled it is downloaded into the edit program; reformatted and ready for reuse, rather like wiping a tape and re-using it. The problem now is how do we archive the data from the SDHC card if we want to keep it for future use? I am storing the clips on an external hard drive, as hard drives are relatively cheap now; this is OK as long as the hard drive doesn’t crash.
Is there a storage stick good for 90 minutes?

With the camera described in my article the maximum recording time on a 32 GB card at HDV resolution (1440 x 1080 7 mbps) is 12 hours!! I haven’t tried this as I have been recording at the highest resolution of 1920 x 1080 at 17mbps and can get 1 hour on an 8 GB SDHC card. The price of the cards has come down in recent months and a good quality Class 4 8 GB SDHC card can be bought for around $35. There are 16 GB and 32 GB cards available.

It is important to use the “high speed” cards, these are Class 4 and above, preferably Class 6, sometimes labeled for Video Use. The lower speed, cheaper cards may be used but there is a potential for problems.

From Ben Burfield

What reasonable priced, around $100, editing programs will handle AVCHD and what is the minimum computer requirements. In other words how inexpensively can I get into editing AVCHD?

Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9. Requires; 2.8GHz processor; 512 MB RAM (2GB better); Windows XP, Vista, Includes DVD Architect Studio. $99.95 ($71.99) There is also a bundled version, Platinum Pro, including Sound Forge Audio Studio and Cinescore Studio $129.95 ($89.99)
Adobe Premiere Elements 7. 3 GHz processor; 2GB RAM; Windows XP, Vista; includes DVD creation. $139.99 ($72.99)
Corel Video Studio Pro X2. Pentium 4 or AMD XP; 1 GB RAM; Windows XP and Vista, includes DVD creation. $79.99 ($72.99).
Apple iLife, Intel Mac with 1GB RAM, recommended; 4GB for FCE. Leopard OS. iLife includes iMovie; iPhoto; iWeb; Garage Band; iDVD; $79.99 ($69.99) or Final Cut Express at $199.
Pinnacle Systems Studio plus 12. Intel dual core 2.66GHz; 2 GB RAM; Windows XP and Vista, includes DVD creation $99.99 ($76.99). There is also a version with additional features, Ultimate 12 priced $129.99 ($124.99)

The prices are: first the manufacturers website for boxed versions and then the Amazon price. There are free download demos for all except iLife & FCE.

Dell Studio Desk Top; Dual core Intel, 500GB HDD; 3GB RAM; 22 inch LCD; ATI Radeon card. $730
Gateway DX 4710-07 : Dual Core Intel; 640 GB HDD; 4 GB RAM; 22 inch LCD $890
iMac 24 inch, dual core Intel 2.66 Ghz, 4GB RAM, 640 GB HDD, incl. Final Cut Express $1,700

Add to these prices the cost of external HDDs, currently a 1TB HDD with Firewire is around $175.

Question from Alan Wood.

Our son who lives in the USA has a Sony AVCHD camera and when we were staying with him I wanted to copy some video from his camera to bring back home. I found that there was not just a video file which I expected but a whole mass of other files. Not being familiar then with AVCHD, I just abandoned the attempt. Can you advise on the structure of video stored in this format?

Answer from Ned Cordery.

I imported all the folders from the SDHC card onto the Desktop of my PC. I then went through the PRIVATE folder to AVCHD, to BDMV to STREAM where the .mts (mpeg stream) files are located. I was able to import these into Vegas Studio Platinum v9 where they played and were editable. This shows that if this data is saved from the SDHC card to a computer it can be recovered and edited.

I don't know if other PC edit programs can import .mts files into the timeline but the current versions of Vegas and Vegas Studio can. As both programs accept most formats on the timeline I assume this will apply to a mix of 1080/60i and 1080/50i originated .mts files plus .avi files as well. Some edit programs handle native AVCHD others create a proxy which references back to the original files when exported.

There is software for conversion of AVCHD files to other formats, here are three sources.

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