Bought a Sony AVCHD camcorder, now what?

[gom]

Hi all.

This is my first foray into HD video.

I have a laptop with

Win7 Premium Home Edition on an AMD E -350 Duel Core 1.60 GHZ. 4 GB of RAM

so I think I have just enough horse power to handle the files.

My problem is that the Sony PMB software that comes with the handicam doesn't work good at all.

I'm appreciative of any ideas for a software that will handle AVCHD for a simple burn. I'm just a consumer who likes to take video of the kids playing football and want the disks of my video to play on a standard DVD player.

I would like to keep the 1080p quality of what I burn so I'm not sure if that means Blu-Ray discs or file conversions etc.

Thanks for any help.

[aedipuss]

take a look at the sony vegas studio hd 11 line. good performance for the buck.

your laptop is barely adequate. you can't burn blu-ray without a br burner. not likely you can add one. you could make 1080 mp4/mkv files but they are going to eat up your hard drive space quickly. an external storage drive will come in handy.

[edDV]

First you don't have 1080p, you have 1080i (unless you shot 24p - don't do that)

Can you play the files on your laptop? That largely depends on your display chipset.

Do you want to edit the files or just encode?

How do you intend to play the resulting encode? To what?

[gom]

First you don't have 1080p, you have 1080i (unless you shot 24p - don't do that)
I didn't shoot in 24p which I assume you mean 24 frames per sec. So I imagine the video is 1080i.


Can you play the files on your laptop? That largely depends on your display chipset.
Yes, the videos play smoothly.

Do you want to edit the files or just encode?
I would like to do some minor editing and add menus. Nothing more fancy than that.

How do you intend to play the resulting encode? To what?
I'd like to burn the final product on a standard DVD-R to play in any DVD player.

[edDV]

How do you intend to play the resulting encode? To what?
I'd like to burn the final product on a standard DVD-R to play in any DVD player.

So you want to watch on an SD or HDTV?

DVD players only play 720x480. Is that what you want?

Most Blu-Ray players will play "AVCHD disc" using BD or DVDR media.

Other option is a media player like WDTV.

[gom]

Oh, ....I didnt know standard DVD's won't handle 1080. I thought it was just file size that suffered because of the size of AVCHD.

As far as what I want? Well, I really want the HD quality which is why I bought the HD camera and HD flat screen TV.

So, What your saying is that I have to buy a blu-ray burner and attach that to my laptop and burn the AVCHD files to that and then also upgrade my stand alone DVD player to a blu-ray so everything is in sync? That makes sense.

Hopefully my laptop won't have to be upgraded.

[edDV]

Oh, ....I didnt know standard DVD's won't handle 1080. I thought it was just file size that suffered because of the size of AVCHD.

As far as what I want? Well, I really want the HD quality which is why I bought the HD camera and HD flat screen TV.

So, What your saying is that I have to buy a blu-ray burner and attach that to my laptop and burn the AVCHD files to that and then also upgrade my stand alone DVD player to a blu-ray so everything is in sync? That makes sense.

Hopefully my laptop won't have to be upgraded.

If your laptop has a DVD burner, you can burn an "AVCHD disc" on DVDR media playable at 1080i on most Blu-Ray players. Look for "AVCHD disc" in spec. About 20min per layer. For software use MultiAVCHD and ImgBurn, both free. For editing, look at Vegas Platinum 11.

Alt is to encode files for playback on a media player device off hard drive like this one.*
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=330

Either way make sure you back up the original camera files.


* It may play your MTS files directly. At worst you need to change the container from m2ts to mp4.

[pepegot1]

Trade it in for a Sandy Bridge computer. Then, no problems.

[turk690]

Hi all.

This is my first foray into HD video.

I have a laptop with

Win7 Premium Home Edition on an AMD E -350 Duel Core 1.60 GHZ. 4 GB of RAM

so I think I have just enough horse power to handle the files.

My problem is that the Sony PMB software that comes with the handicam doesn't work good at all.

I'm appreciative of any ideas for a software that will handle AVCHD for a simple burn. I'm just a consumer who likes to take video of the kids playing football and want the disks of my video to play on a standard DVD player.

I would like to keep the 1080p quality of what I burn so I'm not sure if that means Blu-Ray discs or file conversions etc.

Thanks for any help.

The specs of that laptop is barely capable for handling AVCHD. Lucky it plays smoothly at all. But start editing and plodding through treacle would be faster and easier. To start, get one with a processor that's 2.4GHz or better.
One requirement for any serious level of video editing is that there should be two physically separate hard drives, one for OS & programs, the other for captured and output files. These should be native bus drives, where each drive has a dedicated controller, such as SATA. USB is a star-topology bus whose controller is shared with other devices which means USB hard drives DO NOT count. If that laptop therefore doesn't have an eSATA connector with which to connect an external SATA drive, then even worse.
We've not even covered here how you can possibly connect a blu-ray drive to it.
But, take heart. AVCHD is a roaring tiger that Sony et al likes to sell as a cute coy cuddly kitten to unsuspecting consumers. There IS ironically NOTHING in AVCHD that is even remotely consumer-friendly. Those beautiful hi-def imagery the ads tout is only for you to be convinced to buy the wretched camcorder. But now that you have come to this site means you are ready to attempt to tame this beast...

[gom]

Thanks for all the replies. The camera seems to be ahead of it's time in my case so I guess at some point I'll have to trade up to a more powerful machine to gain full advantage of HD blu ray.

Meanwhile, I'll just try to "tame this beast" as one poster said and be content with 720x480 DVD. The next question is encoding to get a watchable disk.

Some have said Sony Vegas is the program to get which makes sense since I have a Sony product and they developed AVCHD but the big question is will Vegas encode AVCHD files to a more user friendly format?

I have video on DVD-R's in .iso files and they look and play great.

Are .iso files more or less superior quality wise in looks and workability than say MP2 or MP4?

Thoughts anyone?

[edDV]

I think you missed the point that once you shoot 1080i, it is easier to not re-encode to DVD. Just play them to your TV as 1080i off the Laptop HDMI port or get a WDTV and play them off an external hard drive.

The problem with a weak computer will be editing and encoding either for HD or DVD. In the future you will have a more powerful computer for editing.

Just be glad you can play these files. The load is probably being taken by the display chip set.

[gom]

No, I understand it is easier to not re-encode to DVD and just play them on a TV as 1080i, but at some point I dump them on the computer in raw format to clear the internal memory and SD card for more video. Those files I'll save for a better day.

But for today, I would like to put titles and menus and some editing using a program like perhaps Vegas to burn to DVD (even if the quality is sub par to HD).

That's why I was figuring that perhaps I could encode the video to another file type to accomplish this. These DVD's could then be mailed to family members to use at their leasure who live far and don't even own a computer but do have a TV and DVD player.

I draw the line at transferring to video tape though

[edDV]

Try the Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 11 demo. See if it works on your laptop.

[gom]

Good idea. Better to try it first. Will do.

[amoney]

My position was to archive in HD (FX 60i, 24Mbit) quality on hdd, then play it via HDMI. I just need a universal sharing solution... standard DVD comes to mind... and those fancy DVDirect express that Sony sells look simple enough. But using the line out to convert HD to standard def DVD, record live 1:1 copies seems just as tedious not to mention worst VCR quality, and I can do the same with my existing DVD player that also records.

Is there something I'm missing about the DVDirect express line that can burn HD to std DVD (not the crappy hybrid HDVD disc -AVCHD format that only plays on HD specific boxes). I have skimmed through the manuals to no avail, it seems that in this day and age documentation sucks.

Even contemplating recording in std def 480i and the problem will be solved not to mention easy file management. Sigh what have I got myself sucked into. I honestly feel that 480 DVD resolution is pretty good (I loved my previous MiniDV). What a pain.

FYI that AMD Fusion processor is pretty impressive. By no means a power house but can hold its own (my HP has 8Gb ram, 7200rpm hdd, optional ssd).

[amoney]

deleted double post

[edDV]

I have the Sony CX560V.

My position was to archive in HD (FX 60i) quality on hdd, then play it via HDMI.

So you are saying that your laptop can play the AVCHD MTS files through HDMI with no skipping? That indicates an adequate display chipset.

Is there something I'm missing about the DVDirect express line that can burn HD to std DVD (not the crappy hybrid HDVD disc -AVCHD format that only plays on HD specific boxes). I have skimmed through the manuals to no avail, it seems that in this day and age documentation sucks.

The Sony DVDirect Express VRDP1 appears to be a simple DVDR writer. DVD resolution is 720x480. Most camcorders come with software to shrink AVCHD to DVD.

Here are the options for 1920x1080i to disc.

1. Burn the h.264 MTS files to DVDR as data. At 24 Mbps, you can fit about 20 minutes to a single layer DVDR. Then attempt playback from disc on your PC. If that doesn't work, pull a copy the file to hard drive for playback.

2. You can "author" an AVCHD disc with the the same 20 minutes to a simplified BDMV file structure that is playable on most Blu-Ray players or on a PC. To play on a PC you simply play the MTS file from the BDMV/STREAM directory. Free

3. Compress the files to lower bit rates and/or lower resolution. This of course lowers quality. At the extreme you send the file to Youtube so they can compress further. Suggest you start with Handbrake Software.

4. Author to Blu-Ray spec.