Buyer's Remorse on a Canon HF200

[Genison]

After spending about 2-3 hours reading through these forums and feeling a little better acquainted with the information, I'm having a little bit of buyer's remorse for my Canon HF200. I know the topic is boring to some by now, but I'll be more specific to what my dilemma is and I would greatly appreciate responses.

I think I have decided I definitely do not want to deal with miniDV tapes. I understand HDV has some advantages over AVCHD using SD cards, but I really think I want to stick with SD and my own backup strategy. Having said that, what I'm really having a difficult time with is the editing issues I read about for AVCHD. Let me boil it down to what I need in a camcorder:

1. Must do 16:9
2. SD Card storage
3. As good Video Quality under all conditions as possible
4. ~$500
5. The ability to easily take the raw digital footage and convert to smaller sizes and regular DVD post editing.

So, I know that standard def camcorders will do 16:9, the Canon FS200 (for example) uses SD Cards, and producing that video (transitions and menus) could be done with just about any cheapo software I could find. And really, home videos don't have to be a full 1920x1080 resolution. They are just memories for me and family that want them.

I'm having a hard time finding something that will keep me from taking the HF200 back and getting the FS200 or something comparable that will just make this a lot easier. I don't have another $130 to spend on something like Cineform Neoscene to help me edit AVCHD.

I guess the real question is, can a standard def camcorder come close to as good video quality as AVCHD? I mean, take DVD movies for example. They are mpeg-2 right? Yet, they can look very good compared to the HD channels through cable. Upconversion DVD players help this out, of course. The point is, for the purpose of capturing memories and sharing them with family, most of whom just use standard DVD players, I think an AVCHD camcorder might be too much trouble. Idealy, I would love to record everything in full 1920x1080 and store that. Then I have the original highest quality video that I can always go back and redo on Blue Ray DVD if I really want to.

[minidv2dvd]

if you got that cam for ~ $500, you're not going to find an equivalent SD cam that produces video as good in quality. i'd say for now plan your shots well and use as little editing as possible - pause and restart often and discard the reject shots/files rather than having to clip them out. rendering to dvd spec mpeg-2 and burning to dvd isn't that difficult from avchd, if you leave out the editing. plan on upgrading to a fast quad core i7 as soon as possible to allow easier editing in the future.

[Genison]

Well, what are the hopes of better software in the future for avchd without having to convert (before editing) and allowing the option to burn to DVD or BD?

Right now, I'm experimenting and Handbrake seems to have successfully converted my avchd raw file from .mts to a mpga format that Nero VisionExpress seems to like just fine. I'm going to throw in some transitions and stuff and see how it looks on DVD.

[edDV]

Efficient native AVCHD editing will need more powerful CPUs than are generally available today. Digital intermediate conversion is the normal solution (i.e. decompress to all I frames and recompress at output). Downscaling for DVD is rather complicated since AVCHD is interlace. Your software needs to separate and scale fields separately for best quality. Deinterlace is lossy especially with hand held camcorder video.

If you shoot SD MPeg2, there is no downscale required. You can use a simple MPeg2 cutter like Womble or Virtual VCR and avoid decode losses. AVCHD has many hidden costs.
http://www.womble.com/

HDV has the added advantage of in camera HDV to standard definition DV conversion. You can output DV format and make a DVD without need to software downscale. DV format is all I frame.

[Soopafresh]

Xvid4PSP can convert the AVCHD files to different formats for editing.

I wrote a script a while back to convert AVCHD footage to a lossless file format which then can be more easily edited.

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic346331.html

[2Bdecided]

And really, home videos don't have to be a full 1920x1080 resolution. They are just memories for me and family that want them.

I don't even own an HDTV, but for getting content that looks great on the PC (and great downconverted to SD), HDV is wonderful. I wouldn't dream of going back to SD.

And for all that old SD content ("memories"!) I'm sad it's not HD.

...but if you're happy with 720x480, and want a really quick and easy editing flow from the raw footage on a standard PC, you've bought the wrong camcorder.

Cheers,
David.

[a1677c]

I do not know much about camcorders but I’ve been transferring video from a friends Canon Vixia HF100 to AVCHD onto DVD 5 & 9. I realize AVCHD’s have to be played back on a Blu-Ray player but with Wal-Mart & others selling units for under $150 soon most people you want to share your vids with will have one. I've been using AVCHDCoder which you can get here on videohelp for free. You can also load additional AVCHD’s while the program is running which makes ease of use great. You can also try going to 1280 x 720 vs the 1920 x 1080. 720p takes a lot less bits to looks as good which equals less processing time as well.