Newbie Help: Backing up and playback

[secmgr9]

Help please. I have a Panasonic HDC/SD600 (AVCHD format). When we playback home video direct from the camera it is seamless and gapless. However, when I back up the video onto my PC and then playback there is a gap in between each segment. A few (basic) questions:
1. Is there a proper way to back up or store the video onto the PC ? I just copied the mts files onto the PC
2. Should I not erase the SD Media Card so that I can just replay the video from the camera ?
3. If I did 1. correctly, then how does one watch home videos from the PC without viewing the gaps ?

I am sorry if this is basic, but I have always used tape based video cameras before and this is the first time I have had to deal with this AVCHD format.

Thank you very much in advance.

[TreeTops]

Didn't your camera come with software to transfer the vid to your PC? If so use that and see if that works better then a straight copy of mts files.

[secmgr9]

good tip. I just tried - but now my software HD Writer ae 2.1 from panasonic does not seem to be working properly. After looking on a few forums seems some people have issues running it on Windows 7 64 Bit. So can anyone recommend any other software that would help me resolve my issues ? Thanks in advance...

[TreeTops]

Use administrator mode to run that software in Win7 64.

[edDV]

1. Is there a proper way to back up or store the video onto the PC ? I just copied the mts files onto the PC
2. Should I not erase the SD Media Card so that I can just replay the video from the camera ?

Best way to back up AVCHD is copy entire contents of SD drive to hard disk. That preserves the metadata and allows copy back to SD for camcorder playback if that is what you want.

3. If I did 1. correctly, then how does one watch home videos from the PC without viewing the gaps ?

The gaps are being added by the player. If you want continuous playback, you need to join the files.

[secmgr9]

can you recommend a forum that explains how to join the clips ? I also found a player called Splash which seems to play back much better than Media Player - less gaps but still it stops between clips. Makes we want to go back to the Mini DV format - just take the film andput the cassette on the shelf !