Canon HG20 help needed

[Stu Pidazzole]

I'm a newbie to AVCHD, just bought a Canon HG20. I shot some video which I've downloaded a few times using various software, and depending on which software I use for playback, it has a problem on every one. Usually it's the video running in "slow motion", or should I say a "strobe effect", like it's missing every other frame, and the audio has an intermittent echo to it, like a DJ "scratching" repeats. Sometimes the video is still and the audio is running fine, and sometimes the video is OK but no audio. I've tried downloading with 4 different programs and it's the same problem.

Since I'm having problems with numerous download and playback programs, and since the source video/audio is OK when I play it back on my camera, I assume my problem is in my PC's drivers, right? ANY positive help would be appreciated, and I apologize in advance for being an ignorant Stu Pidazzole about this.

[poisondeathray]

If Your PC specs listed are up to date, it's too old - it can't keep up so you drop frames

You need minimum dual core to play AVCHD smoothly

[Stu Pidazzole]

But I'm not playing a raw AVCHD .m2ts file --- I'm converting it to .mpg, which I have no problem playing otherwise. The problem I think I'm having is in the conversion, like maybe my PC is missing something to convert the .m2ts file properly.

[poisondeathray]

How did you do the conversion? what software and settings ?

And why are you converting to .mpg (I'm assuming you mean re-encoding to mpeg2 in a program stream) ?

And what mode did you shoot in ? 60i? , 24p in 60i ?

[Stu Pidazzole]

I'm converting from .m2ts to .mpg because I read that video software can't work with the raw .m2ts file, so I tried Movavi, iSkySoft & ImageMixer 3 SE to convert it, but with each one, it's herky-jerky or audio-only or video-only when I play it back in .mpg format depending on which one I used to convert it. I'm shooting in High Quality @ 17 Mbps, 1920x1080, PF24 frame rate, but I know how to switch to 60i if that's the problem.

If you know of a program that works well with my Canon HG20 and will handle .m2ts files and let me edit them in that format, then convert it to a format YouTube is cool with, or any other way to do a better job that than what I'm doing, tell me more.

[poisondeathray]

You will likely want to upgrade your hardware either way . It's going to be very sluggish to edit and take a long time to convert , and you will get dropped frames on playback

PF24 is telecined. It's a 24p stream packaged in 60i . This is likely part of the problem. Not very many programs can handle inverse telecine. You can do it if you know how to use avisynth or you're willing to learn. 60i will be compatible with more programs.

If you want to edit , edius neo booster will give the smoothest experience with lowest system requirements. Premiere Pro CS5 with a cuda enabled graphics card is even faster but it is probably too expensive for someone new to video . Other popular "entry" level editors would be sony vegas movie studio , or premiere elements