Old vs. New

[astro4travel]

Most of the folks around me are still in the Standard Definiton mode. I need to buy a camcorder for my stepdaughter and need to know if I should try to stay with mini-DV tape. Can the new ones with flash drive that record in AVCHD record in SD and can I transfer this to my computer for editing with Adobe Premiere? For me to make a standard DVD that they can play back on their SD television. I presently myself own a Canon tape based player so I really don't have much knowledge on the latest camcorders. Thank you in advance.

[yoda313]

Edit - sorry I don't believe any avchd can do sd - except odd sub 720p levels that are not dvd standard resolutions that would require extra conversions.

But editing avchd can be tricky.

If you don't see the need or desire to work in hd than you should stick with standard definition. Mini-dv will be fine. The workflow is much simpler and just about any computer can handle dv-avi to dvd conversions with little issues.

Its a steeper learning curve and speedier computers are needed to work with avchd. But it would be a file transfer for avchd not a real time dub.

[fritzi93]

You can convert AVCHD to SD DVD-Video easily enough with multiAVCHD or BDRB.

But two things to consider:

1) AVCHD is a pain to edit.
2) Your computer specs (if correct) aren't up to the job.

[HoosierGuy]

Can I get a quick (few lines) answer to - why is AVCHD a pain to edit?

[yoda313]

Its not easy to get frame accurate editing. Conversion to an alternate format is recommended for it. Also at least a dual core processor is needed to work on it and even then faster is better.

Edit - and lossless cutting is possible apparently but its tricky to do just simple cuts unlike working with mpeg2.

[pepegot1]

When hardware is ahead of software development that's a big problem. Get a new 60P Panny for $1300.00 and try your software on it. It probably won't work. If you get special high priced software you may be more successful. You had better be a camcorder HD Guru in this field. Get a Canon HV40. You can shoot SD and HD-not AVCHD. Camcorders is one area where there are problems with AVCHD, which they insist on using. You had better have a new computer too. Old ones are too slow for this baby. I am waiting for Sandy Bridge and hoping it beats the hell out of AVCHD. In the future things will improve but, that's not today! I am still using my 3CCD SD Panny. I don't want to spend all day encoding, processing, etc.

[astro4travel]

Yeah, you are right. I did indeed look at the Canon HV40. I think I will go with that for now. I am going to build a new system with Sandy Bridge and 8 gigs of ram. Even then, I probably will stick with tape. I know my old P-4 would cough and stutter.

[HoosierGuy]

So we are a point where hardware is a little too far ahead of the editing software. Even for Final Cut Pro?

[Cornucopia]

I thought you'd gotten that cleared up in that other thread - so why are you bringing it up again?

Straight from Apple's website:

"...AVCHD and AVCCAM editing is supported using Apple ProRes...".

This means, they DON'T natively edit it; they transcode it first to Pro-Res QT-Mov codec. This takes time and processing power and is (a little bit) lossy. Then, if you want something viewable by an end user, you need to encode again (with more loss and more time) on export.

It's not that hardware is ahead of software, but AVCHD hardware was brought out before it was truly ready. On the encode side, they made hardware encoders that sacrificed quality for realtime speed. On the decode side, you have a choice of:
1. Hardware decoding specialty chipsets that also sacrifice quality for realtime speed. - $$
2. CUDA-accelerated decoding that might be good speed & good quality. - $$$
3. Unaccelleratd software decoding that is (usually) good-to-great quality, but are slowwww. - $$$-$$$$

In the future:
1. will improve their chipsets/models so quality will improve. - but you'd have to buy all over again.
2. CUDA and other accel. will become more prevalent (and cost will trickle down).
3. Software will benefit from faster PCs (also $ tirckle down).

It all depends on how much you're willing to spend.
If you don't intend to edit, AVCHD is ok and you can get by with lower cost (cams & soft). $
If you will edit, then you choose speed vs. size vs. quality. Cost will be somewhat more. Probably makes more sense here to use DV, HDV, or AVC-Intra, etc. $$-$$$
If you will do pro editing, get a pro camera and then you won't have to worry about it. $$$$-$$$$$

Scott

[redwudz]

Maybe already covered here, but SD DV has every frame as a keyframe (I Frame) and you can easily do frame accurate editing wherever you want. On the other hand, highly compressed formats like Xvid, Divx, H.264, have widely spaced I frames. Divx by default uses a 300 frame spacing. Most editing programs only want to cut on a I frame.

What that means is you can't just cut anywhere if you want frame accurate edits with high compression codecs and not have video breakup and sync problems. Some editors can re-encode at just the cut points and eliminate that problem with some formats.

Second problem is the framesize. HD video uses sizes like 1920 X 1080 or similar. US NTSC DVD video uses 720 X 480 or similar. So HD is difficult to edit and not to DVD specification.

Third problem could be the audio format. Not all HD audio formats are compatible with DVD formats.

I don't want to discourage you from HD formats, but they are quite a bit different than the SD (DVD) formats you might be used to.

But the video quality is much better, IMO.

[Cornucopia]

The quality is much better, ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL. Which they usually aren't. Even with improvements in cost/performance ratio, I'd still expect HD to cost 2x-3x SD of equal performance (obviously not equal quality). So, if you aren't putting out the $$$, you're making SOME compromises.

Scott