AVCHD camcorders

[col lamb]

As most of you will no doubt have seen for a couple of years now there has been an increase in the AVCHD format camcorders from Sony and Panasonic. These record MPEG4 format video onto solid state "SD" card or "Memory Stick Pro" + others at the very top end.

For information, I have never had a HDV camcorder as I have always thought that it is an intermediate step until full 1920x1080 HD camcorders came onto the market. HDV is 1440x1080 for 1080i and the Video is recorded in MPEG2.

The two camcorders that I have are the Sony TG3 and Panasonic AG HMC 151 which are both AVCHD, both give superb results. Totally ignore any article or comments that you have read which gives negative feedback about the 151, in use it is a great camcorder. If it is in your price range test one out with your own Class 6 SD card, take home the footage and import it into your PC using a trial version of Edius Neo Booster and you will be amazed at the results. Similarly my little Sony TG3 is great when out and about but it is poor in the dark. We have tried projecting video from both camcorders at Preston Movie Makers on our full HD 1920x1080 Mitsubishi projector and the results are stunning.

Now onto editing, this is where the fun start (only joking, its not fun at all) for a start you need a fast PC with bags of memory to handle the AVCHD files either natively or via conversion.

Be careful here, software like Premier Pro, Final Cut, Edius 5 etc says it SUPPORTS video in the AVCHD format. What in practice this means is that it converts it ito MPEG 2 format HD files that can be edited.

Magix Movie Edit Pro 15 + (the + is important, as it is only the + that handles AVCHD) and Edius Neo Booster (version 2.5 in practice) both handle AVCHD files NATIVELY, that is without conversion to MPEG2. Of the two Edius Neo Booster is by far the best choice. You will need a fast PC such as 3GHz 4 core CPU, a min of 4Gb RAM and a graphics card that can handle the file rendering to get the best out of both these editing software versions.

You can also get conversion software from the like of Main Concept or Cineform which converts the AVCHD source files into editable files of differing formats, with many options being available. I have been using Cineform's to convert into thier own codec AVI and then editing these files in Premier Pro but there is a slight loss in quality hence why I have been trying out alternatives to Premiere.

I am now quite well used to using Edius Neo Booster, keeping my AVCHD files native and editing them without to much problem. The only issue I have is PC related as my own is only a 2 core 3Ghz system and so I do suffer from a little stutter on the playback monitor, the outputed files are of superb quality and playback on the same PC with no problems at all.

So far I have covered the camcorders and editing, next it is outputing.

Whilst I have a Blu Ray burner in my PC I do not have a player under my TV, nor does the club. So there is no point in burning my movies to disk. I output them to a variety of format files; selecting presets for MPG, HD AVI, AVCHD and h264, I then store these files on three seperate hard disks. I also have a Western Digital WD TV unit which has a USB2 input and HDMI output, the output goes into the TV or HD Projector and a portable hard drive is connected into the WD TV the result is that I can view any of the files in full glorious HD. The last competition we had at the club I had my entries on a 16Gb memory stick which I just pluged into the WD TV, simple. Do check out the Western Digital web site for the WD TV unit, there are two versions available one that can be networked and one that cannot so if you want network connectivity do get the correct model.

One final thing, if you are considering a AVCHD camcorder then please have a look at Ned's web site in the good ole U S of A. the AMPS website

http://www.ampsvideo.com/tech-talk/going-tapeless1.htm

Has an article on going tapeless, it is well worth reading.

Enough of my ramblings for now, I do hope that you find my actual AVCHD experiences helpfull.

Col Lamb
Preston

[Dave Watterson]

Hi Col,
This and your other post on AVCHD editing is very useful stuff. Whenever standards are in the middle of a change it leaves most of us confused!

Am I wrong in thinking that AVCHD, in most camcorders we might afford, is not full 1920x1080?

Just to add to your post:
Edius Neo with Booster is around £205
Magix Movie Edit Pro 15 + plus bundled other image software is £34
Panasonic AG HMC 151 is £3,560
Sony TG3 is £723

But my main concern is what you touch on at the end ... the limited possibilities for showing HD.

It is a chicken-and-egg situation but by the time HD projection/Blu-Ray players and so on become commonplace in clubs and festivals will the technology have moved on again?!

-Dave the baffled

[ned c]

http://www.avchd-info.org/format/index.html

That is the site for the technical specs for AVCHD; my Panasonic HDC-SD100 has a sticker that proudly announces "Full HD 1920x1080 of which it has three maximum bit rates; the highest delivering the best quality. There is also a setting for 1440x1080 which will record 6 hours on a 16 GB card. From the specs I have read most AVCHD cameras deliver 1920x1080 but with different bit rates. The maximum bit rate on a consumer camera is on the top of the range Canon at 24 mbps. The maximum for my Panasonic is 17 mbps and records 2 hours on a 16 GB card. When I create AVCHD DVDs from the AVCHD edited program I see the accepted format into Toast is 1920x1080 so this is maintained through the post chain.

I agree that AVCHD will replace HDV eventually and as Sony expand the NXCAM range I am sure that Panasonic will respond woith their AVCCAM. Exciting if expensive times!!

ned c

[ned c]

A further thought on Col's comments on editing. FCP and FCExpress convert AVCHD to Apple Intermediate Codec which is an intra frame format; not MPEG2, which is why the files get so big. This makes frame accurate editing possible with this software, the systems that work natively must, I assume, reconstruct the cut point frames, transitions and compositing on the fly, but I am guessing.

ned c

[col lamb]

AVCHD camcorders generally record at 1920x1080 in 1080i so it is full HD resolution. Most camcorders have switchable recording formats which either or both, change the pixel ratio or the recording bit rate.

With a 16Gb SD card in my Panasonic 151 it records for about 90 minutes at the highest setting. The manual says that the average bit rate is 21Mb/s and maximum 24Mb/s. I have not tried seeing the results at lower settings. One thing I am happy about is that when I got the 151 it was way cheaper than it is now. The fairly new sister model is the AG HMC 41 which looks more affordable at about 2k.

For info I believe that HDV is 25Mb/s.

I did try to edit for raw AVCHD files on a friends Mac which has Final Cut Express 4 installed, now this is a brand new system but it would not handle the files. A check on the web finds that there is an update for FCE 4 to clear the bugs and enable the handling of AVCHD files. The converter was there but every time I tried to use it the Mac crashed. Pretty poor, a brand new Mac being sold with software not up to date. No being connected to the internet on his Mac I could not update it for him.

Incidentally Panasonic have a utility which converts the AVCHD files into easier editable DVCPro format files. Basically it converts the files into HDV which is way easier to edit.

For our last holiday I bought a small Panasonic Lumix DMC ZX1 for my Wife, it is a very compact digital still camera with 10Meg pixel count. It also records to AVCHD lite 1440x1080 in MOV file format, the results are absolutely amazing, sound quality is not to bad but as someting to carry around on hols it is the best of all worlds and supplements my Sony TG3 very nicely.

[ned c]

Just checking, when you ingested the files into FC Express 4 you did use Log and Transfer NOT Log and Capture which will not ingest AVCHD files. Same in FCP 7. You also have to set the desired transfer format; in FCE this is Apple Intermediate Codec, in FCP we have a selection of ProRes formats.

ned c

[tom hardwick]

Col, I feel your excellent post deserves a wider IAC audience than this page will generate, so have you considered turning it into an article for Garth Hope and FVM? It's just what the mag needs in my view - actual hands-on AVCHD experience.

The serious tests of the HMC151 all find that the Panasonic camera performs noticeably better in the 720 mode rather than at the 1080 setting. Have you seen these results? Even Richard Payne - ex DVC and current Holden importer of this fine camera - agrees, and all his demos at the various exhibitions are shot at 720. As he says, show-goers are looking at his 42" plasma TVs from something like 4 feet away, and he needs the pictures to look at their best.

Although Edius 5 has yet to be updated to work natively with AVCHD it's due next month (March) by all accounts. Meanwhile I've never heard any complaints that the Canopus codec that descrambles the files for smooth 'n' easy editing harms picture quality in any way - it just takes up gallons of gigabytes with the enormous files it generates. That's not a problem these days with 1TB external drives costing £52 (I've just bought one).

It's worth noting the HDV (MPEG2 compression) differs from AVCHD (MPEG4) in that the former is a fixed set of values but the latter is a Pandora's box of options open to the designer. A camera might well claim 'Full 1080 HD' in iridescent, laser-etched lettering on its body, but this simply means that some of the AVCHD options have been included.

Sony's move to the NX5 (the Z5's replacement) signals the end of HDV to tape and their adoption of AVCHD to SD card and Memory stick. They had a flurry with HDV to CompactFlash (Z5 and Z7), but it was an expensive, intermediate solution, and Panasonic have shown them the way. You do say that HDV was an intermediate step to 'full HD' and you're right, but the fact remains that HDV was a huge step up from DV whereas AVCHD is only a little bit better than HDV.

Dave - Blu-ray should answer your question about universal storage of HD signals. The thing going for Blu-ray is the amazing cheapness of discs and players, and this should boost sales while the world gets ready to store everything on SD card.

But in its dying days I'd like to put in a good word for HDV. It brought eye-widening quality to the masses; it used bog-standard MiniDV tapes that could be bought anywhere and archived with painless ease; it used exactly the same tape decks as had been around since 1995 and was above all backwards compatible - a remarkable achievement.

Tapeless should mean greater reliability - in fact I'd go so far as to say it will mean greater reliability. But the move to card capture and even greater compression does mean (as has been mentioned here) that computers are stuttering somewhat in an effort to keep up. If only it were as simple as saying, 'It's only money'. It's not, it's relearning everything you've learnt day after day, and that takes precious time.

tom.

[col lamb]

Tom

Good idea about a longer article for the Mag, i'll e-mail Garth.

As 720p is 1220x720 pixels I am not to keen on using the 151 at anything other than the max settings.

The word out on Edius's next upgrade is that it is still a few months off before we get the upgrade that will no doubt be required. Readers please remember the golden rule about editing software updates: -

"Updated software will have bugs until at least the .1 update".

The present Edius AVCHD converter works great, or rather it did on the trial version. The converter which does degrade the AVCHD file is Cineform's Neo, that said it is not by much and only on certain shots which contain fast movement.

Ned
Yes, I did try to use the "Log and Transfer" in Final Cut Express 4, it was when I started the process that the software crashed. I'll try it again once it has been updated when my mates Mac is online. I could not find a way to download the updates and run them separately, is there a way?

[tom hardwick]

You say. 'I am not to keen on using the 151 at anything other than the max settings.' but you realise you're degrading the image quality in shooting (with the 151) at these settings?

[ned c]

MAC updates appear as a list with the option to add or not. If you select add it will automatically add to the program it is updating; it will not appear as a separate file.

ned c

[billyfromConsett]

I've been trying for some time in helping a friend to get Sony Vegas Pro 9 Platinum to edit 16Mb AVCHD. 1920 x 1080 m2t files sure are awkward to edit, with stability.

My mate has an i7 920 chip, 6GB of ram, 9600GT graphics, 650watt power and 2x1TB HDD's equiped rig, non-overclocked. The rendering phase seems to remain crash-free for short timelines only. There's a mainboard bios update to try (MSI X58 Pro) and a Vegas dll file fix so it will use more system memory. They'll be my next options.

Sony seem to know about this level of instability on some modern rigs with AVCHD, yet have released only 1 patch some time ago. They haven't released a 64 bit version of the app.

This is on Windows7 64 bit.

It's nice to enjoy the pleasures of being in the elite crew!

[Geoff Addis]

Just a small comment regarding formats: I have to say that I find 1280 x 720 50p in some ways nicer to view than full 1920 x 1080 50i. Viewed at sensible distance, the difference in perceived resolution appears to be minimal, but there is a visible improvement to the smoothness of motion when using 1280 x 720 50p, no doubt due to its better temporal performance (Oh for 1920 x 1080 50p!). I am strongly tempted to make 1280 x 720 50p my preferred standard although it is flying against popular trends.

My judgement has been made from footage shot with an EX1.

Geoff

[col lamb]

Hi guys,

The Panasonic chip is a 1/3” CCD with an initial scan of 1920x1080p, all actual recording modes are processed from this initial scan. By playing around with some settings it is possible to reduce some of the minor issues with 1080i recording.

Billy - Vegas is not the best at handling AVCHD files, why not try downloading the trial verion of Cineform's Neoscene and transcode a few AVCHD files, then see if the editing is easier using the transcoded files.

I have also just finished a two part article for the IAC Mag on AVCHD camcorders, transcoders, PC specifications, editing, storage and outputting, which you should see start in the June issue.

Col Lamb

[billyfromConsett]

Thanks Col for your note. I look forward to seeing your piece later on. Can I ask you a question that won't wait?

If I was wanting an AVCHD camcorder now, to take on holiday, have you got any insight into recommending a model. My friend has a cracking Sony HDD job - the HDR-XR520VE - with an image stabiliser that is about the best I've seen (as assessed by giving it a 5 minute play with at his house). It costs about £1000 though.

[col lamb]

Billy

I have a Sony TG3 which is very small and it was great recently on a long holiday down under. There is now an update model in the TG7. It uses MSPro and a second battery is a must, I found that I needed 2 to ensure that I had enough for a full day shooting. In Three weeks I filled 2 1/2 16Gb memory sticks. The model is very good all round during the day and OK in low light, in very dark conditions grain is excessive, audio is 5 channel and pretty good.

It was a toss up between the TG3 and a Panny sd9 which as it happens my brother hs and I have seen his movies and that is a great camcorder. This is now suerseeded.

I also looked at Canon but in March they are are releasing a whole gaggle of new camcorders. They are already on their website.

I'd recommend avoiding any AVCHD camcorder that has either a hard disk or DVD drive, keep recording solid state with no moving recording parts.

If you check out the Sony web site you will also find their new AX2000 which is their equivalent model to the Panny 151, time for Tom to get his hands on one and test it out.

Col Lamb