Help Urgently Needed re Canon Vixia HF S20 Camcorder

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adrian1407
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Help Urgently Needed re Canon Vixia HF S20 Camcorder

Post by adrian1407 »

Just before Christmas I bought a Canon Vixia HF S20 camcorder in America assuming that it had a DV out port. When I got home I proceeded to film 8 school nativity plays for my grandson's school, promising that I would do them DVDs at a very nominal cost (£2) so that parents could see their children in action. The filming went perfectly but when I tried to capture the footage to my Macrosystem Casablanca Kron (stand alone editing suite) by DV firewire I was shocked to discover that the camcorder didn't have a DV out port. It has HDMI, USB, component & composite ports, but no DV out.
Since then I have tried everything to surmount the problem (I used to be a wedding videographer) to no avail. I bought a USB/DV firewire lead, an NTSC/Pal convertor; I have transferred the footage to my PC which has a DV out port, burned a DVD to feed the Kron via a DVD recorder, but everything has failed. At best I get perfect sound but no video on capture and, at worst, nothing at all.
I am now at my wits end. I have 6.5 hours of footage on the camcorder which I cannot capture for editing and I am really dreading ringing the school to say that, after all, I cannot produce the DVDs.
Can anybody help? I am willing to take both the camera and my editing suite (DV firewire in) any reasonable distance if anyone has the technology to overcome the problem. And I don't expect them to do it for nothing.
Please help.
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Dave Watterson
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Re: Help Urgently Needed re Canon Vixia HF S20 Camcorder

Post by Dave Watterson »

Adrian ... are the films not stored on the SD cards in the camera? Or can they not be copied to cards there?

If so a simple card reader-to-firewire gadget like "DeLOCK CardReader FireWire B > CompactFlash 91694" for around £40 on amazon should read them into your Kron, should it not.

Since I use neither card memory nor Cassie I am guessing ...

Dave
adrian1407
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Re: Help Urgently Needed re Canon Vixia HF S20 Camcorder

Post by adrian1407 »

I hadn't thought of that, Dave. The footage is at present stored in the camcorder's memory but it has also got two SD cards. If you are right and I can transfer the footage to a card then I will (you will) have cracked it. Thank you so much.
I really appreciate your help.
Adrian
tom hardwick
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Re: Help Urgently Needed re Canon Vixia HF S20 Camcorder

Post by tom hardwick »

You don't say what format you shot the school plays in Adrian - but was it full 1920 x 1080 60i? One way is to downconvert the files, and the blurb says:

'The LEGRIA HF S20 incorporates an inbuilt HD-SD converter. All you have to do is select HD-SD conversion when you copy your movie from one memory source to another. Easy Web Upload software is already included free in the box, which displays your SD clips, so all you have to do is select your clip and upload with one click.'

This would suggest you could upload the files to the Casablanca via USB, the only problem being the quality of the in-built standards converter, and the interpolation needed to change 29.97fps to 25fps. Give it a go and see what it looks like.

tom.
adrian1407
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Re: Help Urgently Needed re Canon Vixia HF S20 Camcorder

Post by adrian1407 »

Dave, I transferred the footage from the Camera's memory to one of the SD cards & purchased the DeLOCK Cardreader Firewire B as you kindly suggested. When it arrived I found that it only read CompactFlash cards and not the SDHC cards that the camera uses. So, back to square one. I'm now looking for a card reader that takes SDHC cards but I doubt that it'll have a firewire output.

Does anyone have the capability of transferring footage from an SDHC card (NTSC?) to DVD-R. If so, I'd be eternally grateful.
adrian1407
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Re: Help Urgently Needed re Canon Vixia HF S20 Camcorder

Post by adrian1407 »

Tom, Thanks for the advice. I'm still ploughing through the handbook trying to find the HD-SD conversion procedure. As I am not a 'techie' it takes me a little longer to master the finer points.!!
Thanks again, Adrian.
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Dave Watterson
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Re: Help Urgently Needed re Canon Vixia HF S20 Camcorder

Post by Dave Watterson »

Sorry my idea did not work, Adrian. I should really be old and cynical enough by now to realise that when such a simple solution appears ... I should triple-check it because things are rarely as simple as they seem. Maybe someone in a camera club will find the connection useful ...

Dave
tom hardwick
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Re: Help Urgently Needed re Canon Vixia HF S20 Camcorder

Post by tom hardwick »

Adrian, you ask if anyone has the capability of transferring footage from an SDHC card (NTSC?) to DVD-R. Well yes, anyone with an Edius system can do this (and I guess a load of other NLEs can as well).

But do you want the files transferred so that the DVDs plays the footage in a DVD player or do you want the files down-converted to PAL 720 x 576 so that you can load them from the DVD into your pc for editing? Eight school plays would suggest there's many hours of footage to be transferred, so email me if you like

tom r hardwick at gmail dot com
adrian1407
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Re: Help Urgently Needed re Canon Vixia HF S20 Camcorder

Post by adrian1407 »

Tom, thanks for the advice. I have found a chap in Plymouth who is going to transfer the 6.3 hours of footage from my SDHC card to PAL DVD-Rs 'at the highest possible bitrate' so that picture quality will not deteriorate too much. I have a DVD recorder with a DV firewire out port so it is my intention to feed the footage on the DVD-Rs from the DVD recorder to the editing suite via firewire. It's a convoluted way of transferring footage but, in your opinion, would the picture quality suffer badly doing it this way? Thanks again, Adrian.
tom hardwick
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Re: Help Urgently Needed re Canon Vixia HF S20 Camcorder

Post by tom hardwick »

The 'highest poss bit rate' sounds as if he's going to take your AVCHD footage and make it DVD compliant - i.e. compress it to MPG2 at 8mbps. This will be great for showing on a DVD player, but not good if you want to edit the footage.

Does your Kron edit suite have a DVD drive installed? It must have, so why not get the camcorder files transferred to avi files and then burnt to the DVD blanks. It would be like editing MiniDV tapes.

tom.
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