As per Trog's post in this thread I'm off looking at an HF11 (next one up from the one he mentioned, it's got more onboard storage) but reading reviews on CNet lead me to believe there aren't too many video editing packages on the cheap that can edit AVCHD footage from these things. This question is mainly aimed at the Ausgamers staff who edit the files but for anyone else that has one of these cameras that outputs to AVCHD how do you edit the video? I don't want to spend $1500? on a camera and then have to spend $3000 on a mac + final cut just to edit my videos where currently I just pull them off my camera with some dodgy free software I found & edit them in virtualdub/windows movie maker.

Reason I'm out for a new camera is mine is a Mini-DV style and if I record 2 hours of stuff I have to sit there for 2 hours waiting for the footage to transfer to the computer, it happens in real time with mine.

So, the second question is: How fast does the footage from the camera transfer to the computer? Is it done in real time (2 hours of video takes 2 hours to transfer) or is it like copying an HD video file from one computer to another, only limited by the speed of the connection (usb?)?

I'm guessing you'll want a program that will convert AVCHD to some form of raw AVI if you're looking to do basic chopping in virtualdub or something simliar. Maybe the camera comes with software to do this?

Also choose wisely which form of encoding you use or you will quickly lose that nice HD image :)

Not 100% sure on the last question however i'm pretty certain it's just limited to the speed of your usb / firewire connection.

Not really looking for simple editing only, if I could get some sort of green screen features & the ability to do funky effects like masking or whatever I'd be willing to lay some coin on a decent program that sits somewhere between premiere & windows movie maker but I'm not willing to spend megabux on an entirely new computer just for the task to get my hands on final cut or something.

Also my TV is only 720p so that nice 1080 image will be lost on the poor bastards that watch it on there anyway, my computer is full 1080 though so I get the good s*** :D

Either way I'm off out to look at them in stores, knowing how impatient & impulsive I am I'll probably end up buying one anyway & just wait for the software to catch up. HA!

last edited by whoop at 10:54:42 23/Aug/09

Let me know what price you get for that HF11 too, and where from as I'm still looking around at HD cams

If you can convert it to a more standard video format then you can edit it in pretty much anything.

For good easy editing software I recommend Sony Vegas, the latest versions handle your resolution, If you look around there may even be a free plugin somewhere to handle that file format without needing to convert first. Very bloody easy to figure out how to do stuff in this program, just drag n drop mostly, and you can see the waveforms to easily line up audio, comes with heaps of filters and effects like the Sony Chroma Key for doing green screens - lots of tutorials out there too.

Just looked it up - the last few versions of Vegas support AVCHD by default :P Sony are cainors.



last edited by thermite at 11:52:29 23/Aug/09

Well it turns out you can't get HF11's anymore but you can still get HF10, and their newer model the HF20 which it looks like I'm going to get instead. There's also an HF100 or 200 which seems to be much the same but lacking the internal memory. I prefer the comfort of knowing if I take out my SD card & forget to put it back in I can still record a bit of video though, a couple of times I've taken my still camera to work & left the SD card at home sitting in my card reader :(

Just looked it up - the last few versions of Vegas support AVCHD by default :P Sony are cainors.

I'm also an avid sony hater (I do own a bandanna or two but I'm not trog in disguise :p) but if their software has the goods then I shall take that into consideration as I did use vegas YEARS ago before I hated sony and it was pretty easy to use. Thanks.

I'm also an avid sony hater

I'm also an avid hater.

Ok so, camera searching update: The reviews I read and my own experience with them in store concludes that canon HF20 sucks balls in low light situations because of its smaller image sensor, the picture is grainy and the grain is multicoloured & stands out like dogs balls.

For this reason I decided to go the HFS10 because of its larger sensor and favourable reviews. It's still charging at the moment but as soon as it's done I'll install the software and try to take a few videos of things with it, though it'll probably be quite dark by the time it finishes (good test for low light I guess). I'll keep you updated on what I find Wetwired.

I got it for $2100 at my local HN store, I don't know if elsewhere has it cheaper but HN is like 5 minutes drive just up the road and I cbf wasting fuel running around to different stores.

Whoop: I do most of the video editing for AG and prefer Vegas Studio (platinum version is about $120 and there's a time-limited trial that gives you full use for 30 days). I even originally had a Macbook for the purpose and played with Final Cut, but as an inexperienced editor and a native Windows user, personally found Vegas waaay more intuitive. In fact, I run bootcamp Windows 7 on the Macbook with Vegas Studio when abroad. It handles the AVCHD natively fine.

One issue is a lack of control over the output codecs you can render with, but with the debugmode frameserver plugin you can frameserve the render from Vegas and encode with anything that plays nice with Avisynth scripts (recommend MeGui for x264 love).

If you can get that Vegas Studio for $120 then I'd definitely do that (heh I thought it was like another one of those $1000 jobbies).

If you want to go the open source route read my bitch on it - it's doable but at the very least you'll need to invest in a commercial h264 codec to handle the reading, and then you can at least use things like virtualdub, etc.

The software that comes with the HF10 supports BASIC editing - I wouldn't rely on it for anything fancy. I used it like twice before I figured out my above path.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiope US$84.95

Vegas Pro is $600, but for this kind of light use, you can easily get away with Platinum. It has a few disadvantages like restrictions on the amount of layers you can have and the formats you can render out to, but I've found it to be completely adequate. And yeah, 30 day free trial - can't really go wrong.

last edited by Dan at 09:21:22 24/Aug/09

Except you're giving Sony money :(

Don't worry trog, I installed the trial version last night and it won't even run without registration, i.e. it wants my name, address, postcode, phone number AND a serial number (which I just hit don't have, run as trial) just to run. Needless to say sony can go f*** themselves, I know I can enter false details but I'm going to protest their stupid mandatory registration process by not buying it. Hell, I'll go pay $3000 for a mac & final cut just out of spite before I buy Vegas because of that.

I got the trial of premiere last night, gonna install that & see how it goes but last time I tried premiere it crashed all over the place, probably because I had about a million different codecs installed. I'd rather pay Adobe than Sony, though given a chance I'd rather not pay either (Adobe over charge something fierce, look at full packages vs student package pricing)

Out of curiosity I tried converting the files my video camera gives me using handbrake & opening it virtualdub and it works so I can at least cut/paste them together but converting from one lossy format to another then saving as yet another lossy format is lose and no fancy transitions :(

It does come with software but it wants the serial number for my camera and it sends it off to japan somewhere and uses that as the registration key for the program. Not really sure what happens if I format, will it bitch & moan? That and I don't want some chinese hacker stealing my serial numbers. :tinfoil hat:

last edited by whoop at 18:51:28 27/Aug/09

Except you're giving Sony money :(

better sony than apple

I have the Sony HDR-SR11 and love it. The files transfer in no time flat.
I bought Sony Vegas pro. I cant remember how much it was, but it wasnt much and its very good, so worth what ever I paid for it.

Dont be a hater of Sony. If the product is good, than thats all that matters.