Urghhh HDV and AVCHD

SouperComputer

My head is wrecked with this. Been running around inc circles. HDV is easier to edit it seems but its anamophic rather than 16:9.

Is AVCHD THAT much of a pain to work with? What do you think you would go with. Ive read that due to the codec AVCHD suffers a bit more from artifacts in low light.

Right now im eyeing up a Canon HV20 around the $450 if I can bag a good one. Platform wise, I have access to Mac OS and various flavours of windows so platform/OS isnt an issue.

I like the idea of using DV and using HDV but I wonder if il regret running 1440 instead of 1920.

Any thoughts ladies and gents?

follow

i use mac (basically for final cut studio) and my work bought one of those types of cameras and it didnt work at all with final cut, no way to get it on, i had to find a process of uploading to a pc then using some weird converstion that ended up stripping my audio. just recently they have put out an add on for final cut express for avchd, so check that out if you in fact use a mac, works like a charm. i hope this helped at least some

decob

SouperComputer wrote: »

My head is wrecked with this. Been running around inc circles. HDV is easier to edit it seems but its anamophic rather than 16:9.

Is AVCHD THAT much of a pain to work with? What do you think you would go with. Ive read that due to the codec AVCHD suffers a bit more from artifacts in low light.

Right now im eyeing up a Canon HV20 around the $450 if I can bag a good one. Platform wise, I have access to Mac OS and various flavours of windows so platform/OS isnt an issue.

I like the idea of using DV and using HDV but I wonder if il regret running 1440 instead of 1920.

Any thoughts ladies and gents?

emm HDV is 16:9.. so at 1080i, but due to the compression used to get it on dv tapes it uses a non-square (retangular) pixel, it has a pixel aspect ratio of 1.33:1. hence being 1440x1080.

AVCHD can be a pain getting it onto a system that works fine with it, it was supported with final cut as of 6.0.1 on intel only macs transcoded to prores or apple intermediatry codec, dunno about any other system.

hv20 is a great little camera, i've taken in stuff as prores at 1920x1080 and looks stunning for a consumer camera..

extopia

The HV20 will work fine with Final Cut Pro or iMovie on your mac, despite the problems the other poster above had.

It's true that HDV is anamorphic 16:9. But what's the problem with that? It should play "unsquished" in your editing application, if that's what you mean.

Here's a discussion on HDV vs AVCHD.

decob

the other poster had a problem with avchd and fcp - recent updates have fixed that problem, as you said hv20 works fine with fcp.

SouperComputer

Well, I finally pulled the trigger and bought an open-box Sony HC3 for $449. Time was getting tight so I did some retail shoppping...

I'm pretty happy with it, probably not as good as the HV20, but the low light performance of the HC3 has exceeded my expectations so far.

The wife likes it too, which is important haha. Booked her into an iMovie and iDVD workshop, now we just need the baby to make an appearance!

Thanks for your input folks!