Let's talk AVCHD

I've been reading about how frustrated people are at the lack of software support for their new AVCHD cameras. I myself am looking at one, but I thought I'd pop in here and see if anyone has any experience with the format. Pinnacle Studio 12 and Sony Vegas (puke) both claim to support it, but people in the forums say both softwares keep crashing upon import. I would much rather work with a 1920x1080 format rather than that crappy HDV 1440x1080 anamorphic format. Anybody have any info about or experience with AVCHD?

Same thing will happen as did m2t HDV format. Adobe and others were slow at making their programs work with the Canon and other HD raw capture. The freeware programs were much faster at supporting new formats than the big boys. It'll take time but will finally come along.

A friend of mine bought a Panasonic HS9 HD Camcorder from best buy and it wasn't until he got it home that he realized there was no firewire port and no way to capture in real time. The USB2 interface was also useless according to him, the files on the camera's hard drive were proprietary and unrecognizable by any softwares. He said there was some kind of software that came with the camera but it was an unhelpful piece of crap. Bottom line, that camera is only good for recording something and watching it on your HDTV from the camera's playback. I find it hard to believe a company in this day and age would build a camera that had no way to edit the recorded material. Is there really a demand for cameras that can only be played back on a TV??? Plus, what happens when you run out of hard drive??? Obviously best buy knew about this problem because this camera was one of very few items in the store that carried a 15% re-stocking fee. In other words, best buy charged him $150 to return the camera. He got even though and that's all that matters. I personally would never shop at best buy to begin with, I've known all about their dishonest policies for some time. I know my bro will never go there again...

I haven't messed with this due to compression issues I hear about. One day it will be all direct to HDD write, but until they can get it as good as minidv, I will stick with my hv30 :-)

P2 cards seem to work great! But those cameras are in another price range.

zr-media you are doing it right and researching the camera and formats first. We have the internet as a great research tool now days so its a bit foolhardy to go out and buy anything expensive and technical without doing your research first.
Always good to read the technical reviews and also the actual buyer reviews that you find on the likes of Amazon.com. I have changed my mind on many a potential purchase after reading how purchasers really found the devices worked a couple of weeks later.

Hard drive camcorders suit some conditions and users better than others. All formats have there strengths and weaknesses; its a matter of doing your research first.

Interested to know why Sony Vegas didn't work for you? I've been using it for a couple of years now and its been rock solid for me through several upgrades.

Mark

Birkley: I wasn't puking over Vegas, I was poo-pooing sony in general. I lost nearly three years' worth of 3D animation work thanks to one of sony's wonderful root kits a few years back. Yes, I know I should have had it backed up, but I had never experienced a computer catastrophe before and I was protected against everything, I had never heard of a rootkit. And besides, if it hadn't been for sony, there's a good chance I'd still have all that work. So I refuse to support anything so much as associated with sony. I was devastated that blu-ray won the next-gen disc battle, although I hear there's a new non-moving "crystal cylinder" type of storage media in the works that makes blu-ray look like 8-track audio, tech-wise. I would love to see sony gutted and left rotting in the hot sun. They aren't capable of paying back what they caused me to lose through their greed and arrogence. At least the resulting class-action lawsuit really taught them a lesson.

FYI you can load most camera's footage on to a computer with an external capturing device.... like the Dazzle Mojave A1 Capturing device, I have one, I use it if I need to capture off old VHS cameras, vcrs or whatever else doesnt have a firewire.

I recently had the change to play around with some AVCHD footage, I wasn't too impressed with it, the compression was very obvious while watching the footage. Although it is new technology and its quality is improving fast.

Maybe going to Wikipedia and reading their article about AVCHD might help why some of the editing system won't work correctly on their computers.

The sony Vegas 8 Pro works perfectly AVCHD and gives the results of high quality.