Further to last week’s debate on AVCHD, if you’re considering purchasing the HG10, you would do well to familiarise yourself with the Advance Video Codec High Definition format (or AVCHD for short). As you will already know, the HG10 stores footage on an internal hard drive rather than using tapes, and AVCHD is the new standard format for HD video.
This means you must be familiar with how to edit footage filmed with your HG10. Chief Geek found himself unprepared at first, but soon found that for his MacBook pro: “iMovie took the video off of my camera with no extra software, it just worked the first time.” For PC users he suggests that “if you own a 32 bit version of Windows, you might want to use the software your camcorder came with and then transcode the files into something else, and then move it to your favorite movie editing program.”
Sean from Sean’s Tech Stuff also had a similar experience when he first got his HG10:“Here’s where I really started to learn about the AVCHD format and what it’s all about. As it turns out, AVCHD is not THE standard but one of two standards, the other being HDV. And it turns out that AVCHD vs HDV camcorders are related in a minor way to the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD war.”
Sean goes on to explain that it’s very easy to drop the footage straight on to blu-ray disc for viewing purposes, but again if the footage needs to be edited, some popular editing suites don’t yet have the capability for AVCHD yet. He concludes by highly recommending the camera, but warning that you will be on the “bleeding edge” of editing software and things will improve considerably once everyone has caught up software-wise.
Check out the blogs for Chief Geek and Sean’s full experiences, and to see one example of what the HG10 can do once you’re up and running, look to one of our trialists Phil Campbell, who has uploaded a couple more videos featuring new star actor Ella. You can check out a video of her with the HG10 on full auto mode, and another making good use of the close up.
