What workflow would you recommend?

My client is recording 6 hours every day of continuous HD video on a Canon HG21 camcorder with 120gb internal hard drive. What's the fastest workflow to transfer that video out of the camera, to take to a remote location to be edited on Windows Adobe Premiere?

1) Transfer with USB2.0 port on camera to a Pc hard drive?
2) Burn directly from camcorder to a Blu-Ray recorder?

Anyone know the relative time with each method?

My tests are showing the USB2.0 takes 15 minutes to transfer 5 minutes of video (using the Pixela ImageMaster software that came with the Canon HG21 camera to a Vista-64 PC hard drive) but I don't YET own a Blu-Ray recorder to know time involved there, but would buy one if it is almost as fast or faster.

The camera is the new Canon HG21 120gb hard drive so there's no firewire, only USB2.0 or HDMI ports, same as the new Sony cameras.

To make my challenge worse, the client is recording 4 cameras, 6 hours daily, so there's 24 hours of video daily I need to deal with transferring.

If you want to burn the files to blu ray then your still going to have to get the footage onto the pc first, so that won't speed up the workflow.

I presume you have to send the footage to a pc other than the one you reffered to above, in that case, i would plug a portable hard drive into your pc, the transfer the footage from the camera, through the pc and into the hard drive.
Then send/post/deliver that portable hard drive to the editing pc.
At the same time get the editor to send another empty hard drive back to you ready for the next footage offload.

Paul.

That is a very slow transfer. My Sony SR11 1920x1080 AVCHD transfers an hour in less than 20 mins using the Sony Browser software supplied with the camera. That using the USB 2 link, PC is Quad core Q9450 running Vista 64. This transfer speed is the same on my old PC, AMD X4200 dual core running Win XP 32. So I think the limit is the hard drive in the camera.
Ron Evans

My tests are showing the USB2.0 takes 15 minutes to transfer 5 minutes of video (using the Pixela ImageMaster software that came with the Canon HG21 camera to a Vista-64 PC hard drive)

That is a glacially slow transfer rate, Jonathan. Something is wrong!
Are you sure you are hooking up the USB 2.0 port on the camcorder
to a USB 2.0 port on the computer? The only way your numbers make
sense to me is if the USB port on the computer is operating in 1.1 mode
or you have an intermediate hub that is causing things to drop down to
USB 1.1 mode.

I don't see any system specs. in your profile.
Please update! It's hard to give advice without information.

Seems like a hard way of doing things, for sure.

Why not park a dedicated pc with an HDMI input port adjacent to the camera and cut out the middle man by streaming directly to the pc over HDMI then onto an external drive and just swap out that drive every 24 hours?

No disc transfers, only reqires one camera, a dedicated pc and a handfull of external hard drives.

I gotta say, editing down 24 hours of video every 24 hours sounds like the job from hell.

Must be rivetting stuff.


CS

I agree that those transfer times are WAY off... you're just transferring files, it's different from "footage". If you're just using the stock software, there shouldn't be any transcoding hit...

1/3 real time (i.e. 1 hour recorded video = 20 minute transfer to your computer) is what you SHOULD be seeing, that's what I've seen reported from virtually every user, and my own experience... if you're seeing 3x instead of 1/3, something's wrong somewhere.

Maybe USB 1.1 instead of 2, maybe port conflicts of some sort (I've got nearly a dozen USB devices on and off my machine, and sometimes I put the wrong one in the wrong port at the wrong time, and POOF, things get ugly... devices disappear, machine locks up, etc.). Try another machine/laptop?

For the volume of video your client is asking to process, using tapeless with USB transfer is probably the ONLY way to go, but I hope you've got a monster fast machine to preview/edit on... or are getting one before you start trying to deal with this project! With that volume of video, I'd price in a brand new shiny top of the line quad core machine (latest i7 core preferably from the report in the Vegas part of the forum)...

You can transfer the files to a laptop or a portable drive or whatever (they are just files after all), but dealing with that much AVCHD could tax all but the fastest computer - I'm presuming you're mixing the 6 cams multicam and rendering out from there with hopefully minimal CC and post effects? If you've got a lot of post effects, it could get REALLY ugly.

I shoot 4 Sony cams and mix/render in Vegas, and especially when it comes to rendering, I'd never think of doing that size of project with my Q6600...