Hello, nice to meet you all.

Please could you help me with my new HD Canon camcorder, it's a Legria HF200, bought as a xmas gift and I'm tired of it already, which is a shame.

I'm sure its me and my equipment, so as to speak.

Nothing plays smoothly or without jitters when transferred to the pc. I have a hp 6910p laptop running vista business with 2gb RAM.

It plays fine on the camcorder 2" lcd, but not on the laptop via Imagemixer/player (Canons provided software). It also doesn't play in the VLC media player, that's just sound track with a frozen image.

I can't believe that the camcorder has more processing power than the pc??!!

Transferred a test to youtube, it recognises HQ (HD) but jars from one frame to another.

Is it the laptop's video card, not enough ram, Imagemixer, VLC, all of the above? What I dont want to do is spend £120 on RAM, then £? on upgrading the video card (not sure I could anyway) and then have to go and buy a £? PC with masses of RAM and a better video card after.

I was hoping for a HiDef extravaganza, all I got was a jittery set of stills.... gutted.

Thanks for looking, reading and hopefully, helping.

What about playback on an HDTV... via either HDMI or the component video cable, is that working well for you?

Bless Canon, it didn't come with mini-hdmi (as not advertised!) so I have to order one.

hmm, forgot about component, back in a minute...

AVC does require a lot of horse power. Any anti-virus stuff or other background programs will eat into that power too.

Component is fine, no lag at all.

I'm using a Class 6, 8GB SD Card if that helps for info.

AVC does require a lot of horse power. Any anti-virus stuff or other background programs will eat into that power too.

I closed all programs but not the AV, running Kaspersky which I thought was less impactful than say Norton or McAfee. Will try that too.

I googled yr laptop: you got a 2Ghz duo? Probably not enough juice. 5400rpm drive could be a problem too if it is fairly full/fragmented.

Yep Duo and a full HDrive!

Intel or AMD, Quad or?

What should I look for in new pc please? I dont want to have to buy twice in 2 years AGAIN! The wife will go mad.

Great help thus far btw.

yep, there's your problem... not going to get acceptable playback on that laptop...

Generally for AVCHD a quad core is regarded as a minimum, though most currently available machines should have enough oomph to play back OK - things improve across the tech spectrum, and add up to better performance - my laptop which I can manage to edit on has a 5400 RPM drive, and seems fine and dandy compared to 2-3 year old 7200 RPM desktop drives.

If you're going to be doing heavy editing, that's another set of specs, and will depend a lot on how patient you are...

I have a similar laptop with 2GHz Core2Duo, and it plays AVCHD recordings from my Canon HF100 just fine. Most of my recordings are at the XP+ quality though (12 Mbps). Higher bit rates, i.e. FXP and MXP modes, presumably consume more CPU during playback.

I suggest trying Splash player:
Splash - Next Generation Player (http://www.mirillis.com/splash.html)

In my experience, Splash gives better visual quality and uses less CPU than ImageMixer or VLC.

I can't believe that the camcorder has more processing power than the pc??!!

.

Its about time somone said that ^ its probably that big bad $24 dedicated processing chip in the camera using 7watts of power, which when put into a Pci-E board to help the computer will only costs $1500 for the computer, using 140watts of power.
makes complete sence, untill it is a specific Hardware BOX for the manufactures camera/codec costing $5000 and requires 140watts just for the external box.

My Core2 2GHz laptop struggles with AVCHD from my Canon HF10.

If your main need is playback, put your clips on a USB flash drive and play them back on your TV via an HD mediaplayer ($100-$150 - this is the model I use: 1080P EGreat M34A Network MediaPlayer H.264HDMI1.3 NY23 - eBay (item 280447181800 end time Jan-12-10 03:00:00 PST) (http://cgi.ebay.com/1080P-EGreat-M34A-Network-MediaPlayer-H-264HDMI1-3-NY23_W0QQitemZ280447181800QQcmdZViewItemQQptZDVD_Players_Recorders?hash=item414bf463e8) )

Record at a lessor bitrate and try that. VLC will play 16mbps AVCHD with some stutter on my system and I have a quad core. But my Sony software can play it at full bitrate.

If I record at 9mbps, it still looks just fine and VLC will play it back fine.

Before doing anything else, I'd try installing a trial of CoreAVC: CoreAVC 2.0 (for Windows) | CoreCodec (http://corecodec.com/products/coreavc) (if memory serves there's one on their site somewhere).

It's a highly efficient software CODEC and can often enable AVC files to play on hardware that would usually struggle. If it doesn't help, you haven't lost anything.

Editing AVCHD (which is where you are heading one way or another) will require the most computer horsepower you can make yourself afford.

With some hardware prices coming down a bit, look into the Core i7 based machines. Core i7 is a quad core processor that multithreads, Windows Task Manager when you click on the Performance tab shows 8 virtual cores happily at work.

Some software can take advantage of multithreading and some can't. Staying on the low cost software end of things I use Pinnacle Studio which is a computer resource HONGRY beast and requires a quad core processor running at a minimum 2.66Ghz clock speed to edit 1920x1080 17Mbps AVCHD. But Pinnacle was one of the first to come out with AVCHD native editing that really worked.

Sony Vegas, on the other hand will supposedly edit AVCHD on a fast dual core machine.

But if you don't want to be buying again in the next year or two, go with a Core i7 based machine.

Before doing anything else, I'd try installing a trial of CoreAVC: CoreAVC 2.0 (for Windows) | CoreCodec (http://corecodec.com/products/coreavc) (if memory serves there's one on their site somewhere).

It's a highly efficient software CODEC and can often enable AVC files to play on hardware that would usually struggle. If it doesn't help, you haven't lost anything.

I'm with Stuart, before i upgraded to a new laptop my 4 year old 1.8gz single core intel laptop 2g ram played AVCHD from my Hf100 no problem with Coreavc codec and classic media player configured to use only this codec. I think the codec cost $30 so well wotth trying.

Cheers Rambo

According to the CoreAVC website it's on sale for $9.95 through January 17th.
Now anyone care to give a few pointers on how best to configure it quickly?

Simon,

What kind of Graphics card are you using? How much onboard memory does it have?

And finally, when was the last time you reformatted your hard drive?

It might do the computer some good if you freed up the processor from tasks performed by unwanted programs at startup.

Applications like Java, Messenger, Skype, Quicktime, Adobe Reader etc. tend to startup by default when you turn on a PC.

I use Sony Vegas 9.0c which added AVCHD to its list of codecs to support. It works very well on my dual-core 3.0GHz 8GB system. There is a little jerkiness if viewing it in Vegas at the Best setting, but otherwise it is smooth, and it plays equally well in Windows Media Player.

why no one talked about converting the avc files into quicktime or an other video format ?

your computer will be able to play that if it doesn't need to process like a mule at each frame. You will need more space because the files will be bigger but you gain your playback.
what's the most expensif, a new laptop or an extra hard disk ?

Lots of bad information/advices here :( We are talking about playback of these files. AVCHD requires minimum quad core? Folks, please don't spread misinformation.

I can play the MTS files (unedited, untouched, as they come from camera) even on a system la viliv s5 (a friggin' UMPC/MID)
Viliv S5 reviews, specifications and community links. (http://www.umpcportal.com/products/Viliv/S5/)

Your laptop should definitely handle these just fine.

So, you need to check your codecs (the ones used to decode AVC) and players. I can recommend CoreAVC (like Stuart already pointed out). Even the libavcodec from ffdshow (free) should work just fine. Another thing to look into, if you are trying to do a playback straight from the SDHC, make sure your transfer rate is worthy of USB2.0. Else, copy the file onto your laptop and continue testing from there.

All the above can be proven if necessary.

It might be helpful to think of AVCHD as an acquisition format for consumers. (Until you upgrade your computer anyway!) I transcoded AVCHD files in FCP to ProRes and it's a super easy process. For Avid you can use TMPGEnc 4 to transcode and for Premiere CS3 you can use Cineform. No need to go buy a new PC for AVCHD!

The only disadvantage I have found with using a laptop 2.2Ghz dual core is the time it takes to render, about 12x real time, but for playback I have found the free Zoom Player with de-interlace selected does a good job, you used to get zoom player with the free ffdshow codec but now have to download it separately, I have also found for simple editing Corel Video Studio Pro X3 handles AVCHD well and has a good "Smart Proxy" editing system, that allows slow computers to edit with ease, you just have to be patient while it renders out the final video.

Bryan

Lots of bad information/advices here :( We are talking about playback of these files. AVCHD requires minimum quad core? Folks, please don't spread misinformation.

I can play the MTS files (unedited, untouched, as they come from camera) even on a system la viliv s5 (a friggin' UMPC/MID)
Viliv S5 reviews, specifications and community links. (http://www.umpcportal.com/products/Viliv/S5/)

Your laptop should definitely handle these just fine.

So, you need to check your codecs (the ones used to decode AVC) and players. I can recommend CoreAVC (like Stuart already pointed out). Even the libavcodec from ffdshow (free) should work just fine. Another thing to look into, if you are trying to do a playback straight from the SDHC, make sure your transfer rate is worthy of USB2.0. Else, copy the file onto your laptop and continue testing from there.

All the above can be proven if necessary.

Word.

I have a core 2 duo laptop, as well as an Intel i7 860 desktop build and a Canon Vixia HF200. Its true AVCHD is taxing and needs muscle, but you shouldnt experience too much trouble with playback of your files as long as you computer is running efficiently. The fact that VLC player is only playing a sound track tells me your missing something on your computer, such as the Codec. I use VLC for playback for nearly all of my recordings and movies on my computer.

I cant beleive no one has mentioned Cineform Neoscene, as well as the included pixela software being crap. Neoscene is software used for transcoding, which is changing the format of the file, and Neoscene changes it to an .avi. This will allow for much smoother editing on slower systems. There is also a free version that is comparable to Neoscene called Mpeg Streamclip. I normally just edit the native footage from my camera in my editor of choice on my i7 machine as its got enough power to do so (and pretty fast render times as well!).

ImageMixer3 SE Ver5 seems to work reasonably well for me but it's not perfectly smooth. I find that QuickTime for PC is awful - stutters constantly. Sony's Player for AVCHD works pretty well if you can get it to recognise your files. Otherwise - convert your footage to high bit-rate MPEG2 format and you should have far fewer problems.

MOYEA MTS converter has worked great for me to move the .mts to .avi and then load to photobucket or youtube or whatever.