I have a canon HF-S10 and I can play back all the files continuously in-camera. However, when I download the files to the PC I would also like to be able to play them continuously as well, instead of just clicking on each file individually which opens media player automatically and plays just the one file at a time.

Is there a simple program where I could just highlight a number of files and have them also play continuously ?

This would be very handy for checking downloads from the camera for content & quality and then immediately deleting any that are unsuitable.

Thanks,

RonC.

VLC Media Player (free) will play all the AVCHD files in any selected folder continuously.

Thanks Robert, I will give it a try.

RonC.

I downloaded & tried VLC & after a bit of fiddling - adding to playlists etc. it did try to play the files one after another but not as a continuous stream like it does in-camera.

There is a gap of many seconds with gliches between each file ending and the next one starting. Is this normal or am I not setting something up correctly ?

Thanks,
RonC.

It should just work.
I don't remember ever needing to do any tricky set up routine.
AVCHD is a real challenge to your system's resources. You need to have a fairly recent and powerful computer to do much of anything with AVCHD.
From what you describe, it sounds more like a system problem than a glitch with the VLC player.

The coreavc codec can helop with that but it's 12 bucks.
CoreAVC 2.0 (for Windows) | CoreCodec (http://corecodec.com/products/coreavc)

VLC doesn't actually handle AVCHD all t hat well. It's probably one of the worst. Funny since it handles everything else great.

Try the Mirillis Splash Lite media player if you don't manage to round up a copy of avccore.
Splash - Next Generation Player (http://www.mirillis.com/splash.html)

Thank you Denny.
I downloaded Splash and it does play the files continuously, but probably due to the computer,- (Core 2 Duo, 2.8g, Vista - 64bit), the playback is jerky, even when I don't use full screen mode. Is there a way within "Splash" where I can drop the res to play smoothly ?

RonC.

The coreavc codec can helop with that but it's 12 bucks.

That's a very good point.
I forgot to mention it, but I do have Core AVC on board.

I get smooth playback in Splash Lite of the AVCHD files recorded by my HF-100 on a slower laptop: C2D 2.0 GHz. The HF-100 only records at a max bit rate of 17 Mbps though, so if you are recording at the max 24Mbps rate of the HF-S10, then those files will require more processing power.

Note also that the hardware acceleration feature in Spash makes a big difference if you have supported hardware. My laptop has the Nvidia 9200M, which is pretty low end as far as discrete video chips go, but hardware acceleration in Splash still reduces my CPU usage by more than half.