I am considering a Canon G20 and had a question about clip length. I was using a pair of xa10's and they would record for about 20 minutes and then I would loose a frame or two before the next clip would start. I do my editing in Premiere 6. I assume that the G20 will also divide up into clips the same way, but will there be lost frames like the XA10? I want to record up to an hour at a time with as little interruption between clips as possible.

You shouldn't be losing frames. What this says is that you are not importing the footage properly. If all you are doing is copying the files on the SD card to your computer, things are not going to work properly. You should be asking someone in the Adobe Premier subforum how to do this properly.

I shoot with Canon HF-S200's and a HF-G20 with great regularity (weekly) and import the footage using Sony Vegas and have never had a problem with dropped frames or lost audio. I am sure Premier has a utility similar to what comes with Vegas for doing this, but I am not familiar with Premier so I can not advise.

The FAT file system used on SD cards limits the file size to about 2 GB. Then camcorder automatically starts the next file in the sequence. All the frames are there, However, the file has to be stitched together properly because the second and subsequent files in a sequence to not have the same header size (the missing frames worth).

Some NLEs and copy/import software know how to do this. Or you can use the DOS file concatination commands (part of COPY) to do this.

I am considering a Canon G20 and had a question about clip length. I was using a pair of xa10's and they would record for about 20 minutes and then I would loose a frame or two before the next clip would start. I do my editing in Premiere 6. I assume that the G20 will also divide up into clips the same way, but will there be lost frames like the XA10? I want to record up to an hour at a time with as little interruption between clips as possible.
Does Canon supply a file-import utility? If so, best to use that. It should "stitch" long takes together into a single file with no dropped frames. I know other card/solid-state cameras and recorders come with such utilities.

Adobe Prelude will ingest your footage, stitch it together, rename the files and convert to multiple formats all in one operation. I've never lost a frame using it.

Bob

Thanks for everyone's help with this. When I was working with the xa10, it came with software but I was not successful in using it. I ended up importing to premiere and I would loose a frame or two between clips. Most of the time it was not a problem as I was shooting with two camera's and could switch to the other camera during a transition.

After much consideration, I purchased the Canon G30 and not the G20. I am a wedding photographer (stills) and this will be used to do static recordings of the just the ceremony. I choose the G30 for the 20x lens and Wifi. For wedding work 30fps is just fine but it is nice to have 60p if I ever want to use it. The camera will be mounted to a weighted 7' tripod, and it will shoot from the back row of seats. I think the zoom and wifi control will be handy in this application.

Upon receiving the G30, I tried using the included stitching software and it works just fine. When files are imported the software seamlessly put the sections together with no frame loss at all.

Only one very minor issue is you must plug in the usb cable before switching the camera to media mode or the software won't be able to see the G30 correctly. Removing the card and inserting it into the computer also works as expected and the software again imports and put the clips together perfectly.

This week I am doing some of testing before putting it into service. I wanted to report some battery info as I could not easily find this info before purchasing. I am finding that if I charge the battery and then let it sit overnight I can get a little more than 2 1/2 hours of actual recording time with the included BP-820 battery. Using the internal camera recharger it takes a little less than 3 hours to fully charge an empty battery.

I am really likely this little camera!

I've not tried it yet but formatting your cards to exFAT, if they have the capability, is supposed to remove the 4GB file size limit. It is my understanding that the XA20/25 and HF G30 will support exFAT formatted cards.

Bob