Hi, I've been reading throughout the forum to make up my mind. I've always wanted to have the latest in technology, since I'm getting married soon I'm planning on making an investment in an HD camcorder. Since I'm spending a lot in many other things, I have to make a smart investment. Now, onto the dilemma; which I know many other people are in a similar situation...

HDV or AVCHD.
On one hand, HDV is fairly well supported for editing and you can record 60 min per tape, whereas a 30GB HDD AVCHD camcorder allows you to record 2 hours approx and editing is not fully supported yet. (BTW, which to you think might have the beefier requirements for editing once AVCHD gets supported?)

I might not edit that much at first, but having to depend on a laptop to transfer the 2 hours of video to be able to get back to recording, where with tape, I can easily carry a pack of 10 to a vacation or a weekend trip. of course, I can take my laptop, but it's extra weight and lots of space.

I'm leaning over to the HDV format. Is there any recommendation you guys can give me to fully make up my mind. I'm planning on buying a camcorder by the end of September. Even if I was to leave out the hassle of the two hours of recording, what are other factors which make one format better than the other? I've heard about compression and fast motion. Has there been any new developings with this year's camcorders? And lastly, which brand would be the best to buy, considering image color, sat, OIS, etc? I'm looking at a range of $800 to $1200 USD. (I hope they get a bit cheaper by September).

If there is anything I got wrong about the formats or something important that I missed please feel free to educate me. Thanks.

I have both the Sony FX1 (HDV) and the Pany SD1 (AVCHD). I edit on a PC with Vegas 7.

At this point, AVCHD is a bit of a pain to work with. Nero crashes frequently, and the solution with Elecard/Cineform does not work on my computer for unknown reasons.

I have a very specific use for my AVCHD cam that it fills well (rcheli-cam). Other than that, I'm not very excited about the format.

My FX1 is the good ol' camera. Works every time. The workflow is well established and easy to edit with.

Perhaps AVCHD will be like when we first saw HDV. Clumsy and slow at first, but easy now.

Wait and see how the NLE's support it. Until then, I'd go HDV.

Derek,

Can't AVCHD be converted into a more NLE friendly format?

And what about compression, which format loses more information and ends up affecting the editing process?

I might not edit that much at first, but having to depend on a laptop to transfer the 2 hours of video to be able to get back to recording, where with tape, I can easily carry a pack of 10 to a vacation or a weekend trip. of course, I can take my laptop, but it's extra weight and lots of space.

Given the practical consideration you just mentioned I'd say HDV is a good choice for your current situation. It's a proven format which is widely supported for editing and requires less processing power to deal with, whereas AVCHD is in its infancy and would require you to be a cutting-edge adopter. If you buy an HDV camcorder now and find that 2-3 years down the road AVCHD starts to make more sense, you could sell the HDV camcorder then and move on.

I have a Sony HC1 camcorder for personal use and love it. I can see how AVCHD might be more convenient someday, but that doesn't change the usefulness of HDV in the present.

Derek,

Can't AVCHD be converted into a more NLE friendly format?

At present, I convert it with Nero to Cineform AVI, which is NLE friendly. The only problem is Nero, it seems to run alot of errors frequently.

With the AVCHD to Cineform AVI, AVCHD isn't too bad to work with at all. Nero encodes AVCHD to Cineform at about 1/3 real time. So the benefit of AVCHD capture is lost in the encode time. But the size of the camera for me, outweighs that negative.

Actually, I think I'd wait and give both HDV and AVCHD a miss. The next generation of more robust tapeless formats are coming out in the next year. Sony's releasing the XDCAM eX series, which I'm sure will prompt Panasonic to update their cumbersome P2 media. Canon's probably keeping their cards close to their vest, but I'm sure will be offering something new in response.

In the next year or so I think you'll see affordable professional HD formats, with workable tapeless media solutions, becoming available to us mere mortals. Then we can dispense with these "prosumer" transitional formats like HDV and AVCHD altogether.

Brian: the original poster says he has a camera budget of ~$800-1200, so HDV and AVCHD are his logical choices for now.

Oops. Missed that little detail. Yeah, that makes sense.

(Although we can hope that XDCAM will drop to that level, can't we?)

Yes, we sure hope so, one day. Ok then, it seems I might be considering the Canon HV20 come this September. Has anyone had any experience with the HV20. I heard something about HDV and fast motion that didn't get along well, is it true? What can I expect when filming on HD? I know HDV is a great technology, but I don't want to set my expectations to high.

HDV and fast motion (http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/safety/detail_page.cgi?ID=657) Very fast motion and difficult shooting situations. V1 came through like a champ. So did the Canon XLH1, and Sony Z1.

Yes, we sure hope so, one day. Ok then, it seems I might be considering the Canon HV20 come this September. Has anyone had any experience with the HV20. I heard something about HDV and fast motion that didn't get along well, is it true? What can I expect when filming on HD? I know HDV is a great technology, but I don't want to set my expectations to high.

I have the FX1, and I have the HV20. While the controls are different on the HV20, the video is fantastic. It won't win in low light situation, but actually is a bit sharper than the FX1 in full daylight shooting. It shoot 24p, the first time I've tried it, as well as standard 1080i. 24p has more motion issues, but that is something you have to learn about in any 24p situation. Go for that camera, it is great.

Go with HDV hands down... it's a format that is well used.

To my mind AVC is more suitable for consumer cameras - it is more advanced codec than MPG2 / HDV, but by that I mean more advanced in terms of creating an image that looks better.

Although it can look better, the lower bit rate seems to mean that compression artifacts are more pervasive. It is only once you start to grade a piece of video that those non-obvious artifacts start showing.

If the bottom end of the bitrate for AVC (not the peak) was signficantly increased I would be much more interested. I really don't want to be using a consumer format.

If the video is for you and you own a HDTV ( 1080P is incredible) and editing isnt a must I would go for ACHDV. If simple editing is all you want the same is true, I have Nero working well and burning disks that look stunning on Blue Ray, I havent quite played with HD DVD as of yet but will try it shortly.

ACHDV allows you to instantly cut entire scenes from the HD at any time and theres no sluggish capturing from tape (the amount of time this saves is staggering)

Not having 100s of tapes to deal with is truly a bonus as well, the money I have spent on HDV and tapes I could have bought an ACHDV camcorder. Personally I would wait a week or two and see if folks are editing ACHDV with success in Vegas, again simple editing is easy in Nero but theres an order to it to keep it from freezing and speeds up the progress. I made a 20 minute video with transitions, 45 different clips all cut, and rendered fairly fast in Nero. If I have luck doing some real editing in Vegas I will say ACHDV cant be beat. I distribute my videos to others which might be challenging but if it was based on run and shoot for myself and show others on my 1080P system the choice is ACHDV hands down........the DD 5.1 is pretty nice as well!

Not having 100s of tapes to deal with is truly a bonus as well, the money I have spent on HDV and tapes I could have bought an ACHDV camcorder.

But then how are you archiving your AVCHD footage and what's it costing you to do that? With HDV it's a few bucks for an hour's worth of storage on tape, and other than burning to DVDs I can't think of a cheaper way to archive AVCHD...?

4 GB is about an hour of video, depending on the compression you choose; about 40 minutes at 13 Mb/s, comparable to HDV-quality. A DVD5 costs about 50 cents these days.

4 GB is about an hour of video, depending on the compression you choose; about 40 minutes at 13 Mb/s, comparable to HDV-quality.

So you're saying AVCHD is roughly half the bandwidth of HDV for a comparable level of quality, meaning half the archiving cost using any given form of storage. But if you're figuring about 75 cents to archive an hour of good AVCHD footage compared to $5 for a decent miniDV tape, then archiving 100 hours of AVCHD on 150 DVDs will save you ~$425 compared to saving the same amount of HDV on tape. Now figure your time required to burn 150 DVDs and multiply by how much you value your time per hour, and that cost savings disappears compared to simply tossing HDV tapes in a drawer. It's basically a tradeoff of time versus money, at least until flash memory gets cheap enough to use as permanent storage.

Don't know how it would take more than a few minutes per to burn discs, and I'd think capture time from tape on the front end would make the time factor a wash anyway, but I'm just telling you how much it costs. If you're happy with tape, stay with tape.

But then how are you archiving your AVCHD footage and what's it costing you to do that? With HDV it's a few bucks for an hour's worth of storage on tape, and other than burning to DVDs I can't think of a cheaper way to archive AVCHD...?I havent estimated archiving to discs yet but the fact 50% of what I shoot I actually use in editing ( which can be edited on site with the push of a few buttons in ACVHD) which brings up another plus of ACVHD, how much head wear does viewing, capturing,cleaning, pro cleaning, replacing, add up to but I know I never paid a "couple bucks" for pro tapes or even cheapo tapes @ Best Buy or Circuit City. Maybe I shopped at the wrong places but I know I never had the guts to keep recording over tapes due to an anal feeling about quality loss.

I have went back and tried to re edit some 2 year old tapes to find they were damaged as well, not good in a couple circumstances.

I did a search and it appears DV tapes are pretty cheap but I trust those as much as the cassette tapes of the 70s and 80s

Don't know how it would take more than a few minutes per to burn discs, and I'd think capture time from tape on the front end would make the time factor a wash anyway, but I'm just telling you how much it costs. If you're happy with tape, stay with tape.In my time, capturing from tape to HD cost hundreds of hours if only capturing needed material. Theres so many things right with ACVHD ( playing on a 1080i/p HD source being very strong mixed with 5.1 DD, Blue Ray, HD-DVD which I am doing now with stunning results)


In the first 30 minutes of shooting ACVHD I wiped all my experimentation away in 1 second, in my second 30 minutes it took about 20 seconds to dig through and delete more footage un needed ON SITE, A person good at shooting what they want and skipping the garbage could possibly import to timeline with a finished product in the field by instantly deleting garbage quickly

In my time, capturing from tape to HD cost hundreds of hours if only capturing needed material. Theres so many things right with ACVHD ( playing on a 1080i/p HD source being very strong mixed with 5.1 DD, Blue Ray, HD-DVD which I am doing now with stunning results)


In the first 30 minutes of shooting ACVHD I wiped all my experimentation away in 1 second, in my second 30 minutes it took about 20 seconds to dig through and delete more footage un needed ON SITE, A person good at shooting what they want and skipping the garbage could possibly import to timeline with a finished product in the field by instantly deleting garbage quickly

No need to convince me! I've been tapeless for a while now.

Dang internet and my horrible syntax, I was agreeing and adding to your examples!

What are you using to edit and such? Can you mix HDV and ACVHD and rip to MPEG2 480P discs for family and friends that dont own HD DVD and HDTVs?

Don't know how it would take more than a few minutes per to burn discs, and I'd think capture time from tape on the front end would make the time factor a wash anyway...

Good point: it's basically the same time required to set up a bulk HDV capture from tape as it is to burn a DVD for archiving AVCHD footage. So assuming we call the time factor a wash, the cost of HDV tapes is something worth considering over time. I wouldn't call that significant unless you shoot a lot of footage, but it's one factor to consider.

Dang internet and my horrible syntax, I was agreeing and adding to your examples!

What are you using to edit and such? Can you mix HDV and ACVHD and rip to MPEG2 480P discs for family and friends that dont own HD DVD and HDTVs?

I use Vegas, which has been generally great for mixing/matching anything (though rather Sony-centric lately) -- and if you can get it on the timeline, you can get it to DVD.

I haven't shot HDV for a while; I generally use the HVX200, so I'm shooting P2/DVCPRO. Vegas doesn't support it natively, so I use the Raylight plugin.

Good point: it's basically the same time required to set up a bulk HDV capture from tape as it is to burn a DVD for archiving AVCHD footage. So assuming we call the time factor a wash, the cost of HDV tapes is something worth considering over time. I wouldn't call that significant unless you shoot a lot of footage, but it's one factor to consider.

I wouldn't call it a wash; you can burn the data to disc considerably faster than the real time (1 sec/1 sec) required for capture, not figuring in logging time if you do that. But yes; it's a factor among many to consider.

I wouldn't call it a wash; you can burn the data to disc considerably faster than the real time (1 sec/1 sec) required for capture, not figuring in logging time if you do that.

Just to keep the workflow differences in perspective, with HDV you can bulk capture an hour of footage with a few seconds of setup time and let the software separate your clips, at which point you're basically where you would be with AVCHD after copying your source files to a hard drive. There's no need to sit and watch an HDV capture occur, just as you probably wouldn't sit around waiting while burning AVCHD footage to a DVD. The advantage of AVCHD is time saved up front if you want to view your clips quickly; the advantage of HDV is time saved later on by not having to worry about archiving your footage before erasing your memory cards. Any logging time is a wash between formats, since viewing video takes the same amount of time regardless of where it comes from.

The advantage of AVCHD is time saved up front if you want to view your clips quickly;

Any logging time is a wash between formats, since viewing video takes the same amount of time regardless of where it comes from. View clips quickly and delete garbage instantly so as to not bring the garbage to post and have more room for more clips.

Viewing is viewing most certainly but archiving half ( or capturing half) from the field is incredibly useful and FAST. When I first got my ACHDV I messed around for several hours and basically erased it all in about 2.45 seconds. Not being a pro shooter makes ACVHD so much more useable

Viewing is viewing most certainly but archiving half ( or capturing half) from the field is incredibly useful and FAST. When I first got my ACHDV I messed around for several hours and basically erased it all in about 2.45 seconds. Not being a pro shooter makes ACVHD so much more useable

A fair point, but I'd be nervous about being able to erase so much work so easily. What's the process for locking AVCHD clips so they can't be erased, and is there a way to do that for an entire memory card without doing each clip individually?

A fair point, but I'd be nervous about being able to erase so much work so easily. What's the process for locking AVCHD clips so they can't be erased, and is there a way to do that for an entire memory card without doing each clip individually?Im still kinda playing around and dont have a serious project until I confirm Vegas can deal with this stuff but from my experience so far is that you can do pretty much anything you can do with say a NLE on the screen. start and stops are seperate thumbnails and I think those can be cut within themselves. Regardless, being an amatuer I consistantly film small clips I know are worthless almost instantly, mainly when using my crane, steady cam or dollie. For me, crane shots usually take 4-10 tries to get what I like. Ive got hours and hours of this " crap".

My sons Prom was the night I got my cam so I was shooting him, his girlfriend and their friends as well as shooting all sorts of other tests while waiting around ( moving car, nature, deer, sunny sky etc. etc.) when done I hooked it up to my 1080P HDTV via HDMI and just watched the entire thing ( and was blown away compared to my old HDV cam, when finished I brought up the menu and hit delete and it had all/none/selective and I just pushed all thumbnails but the Prom shots and it was done in 2-3 seconds.

I thought I skimmed the manual and saw where you can do many different types of goodies locally on the HD.

Later that night I DLed Nero and put some clips of my reef tank together and burned it in HD to a normal disc on my laptop that played HD via my Blue Ray......I was sold

I had firewire go out on JVC HD10, and was left with no way to capture. With memory cards, if you smash the camera, just take out the card, and put it in a $10 reader.

if you smash the camera, just take out the card, and put it in a $10 reader.

If I smashed my new HD Solid state cam I'd be more worried about that than a $10 card reader...