HM100 and smaller cameras?

[Tom Hardwick]

Sounds like you could have used three secondhand Sony PDX10s. 16:9 SD to bog-standard MiniDV tapes. 100 hours for £100, and fresh tapes available in sub-Saharan souks. No HDD failures, no irretrievable SD cards that have got crushed by your seat runners. No fancy HD either, but then who's going to buy BD versions of the trip from you?

Good luck lad. I'm not helping much, am I?

tom.

[Steve Wolla]

your best bet is probably getting a couple Canon vixia AVCHD cams, they are small enough, cheap enough and plentiful. Plus they will use the same SDHC cards that you bought for the HM100.
Transcode your footage and drop it on the timeline along side the HM100's footage and that should do it.
Best of luck!
SW

[John McDonald]

Thanks Steve,

It's all of the transcoding that has got me baffled.

What will go to what easily with good results etc?

I'll do most of the editing and encoding whilst living in my Land Rover in Africa (I have extra batteries/solar panel etc though), so keen to minimize computer time needed - thus my attraction to the HM100 recording in .mov.

What format would FCS 3 take the Canon footage in as, and how would I get this to 50p to match the HM100 footage?

Many thanks!
(Camped next to a lake in Portugal - mobile broadband is great ;)

[Tom Hardwick]

Is Darrin your pet name John? :=))

Now hop out there and start fishing.

[Bob Richardson]

Originally Posted by John McDonald

What format would FCS 3 take the Canon footage in as, and how would I get this to 50p to match the HM100 footage?

Hi -

I have a Canon Vixia HF10 (same as the HF100 but with added internal memory) -- I can give you sample clips in various bitrates and frame rates.

The camera always records in 1080 vertical resolution, and up to 1920 wide depending on the bit rate. The single-chip sensor is 1920x1080.

The camera records in AVCHD, and in Final Cut you need to bring these clips in via Log & Transfer.

There are NTSC and PAL versions of this camera. The NTSC version can record 60i, 30p, and 24p "cinema" mode. The 24p mode is not truly progressive... it applies a 3:2 pulldown like a movie converted to play at 30fps, but supposedly this can be unwound in some software, but I've never tried it. The PAL version (according to a manual I found online) does 50i or 25p, but not the weird 24p cinema mode.

Three nice things about this camera is that it's easy to find accessory lenses (wide angle, fisheye, tele) cheaply, it has a decent shotgun mic option (for a consumer camera, but it's a proprietary shoe), and you can buy battery packs which last for hours and hours.

Downside: Although there are limited manual controls, they are accessed through a joystick menu on the LCD, can't easily be combined, and are a pain to access.

Contact me if you'd like to download some test clips from my NTSC version.

[John McDonald]

Thanks Bob, that would be great!

[Enzo Giobbé]

Originally Posted by John McDonald

Plus there is no easy answer when you need smaller cams (and I need at least 3).

John, please take a look at this thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/jvc-gy-h...-door-3-a.html and it may help you decide on a small cam.

[Bob Richardson]

Originally Posted by John McDonald

Thanks Bob, that would be great!

OK, you asked for it... (And boy, it turns out that I _really_ asked for it -- I couldn't find my test clips I did over a year ago, so I went out and shot some more.)

Download this zip archive, and save it to your hard drive. If you want to go for maximum authentic results, expand it onto an SDHC card (preserving the folder called "PRIVATE" -- "PRIVATE" should exist at the top level of the card), but I find that as long as the original directory structure is preserved, including "PRIVATE", that the Log and Transfer function in Final Cut will properly find and import the clips.

Archive:
http://www.sqwarellc.com/private/canon_hf10/PRIVATE.zip
(239.5MB)

The actual video files are buried in /PRIVATE/AVCHD/BMDV/STREAM and end in .MTS.

I find that later versions of the player software (for Mac) called VLC can play these files, although the first second or two has digital glitches that I don't see when playing back in the camera.

Note that JVC also stores its files under "PRIVATE" in a folder called "JVC". I've actually had these files coexist on the same card between the HM700 and the HF10, but it was accidental and I can't guarantee that the cameras happily coexist sharing the same media. My cards are formatted on the HM700.

The HF10 has 4 bitrates available. Here's a list, including the reported (by the camera) record time remaining for a 16GB card. (This 16GB card also had about 30sec of HM700 material on it, which ever so slightly reduced the available total.)

LP - "Long Play" - 5Mbps - 6h03m
SP - "Standard Play" - 7Mbps - 4h44m
XP+ - "High Quality" - 12Mbps - 2h51m
FXP - "High Quality" - 17Mbps - 2h04m

There are three frame rates, "60i", "30p" and "24p" which I've previously mentioned.

That's 12 combinations, and I've made 12 clips for you. Each is approx. 15 seconds long, and a card was held up for each one showing the specific settings.

00000.MTS LP 60i
00001.MTS LP 30p
00002.MTS LP 24p
00003.MTS SP 60i
00004.MTS SP 30p
00005.MTS SP 24p
00006.MTS XP+ 60i
00007.MTS XP+ 30p
00008.MTS XP+ 24p
00009.MTS FXP 60i
00010.MTS FXP 30p
00011.MTS FXP 24p

The white balance is set for the overcast conditions, all other settings are auto, and the audio is via Canon's DM-100 stereo shotgun mic, which fits the _proprietary_ shoe on this camera. The mic is set to 90 degree stereo. (The loud birdsong is coming from the top of the telephone pole, just out of the frame).

These cameras are out of production, but they were pretty popular, so you can still find them at some dealers or on eBay, sometimes as refurb, for around $500, as model HF10 or as HF100 without built-in memory. Canon now has newer models, slightly larger and slightly smaller. The larger ones are generally thought to improve on this line, but the smaller ones (HF20/HF200) make too many sacrifices. There's also a model HF11 out there which is basically the same camera with a higher 24Mbps bitrate mode.

The biggest OEM battery is the Canon BP-827. I easily get over 3 hours use per charge on this battery. Some Amazon reviewers report 4-6 hours, but I wouldn't expect more than 4 under ideal conditions.

Sorry if I've turned this too much into a Canon thread, but the question was out there to see if it would make a smaller companion to the HM100 -- and this Canon was my main camera before getting the big daddy HM700.

Give the clips a try and let me know what you find out!

[Bob Richardson]

Forgot to mention you can check out a video I shot with the Canon here:
YouTube - Fare is Fair?

It's just YouTube, but you can at least get an idea of how the camera performs in a "person-on-the-street" interview setting, under unassisted backlit conditions. (We were often under transit shelters, making interview subjects dark, while it was a bright day all around.)

For comparison, here's a more recent video on a similar subject I shot with the JVC GY-HM700:
YouTube - MAX Green Line - First Ride Event, Part 1 of 2

[Bob Richardson]

So John, did you try out the footage?

[John McDonald]

Only downloading it now sorry!

I have to go to an internet cafe for large downloads ;-)

[Bob Richardson]

That's OK! I just wanted to be sure I wasn't talking to an empty room. :-)

[John McDonald]

Not at all, one bloke in a very attentive room ;-)

I really don't mind what cameras I get, just want to make the best decision possible to match the 720 50p footage from the HM100 ie: what converts best to 720 50p

So will play over the next few days as much as I can living in a Land Rover!

[Robert M Wright]

Have you considered an HMC41? Lowest cost camera I can think of that can shoot 720p50 (might even generally outperform the HM100 for you).

[John McDonald]

Thanks Robert,

I can't really travel with 2 larger than 'consumer/tourist' cameras unfortunately, and the cameras i am looking for are for sticking in the sand whilst I drive past, strapping to the chassis of the vehicle, handing to kids to run around with etc.

So as no small cameras will do 720 50p, my question is what is the best workflow - will any other format be able to be converted to 720 50p - for example one of the Sanyo Xacti range will do:

Full-HR: 1920 x 1080 (60 fps/ 24Mbps) Full HD: 1920 x 1080 (60fields/sec 16Mbps)
Full-SHQ: 1920 x 1080 (30 fps/ 12Mbps) HD-SHQ: 1280 x 720 (30 fps/9Mbps)
Digital Camcorder | Full HD Camera | VPC-FH1 Specs | Xacti SANYO

So would filming in 1920 x 1080 60fields/sec easily convert to 720 at 50p?

Etc! ;-) I'm trying to figure out the best solution when all you have is a Macbook Pro to use.