First Impressions of HMC-150 AVCCAM hands on at WEVA

[David Hadden]

Are there any independent players on the PC that can open these files???

I can't seem to find anything that works on my end.

Dave

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by David Hadden

Are there any independent players on the PC that can open these files???

I can't seem to find anything that works on my end.

Try the VLC media player; it should work.

[Ethan Cooper]

Barry Green keeps talking about how clean the 720 is on his end, but I'm not seeing what he's seeing. A word of caution for you mac users, I've been using a trial version of Voltaic to transcode and view these files but it seems that Voltaic turns them into AIC files and this could be introducing some noise that isn't in the originals. I'd love to view them native on a mac. Any way of doing this?

[Paul Izbicki]

I'm the guy who posted about a short hands-on experience with the 150. It was during the filming of footage for a promotional DVD. I really did not have any time to make adjustments, other than focus and manual iris. It handled well, except for the plastic barrier over the audio controls. I had to use the VF because of the bright sunlight, but later, indoors was able to see some Everglades footage shot 720p24 earlier, played on the LCD, which looked very clean.

That's pretty much what I posted earlier, and certainly not conclusive in any way. I reserve judgment until I can get hands-on time, and playback on a larger monitor.

Thanks for the kind words, Chris.

[David Hadden]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

Try the VLC media player; it should work.

no such luck, just plays back audio. Had to use AVCHD UpShift to make it into a file I could make work.

Handy little AVCHD tool to convert to MPEG2 HD files though, and it seemed to transcode these files from the AVCHD camcorder just fine which means that if the cam's not supported natively in Vegas, I can support it through that.

Dave

[Robert M Wright]

MPlayer (freeware) can play them.

[Chris Hurd]

Panasonic's line of 850-series Viera HDTV's have a built-in SDHC card slot that will play AVCHD files from any AVCCAM camcorder, or Panasonic or Canon AVCHD camcorder (I tested this myself with a card containing AVCHD clips recorded on a Canon camcorder; don't know about Sony AVCHD compatibility though).

[Ryan Farnes]

I've used the HVX200 rather extensively and the 720p clips posted earlier look fairly similar. The 1080p clips look noisy. I think you're sacrificing quality for the larger size.

I was initially stoked when I started reading about this camera but image size isn't everything. It seems similar to how digital still cameras advertise their megapixels but that doesn't necessarily equal quality.

I would seriously consider getting the HVX200 instead of this camera, however, capture media has a huge cost difference between SD and P2.

[Dwain Elliott]

Ryan hit the nail on the head when he said, "I would seriously consider getting the HVX200 instead of this camera, however, capture media has a huge cost difference between SD and P2." Despite all the other discussions of pixels and picture quality, etc., the main attraction of the HMC150 is the low price/great value of the camcorder and the low cost of the (SDHC) Card capture media.

For me, the only potential hesitation (at least until the unit is actually released) is the relative difficulty of AVCHD editing w/Final Cut Express.

[David Hadden]

Appearently, if you use the new MPEG decoder from Sony ( found on the SCS forums ) Vegas will read the Panny AVCHD files.

Dave

[Bob Diaz]

After studying the different video files generated by Barry Green, I think I can safely say that the 720p mode is the sweet point for the HMC-150 camera. At 720/24p you end up with the lowest compression ratio of all the modes. Going to 720/30p increases the data rate, but not so much as to cause any real problem. If I were to shoot a wedding with this camera, either 720/30p or 720/24p would be the mode of choice.

I understand that Apple has updated FCE (Final Cut Express) to allow for the newer AVCHD files. I have the older version, but a friend has the latest version. However I have not tested this to see how well or how fast the conversions is.

VoltaicHD does work, but is SO SLOW!!!! In a different forum, other users are using Toast 9 to convert the AVCHD files. They have reported that Toast 9, converts the file very fast. Like FCE, I have the older version, Toast 8, so I can't try this out.


We still have about a month before the camera comes out, but to me it looks like other users are finding possible solutions for the work flow...



Bob Diaz

[Duane Steiner]

Anyone know yet if Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 will play the files?

[David Parks]

I'm very interested in the 150 as a replacement for my HD 100. I was going to buy an EX1 but I hesitated on the cost. This should serv my needs well.

The clips from Barry Green look quite good and cut without any problem with HDV 720p.
So far as workflow goes, I used a new Quad Core Gateway w/Edius 4.51 without any problem. The conversion was faster than real time to Canopus HQ and then used the Panasonic DVCPRO HD transcoder (AVCHD to DVCPRO HD MXF), which was about real time to convert for import into Avid Media Composer. Avid sucked it in instantly. Overall, it is about the same as digitizing from tape.

Also, once the cost drops, then eventually the cards will be treated like tapes. You shoot, import/transcode then put the cards on the shelf. Until then, a 500 gig hard drive is only $80.00. So, in time I think the workflow will come into line. Especially when they firgure out native AVCHD editing.

So, judging from what Barry shot, this will be the move I make come October or November.

Not real interested in pixel math, but the latitude is a important thing to me and I like the fact I can rate it at ISO 500.

Cheers.

[Bob Diaz]

David,

One thing to consider when storing on any media, always have a second copy in case something goes wrong. Today's hard drive rarely fail, but if you happen to be so unlucky, having a backup copy will save you.

I estimate that at the highest data rate, the HMC-150 uses a little less than 11 GB per hour. Thus 500GB drive stores: 500 GB / 11 GB per hour = about 45 hours of material.

The $80 Hard Drive / 45 hours = $1.78 per hour. $1.78 x 2 drives = $3.54 per hour for 2 drives. Clearly not really that expensive for the extra protection.


Bob Diaz

[David Parks]

You're preaching to the choir dude. My media drives (drives I actually edit from) are 1 and 2 TB G-Raid's at raid zero. So I was referring to seperate archive drives. Not new to the rodeo.

Cheers.