Got the camara need the software.

[shrumpage]

After reading this forums and doing some other research decided to pick up a Canon HF100 With a 16gb card. I've been playing with the settings, shooting footage of the kids, just trying learn how the camera works. Even picked up a HDMI cable to display to our TV (looks great btw).

So far so good.

Now when it comes to doing something with the footage I've hit a few snags. Originally i thought i could use Movie maker to just crank out some videos to send to the relatives - that is when i discovered the fun of AVHD.

1. it takes horsepower to not only play but also manipulate
2. cannons default software is pretty crappy.
3. Movie maker doesn't work with AVHD.

I'm looking for recommendations/suggestions for a software package that i can take the raw footage from the flash card and end up burning a DVD. Something that can make decent home movies and is relatively easy to use. Sony Vegas and Power Director are two that I'm demoing now, both seem to be decent (leaning toward Director). Are there other packages i should look at? Any pitfalls i should be aware of with this type of software? Just looking for general guidance.

Editing computer is a Core 2 Duo 2gig, w/ 4gb ram - it can play back the m2ts files fine.

My past experience with making DVDs has just been a couple on a Mac (iDVD, iMovie, etc.)

 

[FP]

Hmm... Well depends on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go.

I personally use the following to burn DVDs from 720p H.264 encoded mp4s that come out of my MinoHD:

1. Open the file in VirtualDub (free) via AVISynth (free) as a DirectShow source. All editing/trimming is done in AVISynth.
2. Do a direct stream copy to an AVI file for video and demux the audio to a WAV file.
3. Normalize/edit the audio file in Audacity (free) and encode to AC3 via some WAV to Ac3 encoder (forget the name)
4. Encode the AVI file to MPEG2 with CCE ($80)
5. Author the DVD with DVD-Lab Pro ($250)
6. Burn DVD with Nero ($50)

The entire process takes about 2x real time for me. This is going from footage to DVD in hand. About half of that time is spent encoding so I am doing other things.

The hardest part is learning AVISynth and dealing with codecs.

I recently tried using iMovie/iDVD on my MBP and it was much easier but the quality of the video wasn't as good imho. The iDVD menus are much slicker than DVD-Lab Pro however.

 

[shrumpage]

Thanks for the post.

I'm trying to balance the quality vs the time put in and initially I'm going to have to go with a simpler method then you've outlined. BUT I'm definitely going to experiment with the OS tools you listed.

How much of a quality difference is there in your method vs the iMovie/iDVD route? Would it be noticeable on an SD TV?

 

[FP]

The quality difference on an SD TV would be hard to see. Even on my 1080p HDTV the quality difference can only be seen if you know what to look for. Most people wouldn't notice but I do .

These DVDs are going to be archived so I wanted to maximize the quality.

 

[Kaido]

Best app I've found for transcoding AVCHD is VoltaicHD ($35), available for both PC and Mac:

http://www.shedworx.com/voltaichdpc

It can also handle batch processing, so you can leave it to convert overnight. I use a Mac and ProRes is my format of choice.

 

[theblackbox]

i use fcs2 and prores. handles avchd really well. plus, if you can shoot 24p, you can use cinema tools to remove 3:2 pulldown and pump out some quality 1080p video.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: theblackbox
i use fcs2 and prores. handles avchd really well. plus, if you can shoot 24p, you can use cinema tools to remove 3:2 pulldown and pump out some quality 1080p video.

What camera do you have? Apple posted a Compressor workflow for removing pulldown for my Canon HV20, works really well plus converts it to ProRes for me. I'll post a video tutorial over the holidays to show how to setup a custom plugin for it.