Why I’m Avoiding AVCHD
Before heading off to the Detroit Auto Show in January, I bought myself a Panasonic HDC-SD5. At the time it was the world’s smallest 3CCD HD camcorder. I loved the form factor and that it was entirely solid state, writing everything to cheap SD memory cards. I didn’t take the time to think about how it saved the HD content. It used the relatively new Advanced Video Codec High Definition.
AVCHD is a high compression codec based on H.264, which has a proven track record for great quality and good file size. While H.264 is a standard, AVCHD is only supported by a handful of camcorder manufacturers and software applications. Not even Adobe’s flagship Premiere Pro supports AVCHD without an expensive plugin. However, AVCHD is much more taxing on the editing computer than something like MPEG-2 or even regular H.264.
How much more taxing? Importing 1.5 hours of full resolution AVCHD footage took over 3 hours (not bad) but exporting took about 36 hours on a dual-core 2.2GHz MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM. I’ll be the first to admit it’s not the fastest machine but 36 hours for 1.5 hours of footage.. really? While exporting I had to keep a fan pointed at the MacBook Pro so it wouldn’t melt. I’m not a video guru by far so the exporting process might have nothing to do at all with AVCHD since it was already imported and converted to a much larger format (as in 1 hour took 60GB of space).
For comparison, after the files were exported at full 1920×1080 resolution to an H.264 encoded .MOV file I was able to edit them much faster. Processing a 2 minute clip from that .MOV took about 6 minutes, compared to what would have taken 30, including importing, had it been an AVCHD-encoded file.
Now that I finally exported all my NAIAS 2008 footage, I’ll eventually get around to posting it somewhere. The 90 minutes of HD footage, now in H.264 MOV files, is only about 6GB and looks fairly identical to the original source. Here’s a clip from my footage: walking around the Nissan GT-R.
Verdict: It’s a lot easier to process photos. I plan on selling the Panasonic HDC-SD5 and replacing it with something less AVCHDy.
Do any of you deal with video? What kind of camcorder do you use and how’s the processing time?
I use a small Sanyo HD1A , records on SD cards too.
Though its not full HD, its decent enough for web playback (quick demo in HD mode : http://www.vimeo.com/379477 and here in 640×480 : http://www.vimeo.com/350779 )
I only use iMovie for editing and its fairly fast
I used to use imovie and it never had rendering times like that. Now I use final cut pro and it can take a while, but nothing near 36 hours.
A couple of thoughts Stammy….
1) Video encoded in that format is only meant to be processed on a Mac Pro (or other similarly equipped PC). As powerful as the MBP is, it’s just not designed to process a codec like that. For AVCHD, you need a Quad-core or an 8-core PC, hence the Mac Pro.
2) Most HD-enabled camcorders that are made these days have dual modes: HD and SD (standard definition). Instead of getting rid of the Panasonic why not just record in SD 16:9 Widescreen? Shooting in SD widescreen still gives you a great looking picture and because it’s not HD, the codec that’s used is standard MPEG2. Your import and render times in iMovie/Final Cut Pro/Premier Pro would be cut in half: 1.5 hours of video should only take 45 minutes to import. Rendering times of course will be different depending on if you added any transitions or special effects to video. Also, you won’t need to point a fan at that pretty MBP of yours (ROFLMAO!!!!!!)
One last thing…if you don’t edit your videos in Final Cut Pro, you should. Getting access to Compressor.app is worth the price of the suite all by itself. Compressor.app seriously packs a video down into managable file sizes. Also, as a bonus, using Compressor you can add sweet looking watermarks to your video to help market your brand. To do that in Final Cut Pro you’d have to purchase a plugin……..
Paul,
I clicked back to your home page form the comments section on your last post and decided to have a quick look at this one….. THIS IS A GOOD POST!!
Will be interesting to see how you fair with the MBA for this kinda job ;)
What are you looking at replacing the Panny with?
@Frank - Instead of getting rid of the Panasonic why not just record in SD 16:9 Widescreen?
Because that would defeat the purpose of my dropping near $1k on an HD cam. :-)
I absolutely hate video cameras. Nothing like still.
Video cameras are fun, but if it weren’t for the long editing times and the exporting/importing stuff.
I like the non-moving pictures, they are nicer and you get better resolution ;-)
Paul, try importing and converting to NeoHDV format to edit the footage (less taxing). You can use the free trial and buy if you like it. It can be used with AVCHD and HDV among many other formats.
I think I warned you about this a while ago. If you can’t stand the Panny, get an HV20 (or 30), thank me in the morning ;)
My wife and I just got a Canon HV20 for Christmas… I’m FAR from a video guru, not even close - but the little bit of research I did before picking this one out led me to find out that you get the best video quality by sticking with tape. So the HV20 uses a MiniDV tape, records at 1080i, has a film mode that I believe records at 24fps (haven’t played with that yet). So, importing is a 1:1 process, but works great with Premier and Sony Vegas. Hooked up via firewire, Premier and/or Vegas control the camcorder as an external device. I can mark cuts in/out and only import what I want. The other factor that was a selling point is the huge community in love with the HV20 as seen here: http://www.hv20.com/
Like I said, I’m no where close to a video expert. Just a geek who likes his toys… but check into it, you might like it. :)
Geez, what will you do once you ditch the MBP and only have an Air?
@Josh B. — That’s what I was thinking!
Go for an HV20 or HV30, excellent HDV-based camcorders.
I don’t have a video camera. I am looking into getting an HD video camera, but haven’t settled on one yet. Having seen what High Definition looks like, I don’t think I would ever consider getting a standard definition camera.
I own a HDC-SD5. This past weekend I shot 45min of video. I own a Quad core 6600 with 4gig of ram, and it took about 4 hours to process the video using Pinnacle Studio 11 Plus. Slightly buggy if you rush your mouse (choosing things before the last thing you choose has stated to process).
Once you learn how to use the Pinnacle software it works quite well.
I have made about 10 different Blue-Ray playable High Def movies on regular DVD’s that play in a Blue-Ray player (about 35 min will fit on DVD).
I am quite pleased.
Pinnacle also allows you to output your HD project to almost any other Windows file format.
I would stick to an HD camera that records to MiniDV tapes. Seems to be the best solution at the moment
1) MiniDV tapes are easy to find..(think vacation desitination)
2) Your import time is 1:1
3) Potential for great data loss is the least ( considering HDD based or SD based recorders on which you miight store a great amount of video before having to export)
What really surprise me (and I do like your blog, I check it every day) is that a techie gear-head like yourself (bo offense I mean this possitively) can make these huge near fatal mistakes of judgement. You adaquately describe why the iPhone is not for you, I read it and go “ok he’se right, I actually don’t need one either” and set it out of my brain …. weeks later you buy one and imply it’s the best thing since sliced bread …. same goes for the MBA, as for the purchase of this 1.000$ cam, I would of thought you would of looked into the effects of this a bit more, and not impulse buy something that looks good on paper…. I might be wrong here, I have great difficulties not buying all the great stuff available…. but still I often succeed in not buying the stuff I want, I tend to go for the stuff I need first, and make sure first that it will fit my expectations
dude, get a Canon HV20. They pwn the world. Have a look on vimeo and search for them.
@Robert - you never really know what something is like until you try it out for yourself. I think that pretty much sums this up. I had heard about AVCHD in the marketing terms used for the camera and didn’t think much of it.
Paul, try that NeoHDV codec I linked to, you may be happier just to keep your SD-5 and use that to help the performance / editing difficulties AVCHD gives you.
Paul, FYI, the new ads on your main page right above the most recent post really kills your design flow.
Or if you’re set on recording to flash media, look at the Canon HF10, which just got a <a href=”http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Canon-Vixia-HF10-Camcorder-Review-34711/Comparisons–Conclusion.htm”very favorable review. Warning, it’s also AVCHD, but using the NeoHD codecs for editing will solve most problems.
Interested in how it worked out with recording to SD cards… How long a recording did you get on one 16gb card? Doesn’t seem like it would be more than 2 hours or so..
Am I close?
Great discussion guys. I’m looking at specs for various cameras including this one and the canon HF10. A question (for you Frank ‘viperteq’ Young) - in all the specs I can find neither of these cameras mention an sd (MPEG2) option.
It would be great to have this feature as we could mess around in SD and move up to HD in a couple of years when the software is finally properly sorted and my PC has the specs to cope!
Thoughts?
I use vegas 8 and AVCHD files from others camcorders are faster than mp4 files from the hmx10c, both at render and scrubbing. How is this possible ?
I don’t fully agree with you concerning AVCHD.
Plain H264 are nearly unworkable with vegas 8 (pro b)
I’ve tested files from a samsung hmx10c (which does not produce avchd files) and ones from a canon HF100 and sony SR11.
Theses types are nearly identicals BUT if you want to edit them with a NLE like vegas, you will be very disappointed to see how slowww you can manipulate them. In contrast, AVCHD files are very useable (on the same config, even with bigger resolution like full hd instead of 1280×720)
Scrubbing is way too slow. Although, I think it’s a problem with the NLE itself.
I’m so happy to have found this information. I recently researched what the best camcorder would be as my very old Sony broke years ago and I’ve been using a Nikon SLR for only still images. I have a new iMAC 2.4Ghz with 4GB memory and 320GB hard drive and I figured this would be enough to start my video downloading and editing projects. I was recommended the Panasonic SD5, then found that the SD9 was the newest model….bought it and found it to be completely incompatible with the MAC, my fault for not checking that out but I figured the SD5 was..??? Anyway, I returned that and after much research again, purchased the newest HF100 and bought a couple of 16GB cards.
The card only gave me about 1:45 min of full HD video, which I thought I would get a full 2 hours +, but that’s ok. I was mortified with the download times as it really is over twice the recording time AND I was also blown away by the space it took, when if you figure the easy math, it’s 1GB/min of HD video…wow!
So now I’m at a loss and am a bit new to all of this editing in HD from AVCHD as I’ve done it with the STD DV tape media on a PC and never really had a problem. I’m considering either selling this HF100 and buying the HV30 OR just keeping it until technology has caught up with more user friends tools, but I have some questions I’m hoping someone can help with:
So once I download the AVCHD information into iMovie, how do I compress it as this first post mentioned above without losing the HD quality? Just for a test, I exported the video which only gave me a highest quality of 940x…., then dropped it into iDVD and burned it…..it seriously came out looking terrible! I played it on a LCD HDTV with both a regular DVD player and a progressive scan and in either case, the quality is substandard and I’m questioning my 1k decision for this HD camcorder.
Coincidently, I was at a friends who had a DVD of a home move created in Pinnacle from just a regular Std Def video camera and it was played on a 52″ LCD HD TV…..the quality was amazingly clear!
I’m sorry to be really detailed in this, but I’m very much self taught and am fairly frustrated with what I’m doing wrong. Can someone give me a path of what I need to do with the AVCHD media to get it to an acceptable quality DVD and possibly compress it so that the Terabyte I just bought isn’t full in a few weeks!
@Koolade
first, copying files from the card should not be slower than real time. If it where the case, you couldn't write to the card in the fisrt place without losing frames. Consult this site about the correct reader you should buy : http://www.hjreggel.net/cardspeed
You may need a fast card too. Class 6 are the fastest actually. Not all readers are equal concerning speed, trust me.
second, consider keeping the HF100. Why ? both cams will give you HD content, about the same file size in the end. But, with the HV30 you will have to capture the video from the tape, slow and inefficient. You could not transfert to file faster than realtime. With a card you can.
Finally, I don't have imovie coz i'm on pc. But, the low quality you've experienced have nothing to do with the camcorder itself. You should search for tutorials about exporting HD footage, because the quality I've got with basics settings and vegas blow away any DVD standard definition…
Guys,
A simple question from a novice HD camcorder user. I have a Sony HD video camcorder. It does record in AVCHD. I am considering get a MacPro with iMovie. My question is this: Can I import the video from this sony into my MacPro and view and edit them on the computer? I am not necessarily interested in posting them or distributing them..this is more of a home video server for the family.
thanks..
Although I’m reading negative comments on using AVCHD with an editor above, my experience has ended up being much more pleasant. I am now using a CANON HG10 and I have just downloaded 2 1/2 Hours of recorded HD 1920×1080 video to my computer in less than 25 minutes I initially used the Corel/Ulead software and it was OK but not much of an editor. I found out that by, instead, using Sony Vegas 8 Professional, I can edit the same as if they were BD or AVI files and it turned out a beautiful video on an HD DVD that plays back through my Sony Blu-Ray player (you read it right - Blu-Ray) and it makes an absolutely awesome image on my 57″ Mitsubishi DLP. I can’t find a justification , now, for buying a $9000 or $4000 HD camera. My $899 HG-10 does everything I need and I love AVCHD. The only disadvantage with this HG-10 is that it is so light, it hard to use it smoothly as I am accostumed to a heavier XL-2 and the like. Also, another minus is the Standard DVD hold only about 45 minutes of AVCHD although you can get about 1 1/2 Hours on a double layer disc. I hope this dispels some myths probably from using the earliest version of hardware and software.
Thank you,
Jim Vance, PE
The Musicians Agency
Photo and Video Division
Houston
The problem is with your NLE not the format. This is from Wikipedia “Apple’s Final Cut Express 4, Final Cut 6.0.1, and iMovie ‘08 allow you to convert AVCHD to the Apple Intermediate Codec format, but do not support AVCHD directly.”
I’m using Vegas which handles the AVCHD natively and my processing times for full HD on a modest laptop are nowhere near as long as you describe.
Your mac is burning up doing all the conversions…