People that have been following me for a while know that I bought a Panasonic HDC-SD5 and returned it because of too much noise in the audio.
So, I’ve been patient and waited for the Canon HF10 Solid State AVCHD camera. It arrived about a week ago and unfortunately I haven’t had the chance to test it in detail yet. So far it looks very good. Small, but more sturdy and solid than the Panasonic. No noise on the audio and a very nice progressive recording mode. Way better performance in low light and a built in 16 GB of memory in addition to the SD-slot.
It works very well with both iMovie and Final Cut Express.
Update:
Here’s a detailed review with tech specs on Camcorderinfo.
I have published some very short test videos and will add more later.
25p-960×540.mov 18-May-2008 01:22 43M
= recorded in 25p and scaled down to half size
25p-testclip-canon-h..> 18-May-2008 02:21 177M
= original recording in 25p, Apple intermediate file
50i-testclip-canon-h..> 18-May-2008 02:11 126M
= original recording in 50i, Apple intermediate file
50p-960×540.mov 18-May-2008 01:52 55M
= recording in 50i and converted to 960×540 50p
For the converting from 50i full size to 50p half size I’ve used the free and excellent JES Deinterlacer. I set it up with the following parameters under “Project”:
Standards Conversion
Custom
Minimal Blend
Settings: Height: 540 Width: 960 Frame rate: 50.000
Movie speed: 1.000
Here’s another quick clip. Something I did to demonstrate Shazam ID on my phone. The video is slightly edited in iMovie, transcoded and uploaded to Brightcove. The recording was done in 25p, saving the hassle of deinterlacing. If you’re reading this in an email update or RSS reader you might want to click through to the article on eirikso.com to view the video.
http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/376819422
And here are two stills from the same camera. It’s snapping decent 3 megapixel stills as well.
eirikso 
Hi Eirik!
How do you find the performance of your mac when working with AVCHD? I’ve seen some peoples frustration over poor performance on MBP’s at least, just wanted to check in on your experience. I’ve been thinking about replacing my stone-age TR-900 with something new and shiny…
Thanks!
Hello. I have also H10 and used it since May 15th. I am pleased with the device due to performance and size :).
Since I’m not a Mac user but stick to Vista I have only experience with AVCHD editing on my PC with Vista, and yes it consume a lot of resources!. For this reason among others as well I have decided to upgrade from 2 MB ram to 4MB. The sad part of playing on “bleeding” edge regarding technology is that there are few video editing apps supporting AVCHD at the time, and you will any way need to convert into a format that your audience support in the players and codec’s….
LOL, I bet that 4 MB Ram really did the trick… 😛
Please be able to take a joke.
Hehe. Most people here are able to take a joke, so I don’t think that’s a problem.
And, remember what Bill Gates said? 640K is enough. So I guess the 4MB is more than enough for AVCHD-editing!
@pixelcollector
So far it seems like my MBP manages pretty well. Haven’t done huge amounts of tests, but editing in iMovie is no problem. For some kind of reason it seems like Final Cut struggles a bit more.
As far as I know both programs transcodes into Apple Intermediate for editing.
@eirikso
Thanks for the answer! I was thinking of using Final Cut since i know it better and don’t really like the new imovie…
True Little Billy did say 1 MB Ram is all you’ll ever need… lawl
No really, I do love windows though…
Despite the fact that I’m a PC user and I like the Mac Vs PC ads on TV… they’re sooo funny…
ridiculous!
No trouble with jokes 🙂 Just out of curiosity what are your experience on this matter on rescores needed on MAC vs. PC?
For the things I use on my PC I don’t find it strange to upgrade from 2GB to 4GM now in 2008.
Lots of RAM is always good! I have 3GB on my MacBook Pro and 2GB on my iMac at home. Both seems to perform well. And my experience with running Mac OSX Leopard with 1GB is pretty bad. That’s not enough for serious work.
When running heavy stuff like Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop and Final Cut Pro at the same time it seems like I could do with even more than 3GB as well.
A more harsh review here:
He complains about the AVCHD and to short battery life
He’s right about the battery life and I will probably buy an extra battery at some point. I’ve had no problems with the focus like he has and complaining about AVCHD-recording on an AVCHD-camera sounds kind of strange…
A comparison with the sony here:
Well, If RAM is a concern, and you need speed because you use your computer to make a living,
and with RAM at 40 Bucks per 2 GB,
Throw 4 GB in there and call it a day IMO.
I mean, it’s 2008. I bet it gets even cheaper.
And by 2010, we prolly won’t even use ram anymore.
We’re going to see the convergence of RAM and Hard Drive before long. (After all Hard Drives become solid state and catchup to ram speeds that is)
…and that’s exactly what they’ve done in the Canon HF10 camera. Throw out the hard drive and moving parts. And in with the solid state…
How do you get the raw vidoes files from the camera to import into iMovie? My version doesn’t recognize the “mts” files.
Thanks
iMovie gets the files directly off the camera. I connect it and start iMovie. Then I use the import function to preview, select and import the files.
What version of iMovie do you have? I tried it with my mac mini and it did not recognize the files.
I’m running iMovie 08, version 7.1.2. And you need an intel mac to get the AVCHD-support.
Without an intel mac you need to convert the files with Voltaic:
http://shedworx.com/?q=volmac-home
I am having a really hard time getting Sony Vegas Pro 8 to work under my fresh install of vista (..reinstalled the OS 4 times now..I am about to give up) so I am looking elsewhere..FSC4 was one of the options I looked into before going for Sony, and I only went for Sony since I got a new computer through my work that would be more capable than my MacMini (with the current highest specs). Now that Sony seems to be unable to do what I need..the darn program wont even start properly most of the time..I am thinking of going for FSC4 again.
So..what are your views on FSC4, MacMini and the HF-10..will I be in a world of hurt trying to edit AVCHD on this thing?
Erikso, I just recently purchase the HF10, and when I imported the 10gb of video onto my intel base MacBook Pro using iMovie08, the original 10gb of video footage is now over 60gb…is this normal? Any work arounds? The video was shot in standard mode.
Thanks
Tom
That’s normal. The original file from the camera gets converted by iMovie. Into a format called “Apple Intermediate”. This is because it is not suitable to edit the original files from the camera directly. Due to the way it is compressed. This has to do with something called the GOP structure of the AVCHD format. That format gives a very high quality for each byte of data. But unfortunately it is not suited for editing and needs to be converted.
I don’t know of any workarounds. Other than shoot-convert-edit. Then keep a high quality copy of your finished edit and delete the raw material from iMovie…