Help with purchase!

[Chamber005]

Hey guys, I'm picking up a HF200 for a few hundred bucks, and I wanted to verify with you guys if it's absolutely necessary for my computer to have an HDMI hookup for this thing to work. Right now I just have the...EEEE14 (whatever it's called for my SD cameras). Will that connection work with this camera? If not, how would you suggest I work around it? If I have to have an HDMI hookup, the only thing I can think is to have the images taken from the camcorder and put onto DVDs and then bring the images into my editing software?

Let me know what you think. Here's the camera's specs:

http://www.amazon.com/Canon-VIXIA-Memory-Camcorder-Optical/dp/B001OI2Z2I

Thanks so much!!!

[ThunderousProductions]

The Hf200 is a SDHC card camera which mean you need an SDHC card reader to upload the files onto your computer like this and btw this website sells it for the same amount plus they are the best service and nicest to deal with I have ever met.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/597442-REG/Canon_3536B001_VIXIA_HF200_Flash_Memory.html#featu res

SDHC card reader = http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/537132-REG/Lexar_RW035_001_Professional_UDMA_Dual_Slot_USB.ht ml

[Chamber005]

The Hf200 is a SDHC card camera which mean you need an SDHC card reader to upload the files onto your computer like this and btw this website sells it for the same amount plus they are the best service and nicest to deal with I have ever met.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/597442-REG/Canon_3536B001_VIXIA_HF200_Flash_Memory.html#featu res

SDHC card reader = http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/537132-REG/Lexar_RW035_001_Professional_UDMA_Dual_Slot_USB.ht ml

No, I'm getting it for much, much cheaper from a local guy. That was just for the specs.

Thanks so much for the second link, though!

Now my main dilemma is whether I should grab a GL1 for 400 bucks or the HF200 for 400 bucks. Audio isn't an issue because I have a separate XLR 3-pin system set up for that. I just wonder which one, in the end, is really going to supply the better picture. The GL1s miniDV via firewire, or the HF200 HD via USB. I know the GL1 will have some better features, but everything I'm shooting is indoors with controlled lighting, so will the extra features really be essential? Plus, it's only being posted on the web, so...

Any thoughts? GL1 vs HF200?

[NickG]

The HF200 will give you a better picture in good lighting conditions because it's HD. The Gl1 will probably do somewhat better in low light (bigger sensors in relation to the image resolution). The Gl1 has way more manual control and better optics. The HF200 is smaller, easier to use out of the box.

You have to decide what combination is better for your purposes. You can produce good quality video from the HF200, but it's aimed at consumers, and so rates ease of use and convenience above ultimate control. If you don't need to shoot in poor conditions, and you see the benefits of HD, go for it. If, OTOH, you really know what you're doing, you might find it a bit limited.

I guess, from this and your other posts, that you're moe in the HF200 category.

Just my thoughts

[Chamber005]

The HF200 will give you a better picture in good lighting conditions because it's HD. The Gl1 will probably do somewhat better in low light (bigger sensors in relation to the image resolution). The Gl1 has way more manual control and better optics. The HF200 is smaller, easier to use out of the box.

You have to decide what combination is better for your purposes. You can produce good quality video from the HF200, but it's aimed at consumers, and so rates ease of use and convenience above ultimate control. If you don't need to shoot in poor conditions, and you see the benefits of HD, go for it. If, OTOH, you really know what you're doing, you might find it a bit limited.

I guess, from this and your other posts, that you're moe in the HF200 category.

Just my thoughts

Yeah, I've only ever really worked in photography prior. This is a whole new can of worms for me. I went with the HF200 after seeing some really remarkable HF100 footage. Like you said, it has its limitations, but since I've got a professional commercial lighting guy and everything will be shot in the same location indoors and will only be for web-based viewing, I think we should be able to piece something together. I've got some great artists, actors, models, musicians, make up artist and an awesome sound guy all pulling their weight just because they believe what I'm trying to do sounds pretty cool, so in that I already feel I've achieved something. If all I do is learn a little bit about framing moving objects opposed to framing stills, Ill be a happy camper as the entire production is only running me about 1500 bucks.

In the end, I've been penciling, painting, creating storyboards, photographing throughout most of my life. I think moving pictures will be a nice transition and will be another medium (or combination of mediums) I can use to express myself.

But yeah -- I'll post some footage once I get going. Haven't really seen any HF200 (narrative) stuff, so that will be a fun little niche to fill regardless.

Thanks for your thoughts!!

[NickG]

Sounds like you're gonna have fun!

[Chamber005]

Sounds like you're gonna have fun!


Ack -- so it turns out that I will not be able to (in the near future) post any kind of decent footage of the HF200. In order to do that I'd have to have access to a much, much more powerful computer and editing software to handle the AVCHD.

As of now the best we can do is take the 1080p footage and burn it onto a DVD via composite (not even RGB!!) wires and then take the DVD footage and convert that to MPEG4 or what have you.

It was kind of a bummer, but luckily the footage (even through composite yellow/white/red cables) looks pretty darned good. I wanted to use this as a B cam someday when I do a short film. By that time I'm hoping to have a computer that can handle the HD data as well as having a separate component to record via the HDMI input for raw HD footage. From my understanding that will be even superior to recording to SD cards.

But anyway, for now it's composite cable out to DVD to computer. I'm too afraid to buy a card with composite inputs for the computer as I'm worried the 1080p signal might confuse the computer, whereas the booklet for the HF200 states specifically that you can send footage to a VHS or DVD via the composite cables.

(fyi you cannot send HD data to a DVD burner via RGB cables as the 480i DVD recorder will not understand what it's receiving -- and it's extremely difficult to find a DVD-RW with RGB inputs regardless)

I've no idea why if the RGB cables don't work with the DVD player while a composite connection does, but, apparently, there's no drama there.

Just all too confusing.

[NickG]

You can get over the computer power problem by transcoding the AVCHD to another codec before editing. There are various utilities to do this. On the Mac MPEG Streamclip is free, Voltaic costs money but does a good job as does Cineform NeoScene. There are others on the Mac and equivalents for Windows.

The point being that you can transcode to HDV, or Apple ProRes 422 or others that mean you don't lose significant quality but you don't need as much horsepower to edit. AVCHD is a very editor-unfriendly codec, because it's designed for very high compression and the poor old computer has to huff and puff each time you want to muck about with it.

All isn't lost - you'll just need to experiment a bit. And yell for help as and when needed.