Selecting a HD small camcorder with Vegas picky tastes in mind...

Deuceofspades

Deuceofspades

Veteran
One of my actor used a small panasonic camcorder to document the behind the scenes activities on the set of my full feature film DEUCE OF SPADES.

His SD panasonic camera produced a form of MPG2 files with .mod extentions.

Vegas was able to open the .mod (despite an initial error message stating "file format error") and read them, but when I tried to edit them, it caused it to crash randomly like crazy. The whole PC would cease up, causing me to have to reboot half of the time. It was so bad I finally gave up and rendered (after saying a prayer LOL) the files as avi segments and then worked off of those.

I called Panasonic and their techs (of course) said that Vegas should have no problem opening the files since they are mpg2 type files.

Yeah, right.

Note that I LOVE SONY VEGAS, and I am very happy with it, while working on my full feature film (using .mxf files and Raylight). It is very stable and has hardly ever crashed, depsite working with up to 4 vegas files simulteaously.

Well, my lead man is now wrapped so I no longer have his camera to use and have to now buy my own little camcorder so I can keep filming behind the scene stuff.

I had my eyes on the panasonic HD camera HDC-SD9 which offered 24p mode and was only $600. However at the light of my recent frustrating experiences working with Panasonic files and Sony Vegas, I became smart (or cowerdly, not sure which LOL) and opted to buy a Sony camera instead.


Needless to say the Sony Vegas software has no beef with it's own Sony brand camera files LOL.

I bought a HDR-SR10. Not a bad little unit for $800 - but I sure would have like to have more brand options to pick from....

Wonder if Canon's files would be more compatible with Vegas...

Anyone care to chime in?

Also anyone able to advise me on the best price/quality small HD camcorder on the market for under $900 ? I have one more week to return my Sony camcorder and get something else...

thanks!

Here is the footage I edited from the panasonic files:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYTdnmB2pGg
 
Faith,

Is there a way we can download one of these .mod files to play with? I'd love to try.

I wish I had been in your area. This film looks like so much fun, I'd have worked on it for free!

Keep up us updated with release info and so forth. I even told some friends here at work about it (old car lovers) and they are looking forward to it too.
 
PerroneFord said:
Faith,

Is there a way we can download one of these .mod files to play with? I'd love to try.

I wish I had been in your area. This film looks like so much fun, I'd have worked on it for free!

Keep up us updated with release info and so forth. I even told some friends here at work about it (old car lovers) and they are looking forward to it too.
Click to expand...


hey thanks :)

I guess I could try to upload one of them (a short one) on my website... if I can... Not sure if having just one of them would reproduce the same amount of mayhem then having a bunch of them edited on a timeline... but might still be a good learning experience...
 
yesterday I did intensive editing of footage filmed with the Sony camera and just as expected it was a flawless process.

I would love ot try a Cannon HD camera too see how that goes... I might go buy one today and give it a test drive.

Won't anyone chime in on this problem?
 
Canon will be iffier with Vegas, especially where 24p is concerned. There are workarounds, but it requires massaging the footage in separate software.

But as with anything, it's about the look you want -- if Canon gives you something you want and it's worth the extra effort, then it might be your better choice.
 
David Jimerson said:
Canon will be iffier with Vegas, especially where 24p is concerned. There are workarounds, but it requires massaging the footage in separate software.

But as with anything, it's about the look you want -- if Canon gives you something you want and it's worth the extra effort, then it might be your better choice.
Click to expand...

I guess I would have liked to be able to compare quality of several cameras in that price range... I have never tried the Cannon HD consumer ones... How do they compare to the Sony's?

Sony is OK, now and then though the automatic focus is a bit off and so is the white balance. there is also a 2 second delays between the moment you hit the record button and the moment the camera actually starts recording...
 
PerroneFord said:
Get me some footage, and I'll chime in. I've got my 64bit laptop at the house, and a rare, free Saturday.
Click to expand...

OK, I checked the size of the clips and it looks like I could email a couple to you, they are under 15MG each cause the footage is SD.

I need your email address please.
 
I pushed around the files you sent without incident. But I could see how having a bunch of mpeg2 files on the timeline could be problematic.
 
PerroneFord said:
I pushed around the files you sent without incident. But I could see how having a bunch of mpeg2 files on the timeline could be problematic.
Click to expand...


But you had to rename their extentions first, right? Per your email to me: "they worked fine once I learned to rename them .mpg ...

did you have to rename each file seperately or can it be done in a batch? When you have over 200 files, it can become a real pain to have to rename each.

Also I was curious as to why having a bunch of mpeg2 files on the timeline could be problematic.. Problematic in what way?

meanwhile, the files coming from my Sony camera are a walk in the park to work with in vegas. I also like how Sony camera generates it's files. It gives them easy to understand numbers (ex: XYZ0001, XYZ00002 etc etc) and keeps appending the files in the SAME folder each time i shoot again. Whereas Panasonic created a seperate folder each session and gave it some real random numbers, making it impossible to figure out which was which... Especially since the files didn't appear in windows in a chornological order.. (so newer shoots may show above older shoots)...

With Sony camera, I can simply copy the single files, watching the numbers, arnd drag over from the camera to hard drive just the new numbers and they are sorted in assending numbers, hence assending dates, so everything is perfect, obvious and easy to understand / organize.

Still would love to test the Cannons and see how they go about generating gtheir files and how good the cameras perform...
 
David Jimerson said:
Canon will be iffier with Vegas, especially where 24p is concerned. There are workarounds, but it requires massaging the footage in separate software.

But as with anything, it's about the look you want -- if Canon gives you something you want and it's worth the extra effort, then it might be your better choice.
Click to expand...

We are talking about low end consumer HD camera, right? This is just for my behind the scene footage. I need a simple automated small camera that I can hand to any idiot standing around on the set and they will be able to film something with it that is "useable" ;).
 
Deuceofspades said:
But you had to rename their extentions first, right? Per your email to me: "they worked fine once I learned to rename them .mpg ...

did you have to rename each file seperately or can it be done in a batch? When you have over 200 files, it can become a real pain to have to rename each.
Click to expand...

Simple command line. C:\video> Rename *.MOD *.mpg. Done.

Deuceofspades said:
Also I was curious as to why having a bunch of mpeg2 files on the timeline could be problematic.. Problematic in what way?
Click to expand...

Problematic in that it requires resources to display and deal with those long GOP files. Not generally an issue for a modern computer with lots of RAM, but an older computer or one with limited resources could see a problem if there are a LOT of the files on the timeline. Like if you had 200 Mpeg2 clips and a machine without much RAM, I could see where that could be an issue.

Deuceofspades said:
With Sony camera, I can simply copy the single files, watching the numbers, arnd drag over from the camera to hard drive just the new numbers and they are sorted in assending numbers, hence assending dates, so everything is perfect, obvious and easy to understand / organize.
Click to expand...

Yes, it's very nice. But I came from the world of tape, where this simply didn't exist. So it's nice, but not necessary to me.

Deuceofspades said:
Still would love to test the Cannons and see how they go about generating gtheir files and how good the cameras perform...
Click to expand...

I'm sure someone of your resources could get a couple canons to borrow. Right?
 
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