Buying the HMC150

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vanishproductions

Member
OK, I'm behind the curve here a little bit on the HD front. I've finally set my sights on purchasing the HMC150. I've never shot HD before or worked with it. I've used other panasonic minidv cameras in the past, with CS3 to edit, and I have a quad core computer with 8gb of ram. Am i going to have any trouble using or editing with this camera and software? and if I'm shooting HD for an event or wedding, will i still be able render it to SD for standard DVD players. Or will I only be able to output HD since I'm shooting HD? I know this all sound pretty elementary, and if I just spent some time on this forum looking I would probably come up with all the answers I need. I just want to make sure I understand it and that I'm not missing something.
 
With a quad core and 8GB of memory you will likely be OK. To natively edit the AVCHD files that this camera produces, you will need to upgrade to CS4, or you can stick with CS3 and transcode the files to another format such as Cineform. The biggest issue so far for most people seems to be dealing with the AVCHD format; some NLE software is not yet updated to support it, and some people still have issues with supporting software when their computer is not a more recent hardware platform. There are many threads here that discuss these issues and a search will reveal a wealth of information.

As far as SD is concerned, programs such as Adobe Media Encoder should be able to handle the conversion for you.
 
thanks for the reply. I really like the camera and it's features, but I'm not sure all of my projects will require HD. I was going to pick up a canon Xha1, which will shoot both formats, but I just really am attached to panasonic and I need to get a camera soon. I don't really see the point in going to a 100B when AVCHD seems like the way to go. So as long as I can shoot with it and still be able to easily convert it down to SD for certain projects, I should be set.
 
Panasonic just announced new software that will convert AVCHD to DV. This makes it really handly to use the HMC150 for SD uses. The great news is that it's free! :)

https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/support/desk/e/download.htm#avchd

Sincerley,

Andrew Hoffman
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Please visit our new online store at ( http://www.spec-comm.com/store ). New products being added daily!
 
Great find Andrew.

"The downloadable AVCHD Transcoder version 2.1 is compatible with Microsoft Windows XP and Vista."

No Mac support.
 
vanishproductions said:
thanks for the reply. I really like the camera and it's features, but I'm not sure all of my projects will require HD. I was going to pick up a canon Xha1, which will shoot both formats, but I just really am attached to panasonic and I need to get a camera soon. I don't really see the point in going to a 100B when AVCHD seems like the way to go. So as long as I can shoot with it and still be able to easily convert it down to SD for certain projects, I should be set.
Click to expand...

Get the HMC. Even without the Panasonic software you could shoot and edit in CS3, by converting to DVCPro. You can always downconvert to SD in post if you desired (thats what I do). On my HV30 I shoot and capture everything in HD anyway, that way I have the files if I ever wanted to produce something in HD. And if you did upgrade to CS4 (or another NLE that supports AVCHD), your computer should be more than beefy enough to handle it natively. I have a 7 month old Quad Core with 4g RAM and it does just fine with the HMC's files.
 
Its telling me that my footage is not Panasonic footage.

While the footage I am trying to convert was shot on a Canon AND an HMC150, I tried to decode just the Panasonic footage and I am getting a message stating that it is not Panasonic footage.

I have pulled the files from each camera and placed them in folders called "small_camera"
and "big_camera" (I know the HMC150 is not abig camera, but it is bigger than the HF camera)

Do I need the file structure to be intact for this to work?
Does the card need to be formatted by the HMC150?

Is the software looking for a specific way the footage was converted to AVCHD, or is it looking for some tag to say it is from the HMC150?

Other than the footage being in 2 gig chuncks on the Canon and 4 gig chunks on the Panasonic, and maybe the 1080 is still in a pull down fashion on the Canon, I can't see how it knows the footage is which.

Again, I AM trying to convert the AVCHD footage from the HMC150 that was shot at 1080/ 24p, but for grins, I also tried the canon footage.

Neither worked going from the MTS files directly with no other folder info.
 
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