AG-HMC151 questions

M

MorleyUK

Member
I'm considering buying a couple of 151's to replace my two DVX100B's and take my first steps into solidstate & HD-land, but have a few questions...

1) Someone recently told me that when the camera creates a new file, once it's got to the FAT32 max of 4ish gigs, you lose a few seconds of action whilst it's doing it's thing. Is this true? if so it's a bit of a nightmare when filming weddings/speeches etc!

2) Can you record in SD? If not, how easy is it to down covert to SD. I use Sony Vegas.

3) The same person who told me about point 1 also told me that it takes ages to get the files off the SD card and probably takes the same amount of time as the oldschool way of capturing from a tape! Again, i use Vegas so if anyone else out there uses Vegas with a 151 is this true??

4) on a slightly different subject, can anyone give me some ideas on how to archive footage from this camera. The thought of having my businesses 'assets' on a hard drive, even if it is RAID, scares the proverbial out of me!!

Thanks in advance for your help!

Cheers

Chris.
www.chrismorleyvideoproduction.co.uk
 
1) Absolutey not. The footage spans files absolutely seamlessly. Some editors introduce a glitch, but that's the editors' fault and I think by now many/most of them have fixed their bugs. The footage is fine.

2) No it doesn't record SD. All you have to do is render out your project as an NTSC or PAL preset to create an SD version.

3) Nonsense. Utter misinformed nonsense. In Vegas you can drag the files to the timeline and begin editing immediately, instantaneously. Shoot 12 hours of footage onto a 32GB card, plug the card in, drag 12 hours of footage to the timeline and begin editing in seconds. Now, if your computer isn't fast enough to process the footage in realtime, that might introduce problems, but if you have a fast computer it's instantaneous. If your workflow instead involves transcoding the footage to an editing codec like Cineform, then yes that can take some time, which might even approach digitizing-levels of time. But that pretty much mocks the whole concept of shooting tapeless! Certain editors can handle the footage in realtime, like Premiere Pro CS4.1. EDIUS and Vegas can do it depending on your computer's horesepower; my dual-core laptop with Vegas 8 can handle AVCHD in realtime up to about 720/30p; anything more than that and it starts dropping frames.

4) Archive however you're comfortable. It's just computer data. Store it on DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, hard drives, or computer data backup drives like DLT or LTO.
 
3) On my machine it takes 1 minute to copy 1GB off the card.
4) If you shoot onto 4GB or 8GB cards you can archive the whole card on a DVD and it will be directly playable on a Blu-ray player.
 
You can archive the full RAW files to DVDs if you are using the dual layer and the 8 gig cards, and if you are using the 16 gig cards then you could back the content up to blu-ray.


For transcoding it takes about 40 percent of the run time on a 4 core Mac Pro. Quite a lot slower on my dual macbook. Takes about real time on that.
 
You said "even if it is RAID" implying it's a better archive mechanism.

Regarding RAID -- it's designed for performance (you don't need it with AVCHD), not archival security. Every single RAID 0 hard drive array I've had over the past eight years has gone down -- taking stuff with them. RAID 1 is designed to be a bit more secure. Any RAID array is entirely unnecessary for archival purposes.

On the other hand -- I've still got a 486 and a Pentium with single hard drives -- both of which still boot up and work.

Be wary of any RAID array (RAID 1 is better in terms of data security). For archival purposes it's entirely unnecessary.

The good news is that in a few years all hard drives will be solid state -- vastly more reliable with vastly larger capacities. The bad news is -- that's in a few years. In the short term, redundant external hard drives works, or these newer external multiple hard drive bay things that work with USB and/or eSATA. For security purposes (rather than performance) you want something with "JBOD" that allows you to have multiple back ups.
 
1tb drives are cheap, just dupe your stuff to a £60 1tb drive and put it somewhere safe.

I transcode from AVCCAM/AVCHD to Cineform Neo Scene, only cost £59 quid and its brilliant for edits in Vegas.
 
Justyn said:
You can archive the full RAW files to DVDs if you are using the dual layer and the 8 gig cards, and if you are using the 16 gig cards then you could back the content up to blu-ray.


For transcoding it takes about 40 percent of the run time on a 4 core Mac Pro. Quite a lot slower on my dual macbook. Takes about real time on that.
Click to expand...

It's worth mentioning that the codec you are transcoding into, as well as the frame size and rate of the original footage affect this. I get roughly 6x real time on 720 25p footage togh a Mac Pro 2.8 8 core into ProRes LT, only 3x with 1080 footage or 720 50p.
 
Thanks again. Seems like it would be best to trial one first. I have a pentium quad core pc, 4gb ram etc etc, so pretty good. I've got my eye on shooting in Progressive mode (so 720p) as i really like the look of progressive footage, and that's what i've been shooting with on my DVX100 for years now.

Can anyone tell me what the advantage would be to convert the files to another codec first, instead of simply dragging the files straight into Vegas??

I seem to be reading, and hearing, loads of contradictory stull about all aspects of AVCHD, codecs, and it's comptability with vegas.

Lastly, has anyone heard anything on the grapevine about the 151's sucessor??? (151A) It seems inevitable that one's going to appear sometime. Don't really want to spend 6k on two cameras that are about to be superceded!

Thanks again everyone.

Chris.
 
Cams out a year, doubt they will kill it off.

Ive got a Intel Quad Core Q6600 overclocked to 3.4GHz per core, 4gb ram etc and the Pana 151 footage in Vegas 8.0c Pro is awful, scrubbing the time line is a pain and it crashes all over the place.

I spent £59 with Videoguys and bought Neo Scene from Cineform. Yes it takes a while to compress the .MTS to .AVI and the files are 6 times as big BUT it means easier editing and I can always delete the AVI's later and rerun the conversion if I need to edit (or by that time have a PC that will natively handle the footage).
 
Although grateful for the responses, i'm now a bit confused by the contradictory statements by Barry Green and Rikki. One gives Vegas the all clear and the other says that even on an overclocked quad-core Vegas struggles with the footage. I know there are loads of other variables that could determine individual performance but this is just confusing me. Where are all the people saying 'yes' 'yes' 'yes'??


So in summary, based on what you have all helpfully said:

The 151's footage can be used directly by Vegas up to a point determined by resolution, framerate & PC power. Over that point the footage tends to make Vegas crash. You can transcode the footage to .AVI using Cineform which takes time but not as much time as digitising tapes - again depending on PC power and codecs etc.

So really, seeing as the demand for HD still doesn't seem to be huge in my neck of the woods (recession saw to that), in buying the 151 i'll be gaining a camera that will save me 'some' time, will 'futureproof' my work, but might also complicate things for me to the point where my business has no future.

mmMMMmmm

Basically i don't want to be in a situation where I take on these new cameras and end up becoming less efficient as a result. I'm making this purchase to take the business further, and not to become a serial question asker in forums like this one.

Thanks again for all your help.
 
I cant edit 1080/25p AVCHD from the 151 in Vegas 8.0c Pro on Windows XP 32bit with 4GB of RAM and an OC'd chip. Thats about the size of it. You try and scrub through clips and you get flashes of frames instead of seeing whats going on. I'll vid later and show.
 
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