AVCHD hardware compatibility question. Can I view dailies on a less expensive camera?

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derbrocks09

Well-known member
I prefer to view dailies on my projector and big screen and I can't seem to accomplish high quality results with a basic laptop so I simply use the AF100. Does anyone know can I simply buy a less expensive AVCHD camera with HDMI out to playback AF100 files? Could I buy an older Canon Vixia HF100 for example? Or would a consumer type Panasonic work better?

Anyone know the answer or have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance
 
Interesting question.

Always thought it a bit weird that a camera can playback AVCHD easily and yet a computer struggles to do the same. ie I do not know of a decent AVCHD Player for use in a laptop for field viewing or even a desktop PC

Go figure.


Undoubtedly Panasonic will come up with an exhorbitantly priced card player / viewer / ingester ... just as they did with P2.

Needs a 3rd party product with out doubt.
 
panasonic blu-ray players have sd card slot for playback from consumer avchd cams, don't know if they would work with the af-100's uncompressed audio format.
 
So I take it you think buying one of these consumer cameras won't work then? I hate to go out and buy one just to try it out. If nobody knows the answer I might just take an SD card into a Best Buy and find out. I wonder if the PH mode will mean that they won't work. What about an HMC40 I wonder?
 
derbrocks09 said:
So I take it you think buying one of these consumer cameras won't work then? I hate to go out and buy one just to try it out. If nobody knows the answer I might just take an SD card into a Best Buy and find out. I wonder if the PH mode will mean that they won't work. What about an HMC40 I wonder?
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I've been using hd vu on my laptop as a player with good results. I have a Mac book pro 13" laptop that is a couple years old and hdvu plays back AF 100 files quite well.
 
dop16mm said:
panasonic blu-ray players have sd card slot for playback from consumer avchd cams, don't know if they would work with the af-100's uncompressed audio format.
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Great Suggestion. I even happen to have a Panasonic Blu Ray player too! Never even noticed the SD card slot under the flap. I'm copying files to the a SD card now. Will report my findings in about 20mins.
 
Problem Solved gang! Thanks dop16mm! My panasonic Blu Ray plays the AF100 files just fine! I wish I would have know I could do this all along. LOL Oh well.
 
Thats great you have a solution.

Does it allow you to access the files in a similar manner to the camera playback mode?
 
No it didn't. But it could be because I didn't have the files directly from the camera. I copied them from my archive.

Actually I still would be interested in another camera if it works. The Canon HF100 can be had for a 2-300 on ebay and would make a nice little fun camera to have around.

I suppose I could try updating the firmware on the BD player too. But it didn't show me a list of clips to choose from. Perhaps I'll still swing by Best Buy one of these days.
 
Ive tried it with audio as ac3 and it plays back fine on the hf10... Not suer on theAf100 with pcm audio though as pcm doesnt playback on my hmc40
 
No it didn't. But it could be because I didn't have the files directly from the camera. I copied them from my archive.

Actually I still would be interested in another camera if it works. The Canon HF100 can be had for a 2-300 on ebay and would make a nice little fun camera to have around.

I suppose I could try updating the firmware on the BD player too. But it didn't show me a list of clips to choose from. Perhaps I'll still swing by Best Buy one of these days.
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HX9 maybe?
 
A Playstation 3 (early one with a Card Reader) will playback the footage from an AF100 perfectly, and will be much cheaper then a camera. Even plays VFR footage fine.
 
derbrocks09 said:
I prefer to view dailies on my projector and big screen and I can't seem to accomplish high quality results with a basic laptop so I simply use the AF100. Does anyone know can I simply buy a less expensive AVCHD camera with HDMI out to playback AF100 files? Could I buy an older Canon Vixia HF100 for example? Or would a consumer type Panasonic work better?

Anyone know the answer or have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
I have a Sony Hx9v which is a $350 camera capable of great video quality. The other day I loaded a card in it shot with AF100 footage. The Sony updated some thumbnails, and when finished I was watching the af100 footy on the sony. So it might work how you want to see it. Plus you get the great 1080/60p from the sony!
 
dustylense said:
I have a Sony Hx9v which is a $350 camera capable of great video quality. The other day I loaded a card in it shot with AF100 footage. The Sony updated some thumbnails, and when finished I was watching the af100 footy on the sony. So it might work how you want to see it. Plus you get the great 1080/60p from the sony!
Click to expand...

That was my suspicion....nice to know that it works. BTW, the HDMI is capable of "full" quality capture. :)
 
I actually just play the files with VLC media player on my desktop. I was pretty surprised that the files played nicely as i've seen so many declare that it's near impossible to do, but nonetheless i can view my AVCHD clips flawlessly from the SD card just by viewing them straight from the folder. I do have a pretty fast PC, but i can't imagine that it'd be that much of a stretch to do it with lesser PCs or laptops. I've got a little Sandisk USB card reader & that does the job, as I don't have a card slot built into my desktop.

So my best advice would be to try whatever PCs or latops you've got around to view them with if you want to quickly check your dailies. If they run them okay, then great - but the performance is gonna depend on the speed of the machine.
 
Regarding playing back AF100 files on other camcorders -- the answer is usually yes, but not always. Some cameras don't know how to handle the LPCM audio files (and that includes all Panasonic's earlier AVCCAM models, so my HMC150 and HMC40 can't play back LPCM AF100 files). They can all play back AC3 files, but not any that were recorded in LPCM.

As Postmaster said, yes there are many standalone players, including blu-ray players with SD slots and PS3's etc.

There are many software options, but they're a mixed bag. If you have an nVidia graphics card with CUDA acceleration and a CUDA-enabled player, then you can get full-screen full-frame-rate playback. But not all players are equivalent, some will skimp on the playback, some will make the footage look a whole lot noisier than it really is, and in general it's not an ideal solution. Playback from a hardware codec to a video monitor is the best way to get the "real" quality, so the blu-ray player or dedicated playback system, or just playing back from the AF100, are the ways you can guarantee that you're seeing the footage the way it's meant to be seen.
 
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