Canon HV20/30 - 25p into iMovie? FCE?

[jdavtz]

Hi, I'm a new user here. I'm thinking of getting a Canon HV30 or HV20 for some upcoming holidays. I have no background at all in videography, but I do lots of digital still photography (40D/Aperture/CS3).

I think I'd like to try out the 25p option on the camera (PAL camera, in the UK - I presume there's no 24p option but that sounds complex and requires FCP anyway by the sound of things), but have a few questions:

Can I use iMovie 08 (or iMovie 6 HD) to perform basic editing of 25p movie clips? I've read about the problems with USA models doing 60i>24p conversion and needing FCS, but is that applicable for a PAL camera shooting 25p? (stored as 50i apparently - do I need to know anything much about that? or will the program importing it be told by the camera, "this looks like 50i but is actually 25p," or something like that?)

25p will look pretty similar to 24p won't it?

My 'final' output will be DVD for distant family, some sort of QT file for our computer, and some sort of online thing as well.

I'll be using an iMac G5 (20", 2GHz, 2GB) for editing; that will also be our 'main' output device (we use it for our TV/DVDs/music/everything).

Am I going to run into any potential problems? Do I need Final Cut Express/Studio? Anything else important I need to be aware of? Is my G5 likely to cope?

I thought getting and using a camcorder would be easy but it seems there's so much to understand with video formats, conversions, pulldown, etc.! Or am I misunderstanding a bit, and it's actually much more plug-and-play than it sounds like it might be?

Thanks for any help or advice.

Jonathan.

 

[Stormyguy]

Hi, I'm a new user here. I'm thinking of getting a Canon HV30 or HV20 for some upcoming holidays. I have no background at all in videography, but I do lots of digital still photography (40D/Aperture/CS3).

I think I'd like to try out the 25p option on the camera (PAL camera, in the UK - I presume there's no 24p option but that sounds complex and requires FCP anyway by the sound of things), but have a few questions:

Can I use iMovie 08 (or iMovie 6 HD) to perform basic editing of 25p movie clips? I've read about the problems with USA models doing 60i>24p conversion and needing FCS, but is that applicable for a PAL camera shooting 25p? (stored as 50i apparently - do I need to know anything much about that? or will the program importing it be told by the camera, "this looks like 50i but is actually 25p," or something like that?)

25p will look pretty similar to 24p won't it?

My 'final' output will be DVD for distant family, some sort of QT file for our computer, and some sort of online thing as well.

I'll be using an iMac G5 (20", 2GHz, 2GB) for editing; that will also be our 'main' output device (we use it for our TV/DVDs/music/everything).

Am I going to run into any potential problems? Do I need Final Cut Express/Studio? Anything else important I need to be aware of? Is my G5 likely to cope?

I thought getting and using a camcorder would be easy but it seems there's so much to understand with video formats, conversions, pulldown, etc.! Or am I misunderstanding a bit, and it's actually much more plug-and-play than it sounds like it might be?

Thanks for any help or advice.

Jonathan.

While I cannot comment I'd like to bump yr thread as I'm looking for similar answers.

Thinking of a HV30 with my Powermac G5 dual 2.7ghz (maxed out RAM) - anything flash any stop lights out there? I think it shld be fine as it's a mini-DV cam and not using the AVCHD format which seems to be a prob with G5's ??? I understand the new Sony cams may not be compatible and I think I'd rather stick to DV tape for storage capacity reasons.....

EDIT: I have iMovie 08 as a part of iLife08 if necessary or FCE that is OLD but I could upgrade to the latest version I guess (I bought when it was new and never got around to using it much so not sure which version I may be able to upgrage to.....)

Regards
Danny