Captured file size - HDV vs AVCHD

[electronique]

Hi. Noob Q here.
Im wanting to get into a bit of digital video. I cant decide between the Canon HV40 or the HFS11.

I understand that when capturing AVCHD (HFS11), it takes up a huge amount of disk space... Is it the same (or less?) for HDV (HV40)?

Can anyone break it down to some figures? GB per hour sorta thing..

Thanks

 

[spinnerlys]

Mostly it doesn't matter if its' AVCHD or HDV, as they are both highly compressed formats and use the MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 (HDV) codec, which is not suitable for editing.

It depends on the software you're going to use to edit all the clips together.
Final Cut Pro will use ProRes, which takes 1GB/min of space, Avid will use DNxHD which will amount to the same.
I don't know about iMovie or FCE but I guess they will also be around the same space eating habits.

http://www.google.com/custom?hl=en&...G=Search&cx=011016119145480959114:kuv1aq0hily

 

[KeithPratt]

In iMovie and Final Cut Express, HDV and AVCHD will be transcoded to Apple Intermediate Codec and take up between 25 and 50GB/hour.

With Final Cut Pro you have the option of using other codecs, and you can also edit HDV as HDV, which is between 9 and 12GB/hour.

To edit AVCHD as AVCHD you need Adobe Premiere or something on Windows.

 

[electronique]

Ah.. So confusing.
I guess I may just use iMovie for now, and see how I go.. Eventually move up to Express or maybe Pro

Im only on an iMac too, so Pro would probably be lost on me as I dont think my 2.66GHz Core 2, 4GB DDR3 would handle the heavy Final Cut Pro features and add ons.

 

[matteusclement]

for what it's worth, I editted on an iMac 2ghz intel w/ 4 gigs ram and a few scratch discs and it was decent. If you can piece together a few scratch discs of decent size, using the apple intermediate codec cuts down on render times but uses about 36gigs per hour. I said the hell with that and just used the HDV codec with not much problems except that render times were a bit tedious.
I am using FCP 6.0.4 and a HV30.

I say go with the HV40, its amazing.