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New Canon HF100 Sample

C

Cmu93

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 4, 2007
55
0
Michigan
I got the HF100 this weekend, did a very quick 1 minute movie, this looks pretty good on the web, but man, the full res version I have is just amazing.

If you care... it's on my gallery. Just used FCE4 for some minor editing of the AVCHD footage.

http://gallery.mac.com/tfudold#gallery
 
Yeah, I'm really pleased with my HG10. Same specs more or less, but it's got an HDD instead of an SDHC card slot. Well, actually, it does have an SDHC (Mini) slot, but that's only for still photos. Though I don't have much firsthand experience with a whole range of HD camcorders, all the Canon HD models seem to be pretty outstanding.
 
P-Worm,

Start up is VERY fast. No tapes to initialize or HDD to wake up. You turn it on and I'd say in seconds your ready to record. You can close the LCD screen for a "quick" mode, where you just open the LCD screen and you're ready even faster. And I agree with Eji... the Canon's are just awesome. I was using my friends HV20 for a bit before I bought the HF100.

T.
 
Wow that is amazing, it is just what i am looking for with it's price point as well!
would you be so kind as to answer a question or 2 for me please?

what is the standard recording format that it records to, do you just connect it and have final cut automatically detect it and put the video straight into final cut or do you have to fidle around with settings first?

how big are the file sizes for a few minutes footage likely to be?

this would be a great help if you could answer a few of these, thanks, dan
 
Lordillingworth,

It records AVCHD, which is a .mt2s file extension. The camera is capable of recording at 1920x1080, but Final Cut Express only outputs at 1440x1080, so I do all my recording on the Canon at 1440x1080, that way, you just plug the Memory card into the Mac, the Mac sees its a Canon shared drive. Start up FCE... and use Log and Transfer. It will give you all the clips you've taped, and you can edit them right there before transfer. So, if you have a 4 minute clip of your dog and only want about 2 minutes of it, you can only have that section transfer over. Makes it really easy. I just grab all the clips, label them, and FCE transfers them over in real time.

iMovie 08 works as well, it will see the memory card as a camera and you can import "Large" to iMovie as well. I also brought these files into Power Directory 7 on the PC. That was simple too... just a quick import, no re-encoding at all.

That movie I sampled here, was about 500 meg from FCE Quicktime... I used Visual Hub to create a MP4 of it and it was about 102 meg. Files sizes can be pretty large, no doubt about that. But it's just gorgeous to see the source material. You can also take the SDHC memory card and just stick it into a Playstation 3 and it will play them back, full 1080, right away. It's really nice.

Tom
 
Cmu93 said:
Lordillingworth,

It records AVCHD, which is a .mt2s file extension. The camera is capable of recording at 1920x1080, but Final Cut Express only outputs at 1440x1080, so I do all my recording on the Canon at 1440x1080, that way, you just plug the Memory card into the Mac, the Mac sees its a Canon shared drive. Start up FCE... and use Log and Transfer. It will give you all the clips you've taped, and you can edit them right there before transfer. So, if you have a 4 minute clip of your dog and only want about 2 minutes of it, you can only have that section transfer over. Makes it really easy. I just grab all the clips, label them, and FCE transfers them over in real time.

iMovie 08 works as well, it will see the memory card as a camera and you can import "Large" to iMovie as well. I also brought these files into Power Directory 7 on the PC. That was simple too... just a quick import, no re-encoding at all.

That movie I sampled here, was about 500 meg from FCE Quicktime... I used Visual Hub to create a MP4 of it and it was about 102 meg. Files sizes can be pretty large, no doubt about that. But it's just gorgeous to see the source material. You can also take the SDHC memory card and just stick it into a Playstation 3 and it will play them back, full 1080, right away. It's really nice.

Tom
Click to expand...

Wow thanks for that! I am hoping to get a Macbook Pro, Final Cut Studio 2 and this camera tomorrow... an expensive day!

Thanks for the reply, i am going to have a lot of tinkering around to do with FCS2 on it's own but at least it looks as if the actual importing of footage will be straight forward! thanks!
 
Cmu93 said:
It records AVCHD, which is a .mt2s file extension. The camera is capable of recording at 1920x1080, but Final Cut Express only outputs at 1440x1080, so I do all my recording on the Canon at 1440x1080, that way, you just plug the Memory card into the Mac, the Mac sees its a Canon shared drive. Start up FCE... and use Log and Transfer. It will give you all the clips you've taped, and you can edit them right there before transfer. So, if you have a 4 minute clip of your dog and only want about 2 minutes of it, you can only have that section transfer over. Makes it really easy. I just grab all the clips, label them, and FCE transfers them over in real time.
Click to expand...

Cmu93: Would you mind giving me the very dumbed-down version of how you 1) change the HF100's settings to record at 1440, and 2) exactly how you get the clips from the HF100 to a MacBook Pro running Final Cut Express? Please?

No clips are showing up at all in the Log and Transfer window, even tho my HF100 is showing up on my desktop. I know I have to set something under easy set-up in FCE, but there are so many options, I have no idea what to use. I'm not using a card reader, I'm just connecting the camera directly. A month ago I got clips off of it, and I guess I should've written down exactly what I did, because now, nothing. SOS!
 
eji said:
Yeah, I'm really pleased with my HG10. Same specs more or less, but it's got an HDD instead of an SDHC card slot. Well, actually, it does have an SDHC (Mini) slot, but that's only for still photos. Though I don't have much firsthand experience with a whole range of HD camcorders, all the Canon HD models seem to be pretty outstanding.
Click to expand...

Actually it depends on what kind of SD card you use. If you use a regular SD card yes you can only use it for pictures, but if you use a SDHC card with at least a speed of 4mps you can record videos on it, I have a 16gig SDHC card in my HF10 to have 32 gigs of recording space.
 
Thanks for your response! My SD card IS recording video.. In fact, not long ago I was able to transfer the video to my mac, I just can't remember what I did. Log and Transfer in FCE will NOT recognize my camera. argh!
 
Jamie, there is a setting on the menu of the HF100 where you can change from 1920x1080 to 1440x1080. I'm not sure off the top of my head where it is, but it's in there!

About your FCE issue. I had a similar issue once, and it seemed that when I took the footage off and then tried to get it again for some other reason, it didn't want to read it. I'm not sure if it figured it already indexed this footage, so it won't do it again, or the fact that I also connected to my PC to get the footage off there and test on my Vista machine. I'm not sure why, but FCE would not read the card again until I re-formatted it and put new footage on, now it's fine. I suspect the PC could have altered it somehow, not sure.

One thing I did that did work, I used iMovie08 to import the clips, and then I just put those into FCE... either way it worked.

Tom
 
Thanks for your response, Cmu93!

First of all, for the 1440 setting: I did finally find it, and sure enough I was already set that way. For anyone else who needs to find it, it's not labeled as such. You have to change your quality setting to SP, and that'll do it. phew!

Secondly, regarding my question about FCE not recognizing my camera in Log and Transfer. I feel so dumb, but wanted to post back just in case: if you spend almost 4 hours trying to figure this out and you are doing everything right and it still won't work, just restart your darn mac. argh! ; )
 
Cmu93 said:
Jamie, there is a setting on the menu of the HF100 where you can change from 1920x1080 to 1440x1080. I'm not sure off the top of my head where it is, but it's in there!

About your FCE issue. I had a similar issue once, and it seemed that when I took the footage off and then tried to get it again for some other reason, it didn't want to read it. I'm not sure if it figured it already indexed this footage, so it won't do it again, or the fact that I also connected to my PC to get the footage off there and test on my Vista machine. I'm not sure why, but FCE would not read the card again until I re-formatted it and put new footage on, now it's fine. I suspect the PC could have altered it somehow, not sure.

One thing I did that did work, I used iMovie08 to import the clips, and then I just put those into FCE... either way it worked.

Tom
Click to expand...

I have a problem loading imaging into imovie 08. on the last import it says problem importing and quits, never transferring. what can i do?
 
I am considering buying the HF100 soon. I'm ready to go HD. Yet, i have one final question.
Is it possible just to drag the clips off of the camera and import them one at a time into FCE? I'm an organization freak and like to have things put in their place before doing any editing.
Ace
 
mynameisshawn said:
Actually it depends on what kind of SD card you use. If you use a regular SD card yes you can only use it for pictures, but if you use a SDHC card with at least a speed of 4mps you can record videos on it, I have a 16gig SDHC card in my HF10 to have 32 gigs of recording space.
Click to expand...

Yeah? I had no idea. So if I make sure it's faster than 4mps I'll be able to add to the existing internal storage?

If true, that would be really, really cool and make me like this camcorder even more.

[EDIT: Shawn, I just checked my miniSD card. It's class 4, which means it records at 4MB/s. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though I can record video to it; there's no settings in the camera that allow for this. Are you sure that this is valid for HDD Canon camcorder models, or is it just for flash-based models?]
 
Thanks for posting the sample footage, it helps for those of us trying to decide on a new camcorder. Some things I noted.

(1) Occasionally the video seems to jiggle. Were you using the optical image stabilization?

(2) On the "Thunder Falls" video, faces appear to get washed out in high-contrast areas. I was wondering if this was also evident on the original as well, or relates to compression for the web.

(3) The video here seems to be more of a 1920x1080 aspect ratio than a 1080x1440 (unless pixels aren't square.)

(4) Ever try using on iMovie '06/iMovie HD rather than '08? After making a few videos with '08, I really dislike the interface and want to go back, but not sure it's compatible with AVCHD.

Again, thanks for posting your video.

Dave
 
jamiemichelle2 said:
Thanks for your response, Cmu93!

First of all, for the 1440 setting: I did finally find it, and sure enough I was already set that way. For anyone else who needs to find it, it's not labeled as such. You have to change your quality setting to SP, and that'll do it. phew!
Click to expand...

Actually you do not need to restrict the setting to SP. According to the manual (p. 36), only the FXP mode records in 1920 x 1080.

I've been enjoying mine for a couple of weeks now

Cheers!

Glen
 
Acer... if you use Log and Transfer on FCE, you can label each clip individually and decide which ones you want transferred over. I also create a back up of all my footage into a directory on an external drive before I ever transfer any of it over to FCE or iMovie.

Dave... your questions...

1. The jiggle is most likely when I'm zoomed in over 8x... it takes some practice to hold it steady at that rate. Everything is exaggerated, all little movements of my hands. But yes, stabilization is on.

2. The washed out look, yes, it's there. That's a combination of 2 things... the compression is one, cause it's better on the original. But the main problem, I didn't realize the camera has a "Beach/Sun" mode. It says right in the manual... "will stop high-contrast wash out". So, I didn't know that at the time!

3. The files are imported as 1440x1080, but when I either create them in iMovie 08 or move them into iMovie 08 after working in FCE, the upload to Mac Gallery Large Settings is considered 1920x1080... so, perhaps that's why.

4. I've really grown to enjoy iMovie 08, it really does more then most people think. I didn't realize you can do frame by frame cuts, but it does. I agree with you though, iMovie 06 is more powerful. You can use iMovie 06, but only if you convert the files first. A program I use is Voltaic, it was I think, $30... I bought it a couple weeks ago on the web. It will convert your AVCHD video to AIC and it then works just fine in iMovie 06... so, that's another option for you. I've done it, and it's great.

T.
 
Cmu93 said:
You can use iMovie 06, but only if you convert the files first. A program I use is Voltaic, it was I think, $30... I bought it a couple weeks ago on the web. It will convert your AVCHD video to AIC and it then works just fine in iMovie 06... so, that's another option for you. I've done it, and it's great.
Click to expand...

Sorry to be negative, but Voltaic sucks unless it's your last resort - and when I say it sucks, I mean it sucks s l o w l y. If you have iMovie '08, do the AVCHD->AIC conversion there, and then open the .mov files up in iMovieHD. If you use Voltaic, you'll be twiddling your fingers for 12x the original clip time during conversion. iMovie '08 is much, much, much, much (etc.) faster than Voltaic.

Bottom line is there is absolutely no reason to use Voltaic on an Intel C2D Mac that runs iMovie '08. None.

Andrew.
 
No Andrew, no offense taken... but I have a question for you. I could have swore I've done that already. When I take the imported movies from iMovie 08's directory of files and import them to iMovie 06'... I thought it actually 4x3'd them instead of keeping the 16x9. So that's the only reason I got Voltaic... and yes, it's super slow, but it worked for me.

I'll have to try the 08' to 06' again, I just was sure it 4x3's my footage for some reason.

Tom
 
Cmu93 said:
1. The jiggle is most likely when I'm zoomed in over 8x... it takes some practice to hold it steady at that rate. Everything is exaggerated, all little movements of my hands. But yes, stabilization is on.
Click to expand...
Well, that's what I was wondering. Of course it's going to jiggle at long zoom without a tripod. I was just wondering how much magic the OIS could exert.
Cmu93 said:
2. The washed out look, yes, it's there. That's a combination of 2 things... the compression is one, cause it's better on the original. But the main problem, I didn't realize the camera has a "Beach/Sun" mode. It says right in the manual... "will stop high-contrast wash out". So, I didn't know that at the time!
Click to expand...
That's again, very useful information. The video in the pool is so crystal-clear, I was surprised to see all the artifact on the bright sunny day.
Cmu93 said:
4. I've really grown to enjoy iMovie 08, it really does more then most people think.
Click to expand...
I like some aspects of it - like automatic insertion of transitions, the playing of audio while selecting sections to include or not, etc. But the organization and power is nowhere near as good as the older iMovie, and the absence of chapter markers.... I actually use iMovie 04 (I think it's 04) on my iMac G5 and love it, except that it won't do widescreen movies.
 
Courtaj said:
If you have iMovie '08, do the AVCHD->AIC conversion there, and then open the .mov files up in iMovieHD.
Click to expand...
But is there a practical way to do this? If I have, say, 20 .mts files that I want to edit and mix, and I want to do it in iMovieHD, do I have to open up an iMovie '08 project for each one, and then Export from the file menu? If Voltaic will batch convert them, it might be easier to just let that thing churn overnight? Or, I suppose, you could import all 20 into iMovie '08, separate them with a blank space so you can tell between clips, export to .mov and then import and remix in IMovie HD?

(And this leads us to why I'm still seriously considering getting the FS100 instead...)

Dave
 
Dave,

Voltaic will batch process the .mts files, but it is slow, so overnight would be a good idea. I did test the iMovie 08 to iMovie 06 last night, it does work.

You could import all your clips into iMovie 08 at the FULL setting. Then go to your Movies/iMovie Events folder and you'll find each .MOV in there. When you open up iMovie 06, pick HD-1080i for the movie setting, and they'll work. So, you may not need Voltaic at all.

Tom
 
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