I am considering purchasing the HDR-SR1 and I have some concerns. Should I be correct in assuming that I would be able to burn the HD Video to either HD-DVD or Blue-Ray disks or am I going to be stuck with Blue-ray only. I don't want HD-DVD to win the High Def DVD wars and leave me stuck with Blue-ray Technology only. Also I have tried to play the *.M2ts files on my computer and they are very jumpy. I have turned off all background services but this did not help. Any suggestions. And how do I convert the *.M2TS to a full 1080 video and 5.1 audio file?

You can't burn it to anything right now as there are no editing/authoring packages that work with AVCHD yet. Plus, you are going to need a dual core processor to play it back at full frame rate.

__________________
Guy

Camcorder User Network

Archanot, dont consider buying it untill they make decent software that will be able to play avchd (*.m2ts) files on PC. After that stage is reached, then worry about whether u can burn onto hd/bd dvd. Besides, whatever the outcome of bd vs hd is it shouldnt really effect you. Even if ur stuck somehow, theres nothing stopping u from setting up a cheap entertainment PC nexto your HDTV to play back some avchd clips directly off PC. As i said, this is after that stage has been reached, ie proper *.m2ts file players have been made for windows.

So if I wanted to purchase a Hard drive Camcorder, and my two choices were the HDR-SR1 with HD and SD, or the DCR-SR100 with SD. Price is a bit of a consideration, but mostly I want quality. I plan this to be my last camcorder, unless it breaks. For the near future I would be burning video to standard DVD's as I am now. My assumption is that I can record in HD burn in SD and store the HD for later when the computers are capable. I don't plan to do much real editing except what cuting and pasting I do in the camera. So that being said should I get the HDR-SR1. I suppose another important question would be would the HDR-SR1 create better or worse SD DVD than the DCR-SR100. And which has the better supporting features.

Archanut,
IMO, if you want a camcorder for the future, it should be HD quality. The difference is enormous. I have a Sony HC1 and love it. The HC3 is smaller and lighter. Both store Mpeg2 HDV on tape and several video editors can handle HDV.

Considering the SR1, as Guy said, there are no video editors (right now, yet) that can edit, or even just transcode, AVCHD video files to other formats.

The only tool available is the Motion Picture Browser that comes with the SR1, which cannot edit the AVCHD. It is only able to playback AVCHD and can export only downconverted (standard definition) Mpeg2, suitable for burning on a standard DVD.

The picture quality of this downconversion is unknown and there is no way to control the video/audio properties of the downconverted file. Comparisons to the SR100 would be pure speculation.

Quoting myself,
Is there any other reason not to get the HDR-SR1.

The Sony software that comes with the UX1 plays AVCHD on your computer and will convert it to MPEG2 and you can then do what you want with that. It will also write AVCHD DVDs or standard DVDs. This UX1 is VERY flexible, in that it can record natively to many different DVD formats and for the casual user all this talk about editing isn't really even an issue. Don't let people scare you away from these, the best consumer video cameras yet made. The images are INCREDIBLE, your friends will be so freakin jealous.

I personally own an HDR-SR1 and it's been a difficult couple days getting the files to play nice with software (to say the least).

I've been completely unable to load the *.M2TS files created by the SR1 into any of the current Pro level Video Editing Applications (Vegas, AVID, Premier, etc).

I was able to get the *.M2TS files to play in Windows Media Player using the CoreAVC Decoder (which is just a DirectShow filter).

TMPGEnc does a better job than most programs as it will actually load the *.M2TS files and allow you to do some basic editing, but I'm having mixed results with the output. I also have the CoreAVC Decoder installed on my system, which I think might be a necessary component for TMPGEnc to open the M2TS files. The CoreAVC Decoder is a DirectShow filter and not a full-blown CoDec.

I'm still running rendering tests in TMPGEnc and so far the results have been less than stellar. Some of my clips are jumpy, and trying to trim the clips results in decoding errors somewhere in the chain.

If anyone wants me to upload some sample video I'd be more than happy to.

Cheers,

-Esotic

Esotic,
Have you tried to do a strait convert to HDV before any editing. Then use the more premiere editing programs from there. I have found this works the best for me, but I am only using two samples. If you could upload one of your most problemetic AVCHD files before its converted and let me give it a shot.

archanut

how would you attempt to convert avhcd to hdv?

You need to use Tmpgenc 4.0 Xpress not the straight Tmpgenc encoder. You should find all the options inside. Follow my previous link to download the trial version of xpress.

I was able to transcode some sample M2TS files using TMPGEnc, but all the M2TS files that come out of my SR1 are not working so well.

Here's the samples:
http://esotic.com/media/WaterTMPGEncWithCoreAVC.mpg
http://esotic.com/media/WaterTMPGEnc.mpg
http://esotic.com/media/Water.m2ts

CoreAVC definitely helps, but the video is still choppy.

The Water.m2ts file came straight out of my HDR-SR1 with no modification.

Cheers,

-Esotic

I encoded the water.m2ts and it plays well except for the first 1/2 a second. It did this on the sample I had as well, but I thought maybe it was because it was the first video recorded by the camera. But It does not seem to be a flawless converter like I thought, that being said I don't see that it will take long for them to get it right.

http://bellsouthpwp.net/a/r/archanut/water.mpg

Yeah, you're encoding went much better than mine. That little glitch at the beginning is pretty much irrelevant.

Do you have Power DVD 7 or Nero 7 or some other program installed that put an appropriate AVCHD decoder (DirectShow filter) on your system?

On a side note, your MPG file crashes most of my player programs, but I was able to load it into Vegas 7.0 for inspection.

Thanks,

-Esotic

I uninstalled CoreAVC in favor of PowerDVD7 and the reencoded Mpeg from TMPGEnc is looking much better now:

http://esotic.com/media/WaterTmpgEncPowerDVD7.mpg

I'm having issues with some formats (WMV looking blocky at 1280x720), but I was able to encode a raw AVI and take a screen-shot in Vegas.

http://esotic.com/media/Water1280x720.wmv
http://esotic.com/media/Water1920x1080.jpg

The 5 second 1920x1080 raw AVI was 1 Gig, so that's not really a viable media format, but at least a good sign.

Cheers,

-Esotic