http://www.vimeo.com/983914

I did this short video to experiment with various settings in Ulead Video Studio 11 to see what they produce. This version seemed to be the best. I went directly from the mts files created by the camcorder to the final movie in one step. There were no intermediate conversions first. I like that because every conversion results in some loss of detail. The fewer conversions, the better.

Vimeo seems to do a good job of hosting HD videos; it compresses much less than the other video hosting sites.

Comments?

Interlacing artifacts, possibly a mistake on the output settings. I havent used that program before, but make sure u output as progressive and/or choose to deinterlace.

Only in extreme conditions you would expect to c interlacing after the video has been deinterlaced, or converted to progressive 30p properly.

Apart from that, nice cat

There was a setting called "smart rendering" and it was checked but I don't know what that does. I did not find a setting for deinterlacing.

Thanks for pointing that out. I may experiment with some other programs that can handle the AVCHD files and see if they can do better quality.

Yeah have a go at other programs too, its never easy to find the most efficient workflow that meets your needs. When AVCHD was first out (got my SD3 in march 2007) i spent like 3 days straight in figuring out the most efficient way to achieve high quality 720/60p from the raw 1080/60i files, it was damn rewarding once i achieved it hehe. So take your time, try things, you'll soon develop an eye that doesnt miss a single artifact hehe.

I shot some additional clips and noticed that the original clips were not very smooth. I had not used the HG10 since Valentine's Day; it has been sitting on the shelf. But now I see that it isn't working nearly was well. It is like the hard drive is running slower than it should. So to make a long story short, I got a return authorization from Canon and shipped the HG10 to their repair facility in California.

Thanks for noticing that the quality wasn't up to HG10's standards. Otherwise, I might have gone along fat, dumb, and happy and not realize that there was a problem until after the warranty had expired. At least this way, Canon will fix the problem at their expense.

It is not the camera's problem that your resulting footage is not deinterlaced properly. Also, I noticed that Ulead softens video a bit. Does it look sharper directly from the camera on your TV?

I don't know how on Earth you could notice the HDD to spin slower than it should. Its speed is more than enough for sustained HD recording.

Harry, when i pointed out the flaw in that clip, i didnt mean it was the cams fault. Im 99% certain it was due to encoding. Not exactly sure what u mean by hdd running slow? As long as it records and u can copy it to your PC, the hdd is working. The playback, or the resulting encoded file is entirely upto the user and the hardware/software involved. Some programs can produce choppy outputs, or poor deinterlacing. Sorry if i may have mislead u, unless u though something else was wrong too, but judging purely by your post its not.

. . . not just the rendered movie. I took new clips and the raw clips were jerky and full of artifacts. So I contacted Canon. They told me to send the cam back to them. It should get there in a few days and they will send me an e-mail with the diagnosis.

I'll let you know what they say.

How did it look straight from the camera on a TV? Was it jerky? And I bet there were no visible interlacing.

Yeah where did u watch it when u saw the issues? On PC using a software player? Or on TV and within the camera?

Since my HG10 is under warranty, they didn't tell me what needed to be fixed, they just sent me an e-mail saying that they were fixing it and I should have it back in 7 days.

According to Canon's notes, the camcorder checked out OK but they installed newer firmware.

I did a test clip to see and it looks like the problem with the interlacing artefacts has gone away. Yipeee!

http://www.vimeo.com/1098739