Looking for advice: I have a Sony HDR-HC1 which records on tape in the HDV format. I'm thinking of going to the Canon HF-S11 or possibly to the Panasonic HDC-TM300 (because of the viewfinder). I've read several times that as far as picture quality goes, flash based doesn't have the PQ of tape. Is that true?

I'd really like to switch to flash based because the processing power required for HDV is more than my computer can handle and AVCHD requires a little less power (although I plan on replacing my computer this month).

No, AVCHD requires MORE power than HDV to edit because of the way it's compressed.

While it used to be true that HDV had a better picture than AVCHD, and still may be true in theory, the latest batch of AVC cams can blow away earlier, much more expensive HDV cams. The Sony XR520V has the best picture I've ever seen in a small cam. But it depends on the cam, lens, chip size and other factors, not just the format.

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Thanks for the response acgold7. Good to know that I shouldn't expect a step down in video.

The following is what I am basing my processor power assumption on:
(From Adobe.com Re: Premeire Elements)
1.8GHz processor with SSE2 support; 3GHz processor required for HDV or Blu-ray; dual-core processor required for AVCHD

I have a QUAD cord at 2.4 ghz. I have 4 GB RAM and am running Vista yet my computer is choked out before it is able to complete a burn of a BD. I have even killed all other processes, including antivirus in an attempt to get it done but no dice.

I called Adobe at one point, and asked if having a quad core would mean any lower requirements than 3.0 ghz and they said no, that it would still have to be 3.0 ghz for EACH core. At the time (and maybe even now) there weren't 3 ghz quads available, either from HP or Dell - I tried to customize one!

There are tons of 3+ GHz quads around; check out Xeon or Core i7 processors at NewEgg or other places. Dell can build workstations for you with these as well.

As usual, the Adobe guys are out to lunch. Usually the wisdom is you multiply the speed times the number of cores to get a rough estimate; it's not exact but it's a ballpark, so a quad at 2.4 GHz should be fine.

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"It can only be attributable to human error... This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error."

acgold7,
thanks again for your information, it has been very helpful. A little off the original topic but I can't resist:
1) why then does my computer choke when processing a HDV->BD w/menus?
2) I've not had much success with Premiere or Roxio's Creator or DVDit ProHD. Would you reccommend another?
3) As I stated in my original post, I am looking at the Canon HF-S11 or the Panasonic HDC-TM300. The Panasonic reviewed better and has a viewfinder (which I would really prefer. Always been a Canon guy but I'm also a viewfinder guy!) but with the Canon specs showing a bigger sensor AND more MP's - how does the Panasonic have a better reviewed PQ??

THANKS!! I know I'm asking alot and you've already helped a ton. If the Canon only had a viewfinder I'd have omitted #3!!

I've been editing AVCHD footage out of the Canon S11 using Premiere Pro with a Core2Duo 2.93Ghz 4gig RAM Vista machine. Editing is pretty smooth, rendering not too painful, and encoding is roughly 30 secs for 1sec of footage. Your quad core should be a breeze I would have thought. I don't understand the issue of not having a viewfinder - I checked out the TM300 and looking through the EVF felt like trying to watch a 1/2 inch bad resolution TV through a black pipe. I'm beginning to appreciate the S11 more and more as I get the settings and editing/encoding profiles right. Deal breakers for me with the TM300 were the touch screen controls and the Canon's larger sensor and more manual settings.

Is your machine alright burning to DVD?

With DVD's I have no problem whatsoever. The problems I see are basically crashing while rendering. If I make it through a render, the burns complete but it seems like my Bluray players only read BD-RE's, but that's a different issue altogether). I've closed everything possible to try to assist with rendering but nothing seems to help. I would think that my computer is powerful enough, so I'm not sure what the issue is.

I'm willing to upgrade my computer to get it done but from the accounts here, my computer should do it.

As far as the viewfinder goes, my primary interest is because of battery life and also shooting in sunlight (which tends to make a LCD washout). THe bigger sensor is definately a draw but I don't understand how the Panasonic gave a better performance with a smaller sensors and fewer effective pixels.

Thanks for any direction you can give!

Can't really comment on question #3, as I have no direct experience with any cam that doesn't run tape through it. But while sensor size often matters, pixel count is largely meaningless and it's more important what goes on inside the cam anyway. VFs are nice so you can brace the cam against your head while handholding -- there's no way to handhold a small cam stready enough without bracing it somehow (and no, steadyshot doesn't do much).

As far as #1 goes, it's a mystery -- you should be fine. Perhaps an upgrade to 64-bit Vista would help, as you'd be able to use all 4 gigs of RAM and the OS is supposedly more stable (it has been for me).

I've had really good luck with Premiere CS3 under Vista 64, but I have dual quad-core Xeons (so eight cores) and 20 gigs of RAM. Haven't burned a coaster yet going straight from Premiere timeline into Encore. I think it's dumb luck.

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"It can only be attributable to human error... This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error."

Brace yourself, gonna show my ignorance (again) - if I upgrade to 64-bit, how do I know if it is compatible with my current sytem? On the other hand, I pre-bought Windows 7 when it was half price in hopes that I could add more functional RAM, maybe '7' will be the difference I need...

I would think most recent core 2 quad or other quad core chips are 64-bit. You could check your system properties to be sure. And I'm fairly certain Microsoft has a tool on their website that can profile your system for you, if you trust them to do so.

Hearing great things about Win7, and I tried the beta a while ago and it seemed fine. But you'd need the 64-bit version of that as well to add more RAM.

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"It can only be attributable to human error... This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error."

Surely sensor size combined with pixel pitch (and the number of sensors) are key to resolution and noise. Also, just to be more contentious - stabilisation works pretty well for me. I'm just wondering ckelly33 - are you rendering clips before you export?

Not being a professional, all I really do is capture via firewire 2 HDV tapes (2 hours worth of HD video), add-in a menu and chapter it out.

When it processes what I have done it typically it will crash the program prior to the burn.

I'm just getting into filming and editing, so don't have much of value to say. I asked about rendering, as I once made the mistake of trying to export before rendering clips that I had added effects to. The estimated encoding time was 44 hours and the CPU was running at 98%. When I rendered before encoding, the time went down to about 1 hour and CPU usage went down to 75%. Looks like that's a different issue to what you're experiencing though.

The whoe 44 hour / 98% thing is eerily familiar. I am going to try another burn and make sure I am 'rendering' appropriately. It's something I haven't paid any attention to.

Any recommended setting?

Guys and Gals -- it's not necessary to quote the entire post immediately preceding yours; it's assumed that's what you're replying to. Only use the "quote" feature if you are responding to one small part of a longer post, or if it's from several posts back and it wouldn't otherwise be clear what you're talking about.

Above posts edited to remove unnecessary quotes.

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"It can only be attributable to human error... This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error."