Should I buy a Canon HG10 or will my software not be able to handle it?

Question

I work on a project at my high school that's basically just a computer class where we record and edit video into weekly episodes for entertainment. We just got a grant for a brand new iMac (top of the line, 2.8 GHz and everything).

Since we have this new Mac and Final Cut Pro (version 6, I believe) I thought that it was time we bought a new camcorder.

We'll be on a budget so I was looking for cameras under $800. I found the Canon HG10.

I know that this camera records in AVCHD to an internal hard drive. My question is, can I import this format into Final Cut Pro, edit it, and then export it and burn it to a DVD easily? We don't use HD-DVD's so it would have to fit on a regular DVD and from what I've heard Final Cut converts it to a different format that is HUGE.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

You may take a look at this guide, it will teach you how to import video from camcorder to mac

http://www.mac-dvd.com/mac-guide/how-to-...

If you have any other questions, feel free to email me.

Answer 2

FinalCutPro2 and FinalCutExpress4 and iMovieHD08 can deal with AVCHD format. I strongly suggest you visit the Apple site to be sure what you have will work. Specifically, go to the Discussion area and do a seaarch in the FinalCut section with the camcorder model you think you want to get.

AVCHD is very highly compressed video. The "conversion" FinalCut does is it is merely decompressing the highly compressed AVCHD file.

Alert: If you look around at what the professionals use and the format to which they store, it is NOT AVCHD. It is DV and HDV to miniDV tape (or hard drive or P2 cards).

I STRONGLY suggest you consider the Canon HV30 or Sony HDR-HC9 - if you need to have high definition OR standard definition video. You will need to also get a 4-pin to 6-pin firewire cable - and you may need to do a custom install from the MacOSX system discs to install the Apple Intermediate codec so all the QuickTime items can deal with HDV.

Yes you can import the video - even hidef into those editors. Do the edits. For FinalCut, save the project as "full-quality" and you will end up with a .mov video data file. Launch iDVD and drag that video file to the DVD scene selection window. You can make some other changes, too... when ready, click Burn. iDVD will take care of the downsampling to standard definition when burning to the built-in SuperDrive. It is that simple.

You do not need a BluRay drive - unless you want to burn the project as a high definition project. If so, LaCie makes an external drive.

FinalCut also will allow you to save the file as AVCHD and you can copy that data file to a single sided (up to 4.7 gig) or double sided (up to 8.5 gig) normal DVD - it will not playback in a regular DVD player (because they cannot decode AVCHD), but you should be able to playback in a BluRay player or a PS3.

Keep the size issues in mind... the BluRay blank discs start at 25 gig and get bigger. Standard def DV uses about 13 gig of hard drive space per hour of imported video; HDV uses about 44 gig of hard drive space per hour of imported video... The trick is to save the compression step (burning the DVD) as the LAST step... not the FIRST step (during video capture as is done with internal hard drive or flash memory or even DVD based camcorders.).