What video editing software will work with my panasonic hdd sdr h18. .?

Question

Both windows movie maker and easy media creator 9 give me a "no video capture device is detected' message. Image Maker 6 comes with the camera, but I do not have it and have not been abel to find out where to get it. what other software will work?

Answer 1

The Panasonic SDR-H18 is a hard drive based camcorder. You connect using USB. You do not import like you do with a miniDV tape based camcorder. When you connect the camcorder, you should be able to see the drive in "My Computer" - if you can't go to panasonic.com - to the support area for your camcorder and get the driver downloads. Just treat the camcorder like any other USB memory device. You copy the files from the hard drive to your computer, then you bring them into your editor.

I suggest you read the manual. In the box the camcorder came in, there should have been a CD with some utilities. I *think* that camcorder saves the video files as ".mod" files and you need to convert them to an MPEG2 file type your editors can understand.

You will also need a BUNCH of blank DVDs - so you can archive the files you just copied to the computer. If you do not copy those file to something, when you are done with the project and burn the finished project to DVD or save as an uploadable file, your next step is to delete the files from your computer. Also, you will delete the files from the camcorder - because you need to make room for your next project. That means the original files are gone forever... and all you have is a DVD (make multiple copies - if one gets scratched and cannot be used, you have another to make a copy) or a very low resolution uploadable file - which, if you burn a DVD for playback on a normal DVD player, it will look terrible.

If you had a miniDV tape based camcorder, you would have better video quality than the compressed MPEG2 video and you would have an "automatic archive" (the tape is the archive).