Expert: Jonathan H Pienaar - 10/29/2009

Question
Hi Jon,
first of all sorry for my bad English , I'll try to be as more clear as possible.
I'm a movie-maker from many years , beginning of 2009 I decided to buy a Canon vixia HF10 to pass to high definition . Now I'm in trouble regarding the tranfer and editing the AVCHD type of recorded images.
I have a new Mac book pro , 2,5 ghz , hard disk at 7200 , 4gb ram . I normally use final cut express 4 but it require me to connect firewire cable that is not present on my camcorder.
If I import using Imovie , I immediately see that I have a big lost of definition and all the scenes in which I turn on the left or on the right result really not stable.
could you tell me step by step which one is the right way to proceede to ahve a final DVD of good quality.
Thanks in advance for your help and for your competence.
Guido

Answer
Hi Guido

I am not familiar with the Canon HF10 (or AVCHD for that matter) - I have now researched it a little, but some things are not clear. My understanding is that the camera has internal memory and the capability to plug in a memory card.  So first I have to ask you: How are you getting the footage from the camera into iMovie?

My understanding is that AVCHD is a compression format which is quite demanding on the computer hardware, so FCP will normally transcode this into the Apple Intermediate format which is less demanding but takes up more drive space.  So perhaps iMovie is doing something similar?  by the way, you are not alone: there seem to be many complaints on the Canon site about difficulty of getting camera to interface with software!

With other digital systems, like the Sony EX, there is a software interface that allows FCP to import the footage from the camera, rather than digitise it in real time. When you plug the camera in via USB, does it mount as a drive would? According to the Macworld site at http://www.macworld.com/article/134495/2008/07/canonvixiahf10.html "the camcorder works seamlessly with iMovie '08 () and Final Cut Pro (). Simply connect the HF10 to your Mac via the included USB cable, and iMovie ‘08 and Final Cut Pro will recognize the camcorder within seconds." If you read further down the page though, there are some user comments that may give you some further ideas.

I see the camera has 4 different settings for shooting, from "full HD" to LP ("Long Play"). Naturally, the LP option will give poorer results than full HD. And just because it looks OK on the camera's LCD screen, doesn't mean you have the best possible footage - a bigger screen will expose all those compression artefacts you can't see on a small screen.

Your Mac should work according to all the sites I've looked on... Perhaps try upgrading the drivers and/or firmware - the latest ones are at
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=177&mo...

So, sorry if I haven't given you much more insight - as I mentioned, this camera and AVCHD is not something I work with - but I will try and research more and possibly post some more links if I find something.

Regards

Jonathan