I have a couple of pictures of my video setup in my picture gallery. Just click on my gallery pictures in my avatar. Bob.

rjb wrote:4 Movie editing requires software (I chose Pinnacle - you need at least Plus for HD, lots of disk space, lots of CPU horespower- my 4 year old 3 GHZ CPU 4 gigabyte ram 500 MB hard disk machine is marginal).

Wow, that is pathetic-- A 3ghz machine with 4GB RAM should handle HD video no problem. It sounds like a case of overloading the bus, or maxing out the bandwidth of the system disk volume.

Are you storing your raw video on the same disk volume as the operating system? If you have firewire or USB 2.0, try storing your project and video files on an external hard drive and accessing them there. I know that on my Mac trying to edit with files or scratch disk on the system drive is nearly impossible.

Another possibility is the video adapter. If it's a lower spec'd video card, perhaps integrated into the motherboard shared memory, it may not do so well.

I just got Vista Ultimate to try to go that way. I have firewire already. I have some footage of playing in a crop duster with the camera mounted on the tail. I'm travelling out of country now, I will tackle it when I get home.
Don't know if Vista was a mistake or not.

On further checking, I have a puny(?) 1 GB of ram (misled by Task Manager commit charge ratio to believe I had more). There is also only one disk which will be corrected tomorrow.

Realistically, the reason the system is so slow is that I am unwilling to let it do one task at a time. If I walk away, close my browser with 8 tabs, close
my vpn connection over which I'm trying to do cross compilations, rendering approaches a reasonable rate.

I don't think my wife is checking this thread so I'm still going to plead NEED
for upgrading to a 4 core 3 GHZ CPU on a 4 GB ram motherboard.

Go Dick Go! When you get it figured out let me know!

I've been flying lately recording with both the ATC3k and Sony HDR CX12.

If you are recording your child or grandchild, you definitely want something like the Sony or Canon HF 10.

Recording stuff to bore people? It's a harder call. It is easily at least 10 times more effort dealing with the Sony output.

You can see the difference below where both cameras are recording landing at KBLU:

ATC3k
http://www.vimeo.com/1759787

HDR CX12
http://www.vimeo.com/1768657

I've added 2 TBytes of USB 2 storage but haven't done any processing yet to know whether the HD effort will get better.

rjb

Enjoyed checking out your vids on vimeo. I like the wing strut perspective but the HD in the cockpit was definitely a higher quality even to my untrained eye.

Dave

I have a POV1 and mounted on my J5 yesterday. Took 10 minutes because it comes with some great velcro mounts. You need to get the 15' cable to move it out on the wing like the video I shot. Really Really easy to operate. They say it's waterproof. I have stuck the camera under water without any problems I just don't know about 80mph precip. I guess I could protect it with a piece of 1" plastic hose. Anyway I would say the video quality on a big screen is VHS not quite DVD quality but more than respectable. As far as web quality it is way more than is needed. What I was impressed with is the lack of vibration in the video. The mount I used is a rubber mount with velcro synch straps. It is rock solid even during my landing. For the price you won't find anything close to the simplicity and durability. I am trying to mount another head somewhere on the strut pointing forward. If I get that done I'll post some more video. I'm just learning how to post video on Mobileme so bear with me if it doesn't work right away. http://gallery.me.com/ttreed#100044

I just got a new Canon HF10. So far seems like a great camera. But the editing software that came with it is very limited. The file format is AVCHD, so there are not very many programs that will handle the native AVCHD files. I assume they have to be converted for most other uses.

Any suggestions on software that will work with AVCHD files?

Pinnacle Plus or Ultimate "handles" the HD files. There are a couple of other programs in the $100 range that turn up when you do a google search.

I chose Pinnacle/Ultimate based on what I read, but I'm far from being happy/content in the two weeks I've been playing with this.

A 20 minute movie took 2 1/2 days to create (although it was all happening on the same disk). A work in progress is not progressing much faster where it is from hard disk to new usb 2.0 disk. Look back in the thread and see Zane's comments about how my system seems misconfigured to him.

In a day or so, I'll hopefully have my new quad core 4 GB upgrade operational and all will be all rosy again.

It may be a reason to upgrade the computer. I have a lot of RAM, and an OK processor.

I read a positive review of Pinnacle, with your comments, I will probably give that a try.

Baddog- Very cool strut video! That thing has a nice wide angle lens.

For public posting of videos, try Vimeo.com. Like YouTube, it serves them in Flash video format, but at much higher quality, and preserves HD. The site is actually a community of amateur producers, so no non-user-produced content is allowed. It's kinda cool. We even have our own BCP group.

Better than paying for MobileMe.

Thanks for the advice. I uploaded a video called "Pack of dogs in Wyoming" that might be of interest. Trying to climb this technology curve and it's as steep as the mountains in the video. http://vimeo.com/1819860

Baddog wrote:Thanks for the advice. I uploaded a video called "Pack of dogs in Wyoming" that might be of interest. Trying to climb this technology curve and it's as steep as the mountains in the video. http://vimeo.com/1819860

Looks like you are doing pretty damn well...that was a great vid.

I have been looking for ways to convert the AVCHD files from my Canon HF10. As reported here, the they are difficult to work with and seem to require a lot of PC power. I found the tutorial at the link below. It uses freeware tools and seems to work well to convert the files to MP4 which appears to be easier to edit.

The only issue with the tutorial is that the link to get Super takes you to a different site. I got it at the link here.

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/video_encoders/super.cfm

http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2008/05/04/avchd-transcoding-using-free-tools/

My upgrade did not got swimmingly. It took a while to realize I had a bad motherboard and not a bad configuration/installation.

I have upgraded to a dual core 4 cpu 2.4 Ghz 4 gigabyte system, 2 1920 by 1200 monitors driven from a pci express 16 512 mb display card, 80 MB IDE progrsm disk, 1 TB sata data disk.

Pinnacle now runs in a reasonable manner. I can create an 8 minute video in 20 minutes. I believe that 2 GB of ram and a dual core dual cpu is sufficient to acheive that if you aren't doing anything else which means I've got double so that I can use the remainder for some billable hours.

HD is amazing but I find it does come at a high price. (I really don't like changing my computers.)