a little r’n'r

So you know what kinda sucks? Tape. Doesn’t matter if you’re writing digital to it, the fact that it spools, it tears, the tension varies… need I go on? Now, the even worse part is, when you’re writing HDV to it, when the tape gets messed up you end up with zero picture. That’s right: not a fuzzy picture, no un-sync’d audio. Just a few brief squares and then bluescreen for the duration of the problem.

That’s what I’ve learned after using Sony’s first HDV camcorder for just under a year. That’s what makes the announcement of 40GB and 60GB hard disk-based units particularly eyebrow raising. Of course, you don’t need this, I keep telling myself. But come on, one of them is named after a stealth fighter:

engadget link

[Update:] The plot thickens. It seems this new crop of hard disk-based HD cams record in a format known as AVCHD, rather than HDV (as their tape-based counterparts do). The problem with this is that AVCHD is not supported by iMovie, Final Cut Express HD, or even Final Cut Studio 2, which basically means that if you get one of these cameras, the only way to edit footage is to use Sony’s movie-editing (Windows-only) software, which apparently stinks in a way that only Sony/Windows proprietary software can.

So, either we wait for Apple to support the AVCHD format in their apps, or we stick to non-AVCHD hi def cams. Which means, for now, it’s the HDR-HC3 (or the recently updated HDR-HC7)

[Update 2:] And in this post on Apple’s developer mailing list, none other than a QT Engineer does the “Apple’s policy is to not discuss unreleased products” dance. One could read this to mean, “Of course Apple are going to support it, duh.”

An interesting point that may be relevant is the processing required to transcode video. My 2.16GHz Core2 Duo struggled at times converting HDV into Apple Intermediate Codec for editing in Final Cut Express HD/iMovie, dropping to 1/4 or 1/8 realtime on the import. If AVCHD is heavier than HDV (being a lossy, MPEG-4 based codec) the truth behind lack of support in Apple’s products might simply come down to them waiting for Intel’s new batch of Core2’s which are meant to excel at video transcoding tasks (up to 40% faster, I recall reading somewhere?). After all, no point in AVCHD support in iMovie if you can only import footage at 1/8 realtime or worse (10 minutes to import 1 minute of video!??!).

Here’s to 3.0GHz Core2Quad touch screen iMacs and iMovie ‘07 with AVCHD support! But now I’ve meandered into another topic altogether…