Canon VIXIA HF10 Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 16 GB Internal Flash Memory and 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom

This camera has a lot of appealing features, but the AVCHD format makes it very difficult to work with files using a Mac and iMovie for editing. The files become unmanageably large when imported to iMovie, and take a lot longer to import than 1:1 even. Perhaps there will be software upgrades or improvements to handle these files with ease in the future, but for now it has made use of this camera a chore.

In fact, I am now planning to simply buy add'l SD cards for archiving of the footage we are taking of our new son, and will hope for a more user-friendly way to edit these videos in the future. At $25/8GB for Class 4 cards, which can hold 1-2 hours of raw footage, which is not unreasonable, but it beats the time investment required to deal with the files using current software.

Do some research before you buy this camera!

It's breaking mah heart, but I have to send this beautiful camera back.

The MTS Codec doesn't play nice with premiere pro cs3.

Since it doesn't have a firewire port, I can't use it on my mac and record with quicktime.

If, and that's a big if, I can get anything from this gorgeous camera onto my mac, I would have to recode EVERYTHING to edit, think .flv or .avi packed with xvid. Think hours of recoding and hours of extra defragging.

Too much drama. It looks like if one spends hundreds and hundreds of dollars on "video editing" software, you wouldn't have to buy more software to recode ANYTHING! I used to have the same problem with Sony Vegas. What the hell are they thinking? Internet video is a passing fad???

Anyway, the flash sounds great but it's not working for me. I'm trading it in for a HV30. Mini HD tapes aren't as sexy, but they are very cheap archival quality storage. Plus they record straight HDV no codecs.

Canon VIXIA HV30 MiniDV High Definition Camcorder with 10x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom

happy...ah whatever.

The best part is being able to randomly access the different recordings! No more tape to rewind/fast forward.

I bought the camara, and found that it is fairly easy to use.

I have some troubles with its software and manual.

1) The Manual cannot be openned up easily by Adobe PDF Reader 9.0, and got stuck constantly. As a result, I have to download another reader from other software vender to read manual.

2) I had a hard time to upload the video records from the camara to my PC, until I did a lot of research over Internet to find that I have to use AC power instead of battery to upload the recording.

I wasted about 6 hours to address these two issues. Other than that, everything seems working out okay.

Another complaint is that the battery life is too short (about 90 minutes).

I studied the various HD Camcorder options and after three months settled on the HF-10. I almost got the HF-11 (24 mbps vs 17-18 with HF-10). but the HF-10 is so good that it really suits my needs. Superb video, great focus and zooming, Plays back in 1080i through Mini-HDMI to HDMI cable on my 1080i HD LCD TV. Component output looks great also.

I have been doing video editing as a hobby for about 10 years and I was concerned about editing the AVCHD on my PC. I am still learning various ways to edit and produce a video and then play back. So far

1. I have used Pixella Imagemixer software to trim and do limited effects and write back to the HF-10 to play over the HD TV. Works OK but the editing software is not very capable.

2. I upgraded from Ulead Video Studio 11plus to Corel's Video Studio 12 Pro X2 (Corel bought Ulead) The new package is excellent with many capabilities. I have a pretty fast Intel Core Duo with 2 MBytes of RAM

I have: Authored a 45 minute video after capturing from HF-10 and burned to an DVD+R as an AVCHD DVD. It plays great on my SONY Blue Ray Player. I used the same editing project to output to a 1080p wmv file that took about 8 hrs to render. I also could burn a regular 480p DVD so those without Blue Ray could view the video.

I understand SONY Vegas is a good package. Also Pinnacle 12 might be OK I have heard, but I have had problems in the past with stability of Pinnacle's products.

Has anyone else tried other software for editing AVCHD on a PC. What is a good fast PC and how much faster can it render video compared to the fastest core duos? Has anyone seen any benchmarks?

Anyway, I am extremely pleased with the HF-10 and plan to use it a lot for a good while.