The XA10 would be fine too. It’s probably the best camera you can get in that price range. If you wanted to move up (an extra $1,000 USD), your best choice is the Canon XF100:

http://usa.canon.com/cusa/professional/products/professional_cameras/hd_video_cameras/xf100

On the web, the average person wouldn’t be able to see any difference between footage from the XA10 and XF100. But the XF100 is a professional camera…it offers a better build, physical buttons for settings (instead of having to go through camera menus) and most importantly, it offers true broadcast quality recording. It doesn’t do AVCHD…it does Canon’s own MPEG-2 codec (which works in Vegas) and records at twice the quality of AVCHD plus it offers twice the color resolution.

Phil Bloom has a great review of both cameras here:

http://vimeo.com/26184320

I now want to upgrade all round and am looking at Vegas 11 on high spec p.c. and canon xa10.

I have never used HD or AVCHD files so was looking for two possible re-assurances

1). Vegas 11 does the job, and not to huge a learning curve from V.7

2). Camera choice o.k. for simply documentary indoor/outdoor filming, or am I missing a better option?

Any thoughts would help an amateur avoid making an amateur decision!

Regards,

Trolley Ronnie

I’m doing it now and it works great. Big thanks to Ben for the idea and much stress relief

MPEG Streamclip’s site…
http://www.squared5.com/

As for AVCHD Converter, I am using Aunsoft MTS Converter which helps me convert MTS and M2TS video files to MP4, MPG, WMV, AVI, and enables you to enjoy movies on computer or WMP, to further edit video for creation, to present video on HDTV, and to publish video online in web-friendly format. It makes your AVCHD camcorder videos editable on Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas, Window Movie Maker, DVD Maker.

Thanks for posting.

Now i know to get proper HD i will need to upgrade my pc etc, but the trick i saw here (render the .mts to .mpg in vegas), worked superbly and i have no lag, no choppy ness no thick lines around the edges or stripey video.

Obviously i can then convert the .mpg or edit it.

Many thanks and now i can get some editing done on perfectly acceptable video.

Anyone with a AVCHD file, just drag it into vegas and render as .mpg and you will have a clear video. For true HD the original file will play perfectly through your tv but to get it to play on your lappy or pc and be able to edit it then just convert the .mts to .mpg.

Works a treat.

First off, people need to understand that whenever you convert video, and I mean WHENEVER, you lose quality. You damage the video. It’s like the old days with a tape recorder and you make a copy of a copy of a copy – they each sound worse and worse. Converting digital video files to another format will always cause a degradation to the video quality, due to the different ways compression algorithms handle video information such as color, motion, etc. Sometimes it may be minor enough that most people can’t easily tell the difference, and sometimes it will be worse (such as the noticeable color shift mentioned above). It’s best to avoid this as much as possible.

The ideal is to work with your original camcorder’s video files throughout the editing process, and then only when you’re all done, render to your desired output format(s). That way there is only ONE conversion happening, during final rendering.

Of course, editing with less than 1 frame per second choppy video preview is difficult if not impossible, so many people are willing to take a layer of conversion damage if it means they CAN edit. But I found a way to have my cake and eat it too.

Here’s a brief nutshell of what I’m doing:
First make a Sony AVC super-low-res render MP4 file (using a custom “240-30p 384k” setting I made works well). Then use it to do all the editing with smooth video previewing all the while. Then close Vegas, move the small MP4 away, open Vegas – it can’t find the files, you then supply it with replacement files, using the original videos, which now have all the edits in place!

I can even do this in “batch” by loading many clips, then douple clicking each clip and hitting “R” to make a “region”, then in the menu “Tools” – “Scripting” – “Batch Render”, select “Render Regions” at the bottom, select naming convention, select encoding format (such as my custom tiny Sony AVC “240-30p 384k”) and let it “cook” overnight.

Here is a longer step-by-step version:
1 – Open Vegas, load the HD “MTS” videos into video track
2 – One at a time, double-click on each video segment and hit “R” to make a “Region” above the track, and repeat for all the videos
3 – In the menus select “Tools” – “Scripting” – “Batch Render”
4 – Select naming convention, select a small encoding format (such as my custom Sony AVC “240-30p 384k”), and select “Render Regions” at the bottom
5 – After all the parts are done rendering, start a new project in Vegas (don’t bother saving the current project)
6 – Load the new small videos into the video track, and save the project with whatever name you want
7 – Edit your movie, using the small videos which should work smoothly and easily all the while, then save your final version.
8 – Close Vegas, and move the small video files away (such as into a separate folder for temporary holding)
9 – Open your saved final version of the project – Vegas will complain about missing files:
10 – Supply Vegas with replacement files, selecting your original HD videos (in the correct order if there are more than one)
11 – Save the final version of the project, perhaps with a new name this time
12 – Render your HD video!

It works beautifully! I avoid doing an extra video conversion, thus retaining the perfect original quality of my camcorder files, but I also am able to edit with perfectly smooth video preview, even during transitions and effects. It’s definitely a “hack” or trick method, but it works well.

Hope that helps.