Beyond HDV: Using AVCHD with Panasonic's AG-HSC1U

I've been a user exclusively of tape-based cameras since the analog days. So, beyond the implications of the AVCHD format, I was intrigued by the opportunity to test Panasonic's AG-HSC1U, because it stores all video and still images on SDHC cards. A 4GB card is included with the camera. You can find the camcorder online for well less than $2,000, with spare Panasonic 4GB cards for as low as $150 (gulp!)—although Kingston offers a card that should be compatible for around $50.

I''ll start with the basic specs. Physically, the camcorder is about the size and shape of a 12oz. can of soda—perhaps a touch skinnier. It features three 1/4in. CCDs with 560K effective pixels; you''d need nearly three times as many for the full-resolution AVCHD (1440x1080i) that the unit records. This obviously means that the unit interpolates the pixels captured up to the HD resolution, which usually contributes to soft details. There is no viewfinder, so you record using the generous 3in. flip-out LCD with 250K effective pixels.

The onboard microphone captures Dolby 5.1 surround sound, with a stereo mini-jack microphone input port. You can drive the camera in fully auto mode or adjust gain, aperture, and white balance manually via an easy-to-use joystick that also helps you navigate the menu and control playback.

The unit offers three recording modes—6Mbps, 9Mbps, and 13Mbps—the highest being about half the data rate of HDV. I recorded only in the highest-possible-quality mode, which gave me 40 minutes of video on the included 4GB SDHC memory card. Unlike with the consumer version of this camcorder, Panasonic includes a battery-powered hard drive that can copy the video from the SDHC card at about 8X speeds. The hard disk connects to a PC via USB for fast downloading.

You can view the video via HDMI (Panasonic doesn''t include a cable), or watch via component or composite video with supplied cables. Panasonic does include a power supply that can power the camcorder or hard drive, as well as a separate battery charger with its own power supply.

I used the camera over the course of two weeks, shooting about two hours of video, both inside and outside and under a variety of lighting conditions. While I''m not ready to abandon tape, recording on nonlinear formats definitely has its appeal—lprimarily the ability to quickly find and play back the clips you just recorded.

Of course, this doesn''t matter if the quality isn't up to par. To assess this, I''d need to capture, edit, and render the video. So that''s the next stop in our tour de AVCHD.

Final Cut Pro''s Log and Capture function, ingesting the AVCHD footage and converting it to ProRes format.
Click here for a larger image

Many programs, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, don''t yet support AVCHD, and others exhibit rough edges. For example, I had to manually change the MTS extension to MPG to load the files into a Canopus ProCoder—a pain when there were 38 test files. Sony Vegas 7.0e does support AVCHD, but only from Sony camcorders. Panasonic support will appear in a later version.

On the other hand, Apple Final Cut Pro 6.0.1 offers an excellent workflow for those using the HSC1U to capture B-roll for HDV or HD productions. You use Final Cut Pro''s log and transfer capability to ingest AVCHD and convert it to ProRes 422 format, which obviously increases the data rate but makes editing exceptionally responsive. Given the highly compressed nature of AVCHD, this is one format for which native editing is almost certainly a disadvantage.

Not bad for fast-moving video shot during early evening hours..
Click here for a larger image

I had my first real look at AVCHD quality in Final Cut Pro, and found it hard to separate observations that relate to CCD size and pixel count and those that relate to format. In general, judging from what I saw on the computer, detail was a bit soft, but better than I expected. Color was exceptionally vivid and accurate, and I saw very little obvious noise in the video.

I shot most video at a local fair during twilight hours, following my children as they rode one stomach-churning ride after another. The camera and format handled even moderate motion well, but the image could get ugly during extreme motion—something you see with HDV video as well, but not DV and other intraframe-only formats.

Few people watch video on the computer, however, so I was eager to get the video on a high-definition disc. For this, I turned to consumer video editor Pinnacle Studio.

Pinnacle Studio – an efficient AVCHD-to-Blu-ray workflow, albeit with re-encoding.
Click here for a larger image

Pinnacle Studio recognized the camcorder and transferred the files flawlessly—although on a 3.2GHz HP Pentium 4 xw4100 Workstation (my consumer software test platform), it played back the video at about 5fps in what appears to be slow motion. On the same computer, Studio plays back HDV in realtime.

This playback performance disparity wasn''t directly reflected in encoding times. Studio rendered a one-minute AVCHD file to MPEG-2 in 4:41 (min:sec), while HDV took 3:06. However, if I applied the same effects to both videos, rendering times were much closer: 9:59 for HDV and 11:06 for AVCHD. Lack of responsiveness could make editing AVCHD on an underpowered computer frustrating, but rendering time should be similar to that of HDV.

Interestingly, I had thought that one key advantage to AVCHD would have been the ability to simply (and quickly) copy AVCHD video from camcorder to Blu-ray Disc. Although Pinnacle Studio can burn a Blu-ray disc on a standard DVD recorder for playback on a Blu-ray player—a feat no other program I''m aware of can perform—it re-renders the video to H.264 format before doing so, which is very time-consuming. While I''m told this will change in future versions, that''s the status quo.

Still, video quality seemed to improve when I displayed the Blu-ray Disc on my 36in. JVC high-definition monitor, displaying component output from my Samsung BD-P1000 player. Gone was the softness displayed on the computer monitor—in part because I was playing at full speed, in part because televisions seem to have a more forgiving display. Whatever the reason, it clearly exhibited the usual "I-want-that" HD quality.

Overall, nothing in my first glance at AVCHD made me want to put my HDV camcorders up for sale on eBay. On the other hand, in my primarily concert-, theater-, and wedding-oriented practice, I could definitely see using the camera for candid or B-roll shots, a usage also dictated by the limited high-quality recording time of the current generation of SD memory.

Going forward, however, you don''t have to be John Naisbitt to confidently predict that we won''t be shooting in MPEG-2 in five years. We also probably won''t be storing our video on tape, as much as I love the affordable backup of tape-based media. Whether the format de jour will be AVCHD is anyone''s guess, but nothing I saw over the last two weeks rules that out.