If you've been doing research, you know that most people say that AVCHD is a nightmare to edit and render. Not so! You need Sony Vegas 8.0 Pro and a fairly new computer. Editing and rendering is slower than with HDV, but it's not a nightmare at all. Can't afford Sony Vegas 8.0 Pro? At least download the trial version to see what you're missing.

If you want to speed it up, shoot in XP+ instead of FXP--rendering takes 1/2 the time.

1) Shoot in 30p. Looks amazing and no deinterlacing required in post to be viewed on the web.

2) Do not use the software that came with the camera, Pixela Image Mixer. It wants to change the files to M2TS which, for some reason, turn out all garbled in Sony Vegas. Remove the card from the camera and put it in a card reader and transfer the MTS files directly to your computer.

3) Drag and drop an MTS file into Vegas

4) Edit

5) Render (if you shoot in 30p, then render in 30.000 frame rate (do not render in 29.970--it will give you a jittery video))

For Youtube rendering: There is a general consensus as to the settings that are best:

Search Youtube for:

"how to make your videos high quality using sony vegas"

The HF100 is a great deal right now. Compared to my old standard def miniDV (Canon ZR-30) camera, the hf100 is a hands down winner. One big area of improvement is the image quality in "room lighting". Under incandescent bulb lighting, the detail, color and sharpness are very good. There is still noise in low light, but it is much more reasonable.

The camera creates a new file on the SDHC card each time you press the record button. You can view and delete each "scene" in camera, allowing you to free up valuable space. Compared to tape, the non-linear nature of the videos is a big plus. No fast forwarding or rewinding required.

I have found the following downsides so far...

1) Battery life is just ok.

2) The built in video light is not that useful. It has a very blue tint to it, and is not very flattering to your subjects. An add-on light is still required if you are picky about this.

3) The built in microphone picks up the holders voice at a very high level. I find myself speaking much more gently when talking to my subjects.

4) There is no eye level viewfinder, just the lcd, which can be troublesome in very bright light.

5) The biggest issue for me is going to be the archiving of the raw files. Tape provides you with an instant archive that is missed. While you will save some money from not buying tapes, plan on spending some money on Hard Drives, or a Blu-Ray burner if you need more than just a burned dvd of your videos.

If you buy this camera, I'd recommend getting a second battery, a 16 or 32gb SD card (8gb = 1:05 hours at highest quality), and an SDHC card reader for your PC.

To sum up, this is a great product if you realize what you are getting into. High Def AVCHD video creates large files that require a powerful pc to edit. Archiving can be frustrating. With those caveats aside, the HF100 is hard to beat when compared to the competition, especially at the current price.

Somewhat long/complete review...get a cup of coffee.

Gotta check out the quality of this thing before you buy, it is amazing. Go to youtube or vimeo, search HF100 (or HF10, same thing but with built in memory and different color).

Pros: Video Quality!!!, Size, Weight, look, LCD Screen Resolution, Stereo recording (Left and Right Mics), Flash memory (so easy, cheap, reliable?), 3MP Stills, onboard light (for camera flash or somewhat lighting up your videos), lots of manual options (mic level, zoom, recording qualities), External Mic Jack(important for us music/band folks), Menu is ok once you get to know it.

Cons: Could offer better optical stability, wind interferes with sound, battery life, cost of official replacement batteries

Cons to AVCHD (not camera): Limited editing software, requires powerful computer (I'm running off a NEW laptop, barely keeps up...3GB Ram, AMD 2GHz)

The video quality is highly dependent on the settings you use...60i, 30p, or 24p? Cinema Mode, Portrait Mode, Auto, etc? LP, XP+, etc?

I suggest Cinema mode in 30p for most recordings. I tried the "easy" button at night, was grainy. I have yet to try the easy button in sunny conditions. I recorded a few scenes in 24p Cinema, came out pretty choppy, I'm guessing it would be best on a tripod, capturing movement, instead of moving the camera around (I'm no pro).

Some people have mentioned long waits between switching from Video to Still mode...I have tried this with both a 4GB and 16 GB disk...it takes 3-5 seconds with the 4GB and 9-11 seconds with the 16 GB. As other folks have mentioned, it appears to be inventorying the empty portion of the disk, to inform you how many pictures you could take. I suggest recording with a 4GB card if you plan on switching between modes frequently. (Note: I was counting, not official Omega seconds)

For Memory, I have a 4GB PNY Class 4 and the Amazon recommended Transcend 16GB class 6. They both work great, I haven't been able to notice any speed difference.

As we've all read, AVCHD editing is limited. I tried the Sony Vegas 9 Platinum trial version, works well. The Corel Ulead trial software doesn't include the capability of importing the mts/m2ts files. However, I have purchased Corel Ulead VideoStudio 11.5 Plus [AMAZON.COM EXCLUSIVE] from amazon. I hope it works well with the avchd files.

UPDATE: Corel 11.5 works great! I've posted a review on it, go find it.

The Vixia HX100 is my 5th camcorder, the first AVCHD, and the first that records directly to SDHC media. To date I have shot about 50 GB of video, all of it youth sports, most of it at 1440 x 1080 HD resolution, and about 100 still shots using the cam's max resolution. The cam works flawlessly at even the highest video resolution using 16GB Transcend speed class 6 SDHC cards. I have filmed in bright Southern Cal sunlight and under baseball lights with good results. I use a 37mm haze filter, both to protect the lens and for outdoor shots. The supplied software works OK for downloading the memory, but I read the SDHC cards directly into my Sony Vaio laptop for faster transfer. The learning curve for the software is reasonably easy and the manual is good. I have played back the stored video directly into a 1080p Vizio TV using a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable and also recorded directly from the cam to a standard definition Toshiba DVD recorder using the cam's component output.

Two minor negatives - the supplied BP-809 battery is only good for about an hour and the higher capacity BP-819 batteries aren't currently available at any of about a dozen locations that I tried. I purchased a 2nd BP-809 and they do change out fairly quickly. The software starts to warn you with 5 minutes of battery remaining, and I took it down all the way to zero without losing any data. The other negative is that you have to leave the AC power supply connected if downloading via USB cable.

The lens at the widest zoom setting isn't quite wide enough to film a standard baseball field from behind the backstop, and a 0.5 to 0.7 wide angle lens would be a very good accessory for shooting sports.

I have a 37mm to 28mm adapter, and the cam works well with the Nikon 3X telephoto lens from my Nikon 4300 still camera, although you have to have the telephoto on the cam set all the way out to get full field in the cam.

As an aside, I use Pinnacle Studio 12 Pro to build my movies, and it handles the AVCHD output files from the cam without a hitch. You'd better have a fast PC with at least 2GB (better 4GB) to work with HD, however.

With this review I will tell you everything you need to know to pick best camcorder for you

First of all about the HF100

Sound,Size,Video,Value are all perfect to be honest the video is crystal Clear and the sound is unbeatable even without an external mic

There is no viewfinder but the LCD is extermely bright,Battery 1Hour~, and its very light/small camcorder i simply put it inside my jeans

You need to know that HF100 do not record in SD (Standard Definition) or 720p "it only records 1080 videos"

So if you want the options to record in SD or 720p then you might reconsider another Camcorder

So lets start first of all Yes I wrote HF11 in the title its not a Typo Canon just announced TODAY (22 July 2008) that they will release HF11 very soon "September" (Only in Japan for now as I write this review) Which use 24MB/S instead of the 17MB/S max that the Current HF100 use (That's around 30% video BITRATE Boost over HF100/HF10)

So before I starts Some might say The hell with HF100 I will just wait for HF11 which have 24MB/S AVCHD

Well you need to understand First what does the 24MB/S means

1-There is a million Camcorder that use HDV tapes with 25MB/s recording yet HV30 wins hand down without any other camcorder getting close to its quality/price because HV30 lens, sensor, etc are way better than other camcorders in the market, Same goes here HF100 and HF11 both have the EXACT SAME lens, sensor, optical zoom, pixels 1920x1080i (or p) and even the body design!!!! So don't expect serious changes in video quality at all (Lens, sensor, etc matter the most than the codec of the video) what was changed in HF11 is that Canon added 32GB memory and new processor to record the new 24MB/S AVCHD (which of course require faster processor to play/record in the camcorder) (I am not saying 24MB/s is useless however I AM saying that HF11 wont be the camcorder to use the true power of the 24mb/s avchd

2-You CAN NOT copy these files to a DVD and share them with family/friends because All DVDS have "18MB/S LIMIT" and sharing 4-5GB files over the internet is something people try to avoid, yes you can edit the video and lower the BITRATE to 18mb/s however this will take a lot of time (AVCHD isn't walk in the park when it comes to editing) and the quality wont be as good as the HF100 17MB/S because HF100 video is unedited

Almost any BLU ray player can play normal AVCHD DVDS! (The PLAYSTATION 3 plays them too) and since BLU ray burners are very expensive (300-600$) and Each disc is around 10$ you don't want to deal with BLU rays for now (Unless you don't mind giving free 10$ discs to friends/family) DVDS cost like nothing these days for 10$ you can buy 100 DVD

3- 24MB/S = you need Bigger hard drives to backup/save your data

17MB/S 2hours and 5min for 16GB

24MB/S 1hour and 25Min for 16GB

4-Bigger files = Require better PC for playback/editing (But not huge jump like HDV to AVCHD editing/playback requirement)

5-HF11 is priced for 1300$ (HF100 is half the price) why waste more money for Same Exact camcorder even if you buy the HF11 trust me next year a new Camcorder will be released which will use the true power of the 24MB/S AVCHD but as of now HF11 lens and sensor is very limiting and wont use AVCHD 24MB/S real power Canon is just using the 24MB/S for Marketing~ save your money and get HF100 if you want memory based camcorder

Now AVCHD vs. HDV (HV30 VS HF100)

HV30 = Best Tape HD camcorder

HF100 = Best HD Camcorder that use Memory to record videos

HF100 pros over HV30

1-Its smaller

2-Record in full HD 1920x1080 (HV30 max recording is 1440x1080)

3-You just copy the files to your PC however with the HV30 you need to plug the camcorder to the pc and LIVE capture (HF100 is way faster and better tech also you can use your pc and browse the net while you wait for HF100 video file to be sent to your pc , but with HV30 using your pc while you live capture from the tape can cause slowdowns and frame drops in your video )

4-You can take your memory of the camera and insert it on any PC/PS3/blu ray player and watch your videos (With HV30 you need to plug the camera... because it use tapes)

5-With HF100 you do not need external microphone for acceptable audio sound which make it very portable since its already smaller than the HV30 however the HV30 without External microphone is completely not acceptable at all you can hear the tape noise and trust me its very LOUD

6-HF100 use AVCHD H264 Codec "To Me" it have better colors it depends on your taste some people do not like the cool blue effect that AVCHD videos use

7-With tapes you have 1hour limit for recoding then you have to switch your tape but with HF100 you can keep recording for hours (Depends on your battery + memory size)

8-With memory based camcorders you can shoot in 1sec!! But with HV30 you cant record fast you need to wait for tape to get active first

9-You can record with any settings/frame rate you want with memory based camcorders but with HV30 recording multi settings/frame rate in the SAME TAPE can cause problems when you capture the video on your pc

10-you can backup your AVCHD files and make them "playable video discs" to any DVD or (BLU ray in the future "now if you are rich") without any EDITING at all!! But with HV30 you are required to Edit/capture , with AVCHD its just drag and drop then burn voila !

11-You can record over hundred and thousands of videos in the same memory without any problems and its free but with HV30 "tapes" first it costs money to buy tapes and secondly you cant repeat recording in the same tape after 3-4 times you will see lot of video quality drops the more you record over same tape also keep in mind that with HF100 all what you need is your camcorder and you are ready to go, but with HV30 you need lot of tapes with you if you going in trips and tapes are big which will kill the idea of having a portable camcorder

Now lets talk about HV30 pros over HF100

1- It have a Viewfinder which a lot of people prefer over the LCD

2- It can record in SD (standard definition) and 720p (HF100 can only do 1080)

3-It use HDV format which is way easier to play or edit in pretty much any pc nowdays

4-HDV format have worldwide support programs wise because its very old almost any video editing program can edit HDV, not the same for AVCHD which is new (Sony vegas 8 pro edit AVCHD just perfect but its very limiting to have few programs that really work with AVCHD unlike HDV any program is fine with it kinda, i guess by the end of the year everything will be solved remember AVCHD is new format"

So after reading all this you should know that waiting for HF11 isn't really good idea and which camcorder is better for you HV30 or HF100

And that's about it I hope it was helpful to you :)

==========================================================================

Update "AUGEST 14" Camcorderinfo.com just confirmed what i was saying from the start about the HF11 you can read there review at there website (heres what they said about HF11)

"Out of the lab, we put the HF11 and HF10 side-by-side in some difficult shooting situations

and examined the playback footage with an extremely critical eye. After much deliberation,

we came to the conclusion that most people can't tell the difference between the two.

You'd have to spend an insane amount of time and energy--as we did--to see a variance." -Camcorderinfo.com

HF11=1299$ HF100=649$ (Half the price of HF11 save your money people ;p)

This is my 1st HD camcorder and it has yet to disappoint. After using the "movie" mode on our point-and-shoot Nikon, this is a breath of fresh HD air! My wife and I just had our first born and we wanted to catch everything our little man does! The HF100 is perfect...small, lightweight and easy to use. My wife is somewhat intimidated my technology(she does not touch my Canon 40D) but she has little issues with this camcorder.

I usually shoot 30P in Program mode with the image stabalizer on. Program mode will give your shot far better color contrast and 30P is much easier to convert for web uploading than 60i. 60i looks good on DVD but most videos I shoot end up in Vimeo for my family to watch, most of which live hours away.

Uploading is a breeze with the flash drive. I purchased a cheap flash drive reader off an auction site. For whatever reason you have to have the camera plugged in when uploading movies to your computer. That is a lot of cords. A memory card reader is cheap and a major life saver.

I have both a Mac and a PC so I have some experience with both platforms when viewing video. One major complaint is that AVCHD is somewhat difficult to view on a computer. You do have to convert it to another format to view your movies on a Mac and even to edit them. I use Toast 9 along with Quicktime Pro to convert my video to a format easily uploaded to Vimeo(H.264 - 1280X720 HD). The quality is astounding!

In its RAW format, AVCHD looks excellent. The bundled video software(Windows only...dang) does a great job with unconverted AVCHD playback and some editing. I wish they would make a Mac version of this software. I have even made a DVD with the software and it looks really great on my Plasma. For bare bones editing, and DVD creation...the bundled software does work, and works well. One thing I have noticed when converting AVCHD to a more friendly video editing format such as HDV with TMPGEnc 4.0 Express is some stuttering when panning video is being played. This does not happen when viewing in AVCHD format. My suggestion, unless you really have to, try not to convert the video unless necessary. SONY Vegas video software lets you edit in AVCHD, no conversion is necessary. If you are on a Mac...well as far as I know a program does not exist that allows editing in AVCHD...you have to convert the file to something else (video codecs are numerous).

Eventually AVCHD will be the format of choice as tapes will inevitably be phased out (some will argue this, but this is my personal belief). In my opinion you cannot go wrong with this camera. Hard drives fail, tape drives fall apart and RW-DVDs are a pain. Flash memory is the future.

One issue I have is the lack of a stand alone plug in for the battery. You have to plug the camera in to charge your camera's battery unless you shell out around $60 for a separate plug in charger. In my opinion this should have been included with the camera.

This is a remarkable camera that weights practically nothing and takes very realistic HD video with extremely clear stereo sound. I bought a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable to plug it directly into our HD LCD TV and the quality rivals what you can see on Discovery HD. You will not be disappointed with the video quality. Still images too look fantastic. I set it to 30p frame rate since our TV and computers are progressive scan displays and the 60i seems a little shaky with software support. The stills at 2 MP may not have enough resolution for large prints, but they are incredible again on an HDTV as it displays them at a 1:1 ratio.

The only thing lacking is good software support for the AVCHD format. The crappy software that it comes with is Windows only and has limited editing. We are a Mac/Linux household so I'm still waiting for native AVCHD playback support on my MythTV box. The Mac can import from the camera using iMovie though it converts it to Apple's format which is huge and can take hours. I'm sure the software world will catch up with the new AVCHD format cameras very soon though.

The only knock against the camera itself is the slowness when changing between video and picture modes. It can take 15 seconds before it is ready to take a photo or up to 5 seconds or so when switching back to video mode. I do not know why unless it is the fact that I have a 16GB card? Maybe Canon can provide a firmware update to speed it up.

Hi all, I've been using my friends HV20 for some time, and I just picked up my own Canon HF100. This camera is amazing. I'm not going to knock tapes, but I simply can't believe how easy this Flash Drive makes things. I've done some recordings around the backyard and house, then you just take the SDHC card out and pop it into the Ps3... they start playing and are simply gorgeous.

I'm using iMovie 08' and FCE 4.0 for editing on the Mac. I also brought these files into my PC using PowerDirector 7, that was no issue at all either. On the FCE 4.0 side... I was shooting video in the 1440x1080 mode, instead of 1920x1080... the reason for this is that FCE is 1440 by default. So, the clips are copied in, using Log and Transfer, at about 1 to 1 speed. And you can add them all to the timeline and preview them, without the need to render them, which is awesome.

I have much to learn, I'm not that good at FCE yet, at all. iMovie works just fine, but it's very limited. The HF100 also takes amazing still shots at 1920x1080 widescreen, they came out fantastic.

Hope this helps someone... don't be afraid of the AVCHD, I've had no issues at all using the Mac or the PC so far... oh, one more thing. My SDHC 16 meg card came with a USB adapter. So, I just plug that into my Mac and FCE and iMovie both think it's a camera... never need to actually hook the camera to the Mac. Before I even bring those files into the editor. I copy the whole directory, as is, to a Disk Image I created on the Desktop. Label the folder by date. That way, I have the full AVCHD files stored away for use later. When the disk image becomes 4.3 gig, I just burn a DVD of it, and put it away, or use a Dual Layer and make the disk image 8 gig... either way. You have the original untouched footage stored safely away.

Tom

My husband did a great deal of research (including Amazon customer reviews) before we purchased the Canon Vixia HF100 cameraCanon VIXIA HF100 Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom. We are delighted with the camera. We also purchased 8 GB and 16 GB SDHC (class 6) memory cards Transcend 8GB SDHC CARD (SD 2.0 SPD Class 6)and an extra battery. There are some things we did not understand before we purchased the camera that we now know -- and I will share with you.

(1)In order to edit your HD movies, you MUST have a powerful computer (we tried it on our "pretty good" computer and it did not work). When replacing our old desktop computer, we used the requirements called out for expensive video editing software. We got a Dell Inspiron 530 with Core 2 Quad, 3GB Ram, 256 NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT video card, 500 GB hard drive (bigger would be better), 48XCDRW/DVD drive, 16XDVD+/-RW drive (maybe should have gotten dual drive and maybe Blu Ray?), SoundBlaster Audigy audio.

(2)The 16GB card holds about 2 hours of recording.

(3)You can make High Definition movies using your powerful computer, a REGULAR DVD burner on DVD-R discs, USING THE SOFTWARE THAT CAME WITH THE CAMERA. Most people who will use this camera have no need for the expensive video editing software that does fancy things. With the software that comes with the camera you can delete scenes, clip scenes, split scenes and add titles. Just follow the steps in the manual included on the software disc. There is a small learning curve. I had a little trouble with adding transitions, but don't care. I have not tried adding extra audio.

(4)You can also burn regular (not HD) DVDs (about 30 minutes per DVD) and export movies in the format for a website or YouTube (instructions in manual).

(5)To view your High Definition movies, you must have a Blu Ray player THAT CAN VIEW AVCHD FORMAT. (Not all Blu Ray players support AVCHD.) We purchased the Panasonic BD30 Panasonic DMP-BD30K 1080p Blu-Ray Disc Player. It is a great player that pairs perfectly with this camera. You can put the SDHC memory cards directly into the player or burn your own, edited HD movies and play them in the player. This player will also play the ones you burn as regular DVDs.

(6)We burned 25 minutes of High Definition video (3.47 GB) onto a DVD. There was room left, so we believe a regular DVD will hold 1/2 hour of HD (4+ GB). (The Panasonic player can play dual layer discs, so a dual layer burner on your computer, and dual layer discs might get you a full hour.)

*Note: Regarding the Panasonic Player, you can make a CD of your JPEG photos from other cameras and play them. That is "CD", not "DVD". The important thing is to NOT include anything but JPEG (no movie clips), or the player will not read the disc.

This is my first Flash Drive Camcorder. Prior to this my experience with Camcorders goes back to the early 80s when I first used a Sony BetaMovie, then onto VHS. Previously I still used a Sony Handycam Hi 8 camera for the past 10 years. Incredibly reliable....

Now onto the Canon: I immediately read the other reviews. First let me point out that if you are serious about this camera, make immediate plans to purchase the larger battery and at least a 16 gig SDHC card. For editing, do not use the U-LEAD software. It absolutely can't handle the high definition files that this camera can put out even if you have upwards of a Core QUAD processor as I did. Go instead for the Sony Vegas Pro 8. Save the Grief.

The Camera is outstanding. The only issue I thought of initially was that it did not have a view Finder and uses an LCD viewer exclusively. I tested this in the hot sun on my back, and I had no issues. Video stabilization was good. It is a necessity for such a small camera or you risk having videos that look more like earthquakes. Also important to get a very good tripod. This camera takes exceptional full HD video. Nature shots will require this as well as using this for a good pan shot. It's difficult to hold this camera steady so a Tripod helps. I was surprised at the lack of latency reading and writing to the SDHC card and I am assuming there is a small buffer zone that assists with this.

Most of my initial tests were in the "Cinama Mode" where it moderately degrades the video ever so lightly to give it a Film look. I thought that was outstanding. The color response on the default settings is a bit high, but it can be adjusted. The controls are intuitive. I really only looked through the book only for non basic settings. I also recommend Canon's external directional microphone especially if you are interviewing someone among a crowd. The internal mic's are great but very sensitive to a larger radius of sound. The only negative I have is that the battery doesn't fit as snug as I would like and I hope this doesn't introduce any noise. Photo quality is ok. Glad to have it, but more impressed with the video. Also, this camera does not have an infrared or nightshot type mode. (My Sony had this. It proved useful many times). Since the video in the HF-100 is far superior, I can forget that completly.

Exporting files is pretty painless. Use the Image Mixer software to transfer files to your PC. The additional software is useless. Just get a decent editor such as Sony Vegas Pro 8 (Discussed earlier).

I recommend this camera for those who are above the average person who wants to do serious video in HD but not want to spend a fortune. In the right hands, this camera can produce anything your collective conscience can think about.