Canon VIXIA HF S20 and FCP interaction

Middle school, 13 year olds create a 2 hour video yearbook every year. We have won the California Student Media Festival 5 of the last 6 years in the yearbook category. We are not experts but do shoot with 4 cameras and use multiclip. It is amazing to see what 13 year olds can do when you raise the bar with FCP. My question is related directly to FCP and its interaction with cameras. We are looking at purchasing 4 new Canon VIXIA HF S20 cameras, using flash memory (we have the Canon Vixia 30 that use tapes now). I have read some on the Vixia HF S20, some on this list, some on the internet in general. We have used canons, have hundreds invested in batteries and are familiar with Canon. We are limited to about 1200 per camera. So, any terrible issues I should be aware of with the Canon Vixia HF S20?

Hi-
Yes, you are correct. File transfer (and the required conversion from AVCHD to an editable format) can be faster than real time, in fact much faster with a fast computer and raid storage.
When dealing with event/news acquisition and delivery, and every second counts, then file based is the clear winner.
The down side is the reliance and drive space and stability, and lots of both. And the discipline/organization required to run a backup program that is both effective, searchable and ready to be pulled into service at a moments notice,
When a student comes to you and says: "Mr. Peach, the disc drive that holds all our class projects isn't mounting and is making a funny clicking noise!" are you going to be able to swap in a backup drive with the required media on it?
That"s my point about switching to file based acquisition. There's no tape to fall back on. Because we have switched to XDCamEx and Red production, we had to add another crew member we call the "Data Wrangler" whose job it is to make sure all files or organized, accessible and backed up (in our case to several backup locations).
You demonstrate that you are both technologically knowledgeable, and creatively knowledgeable (with your string of awards) and I just wanted to highlight side of the tape to file based transition that is often overlooked.
One more comment - I wouldn't worry about using the technology of the "future". If that were the case, I would recommend you buy a bunch of Kodak Zi8 cameras, edit with iMovie '09 and deliver via You Tube.
Hope this helps and I'm sure you'll make the right decision.
MTD

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    Hi-
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