Optimum settings for shooting HD video?

Question

I just purchased a Panasonic AG-AC160a camcorder with the firmware upgrade to 1080/59.97p format with MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 compression. Since this is an upgrade from my DV tape camcorder I'm kind of lost and not sure what the best video format is to record in. I am shooting youth hockey games and want to produce the best HD picture I can and with as few steps as possible in PP CS5. I shoot approximately 45 minutes of content and I want to fit everything on one media disk. Thanks for any guidance on the best format settings.

Answer 1

Wilderness08 wrote:
Thank you. When I shoot my son's hockey games I pause the camcorder each time the action stops. When I got back I noticed that a new clip was formed upon each pause of the shooting (I'm used to capturing my entire tape footage -- even with multiple starts and stops -- into one clip directly from my old camcorder). Is there an easier way to get these multiple clips into my timeline panel without having to physically drag each one from the project panel?
Also, what is the best way to copy/transfer the files directly from the SDXC card to my computer so the files are resident on the computer before importing them and editing in PP?
Welcome to the wonderful world of HD. I've used the 160a before and it's a nice camera. I've been shooting with HMC150's for 3 years now and I think we squeeze every bit of juice out of it. A good forum for Panasonic users is DVXUser.com  Go there and find the 160a category and they'll be really helpful with camera questions.
When it comes to HD footage on these cards, eventually you'll really like that each time you stop the camera it makes a new clip. That way if you have shot a lot of clips you can pick and choose which ones to import or transcode (to a different format if you'd like) and save disc space if you are transcoding your clips to another format (which can sometimes be easier on your system than editing these native AVCHD files...that depends on your computer and how powerful it is). First, you are going to want to copy the ENTIRE contents of the SDHC/SDXC card onto your scratch drive (scratch drive just means a separate hard drive where all your footage is stored. Don't edit off of the card reader...copy it ALL to your drive and use that. Again, you have to copy the ENTIRE folder structure of the card not just the little video files. Then you can use Premiere's Media Browser to import the clips that you want. Just SHIFT+SELECT all the clips that you'd like and right-click and import the clips. If you want to drag multiple clips to your timeline, go ahead and shift+select all the clips you want and drag/drop on the timeline and they'll all drop on in order. You are shooting Hockey so I think it's important to turn your shutter on in your camera.  These cameras sometimes have "shutter off" as default...if I remember right. It's easy to adjust. There's a shutter button at the top of the panel where the LCD closes and you'll want to have a shutter speed of at least double your frame rate. Normally double is acceptable. So if you're shooting 60fps, then hit the shutter button and adjust to 1/120. When it says "shutter off" at 60fps that means it's at 1/60. That looks just fine in my opinion but for fast sports, you may not want that motion blur so I'd turn the shutter on. If you shoot at 30fps, then set the shutter to at least 1/60. Going to too fast of a shutter speed may start to create a hyper-real look similar to the opening beach scene in Saving Private Ryan which may not be what you want which is why I say go double your frame rate to start.
Also, if you are on tripod, you may want to turn OFF the OIS (image stabilzation) so you don't have any issues with it shifting at all. We keep the OIS on most of the time, but every once in a while on a tripod we need to turn it off because when you are doing lots of panning (which will be the case I'm assuming with Hockey) then you might see these weird little shifts in the image with these cameras as the OIS is catching up. If your final product is going to the web then I'd suggest either 720p60 or 1080p60 since computer screens are progressive. If you are just going to DVD, then you probably won't notice a huge difference with 1080 vs. 720 on these cameras. That's my experience anyway. If you go to Bluray, then maybe try 1080. The forum I mentioned above will help you with those camera related choices.
If you notice your computer getting bogged down editing these native AVCHD files, first switch Premiere's windows to "1/2 resolution" instead of "full". Or you may want to transcode to a different format (eg. if you're on a mac, transcode to ProRes 422). Again, like I said before, it depends on your computer's strength. Good luck!