Help with AVCHD and CS4

[Rudi Herbert]

Figure I give this a shot here in case someone can help,

I've just got a Canon HG20 camera to test it so that if it delivers enough quality we can buy a few of them for crash cams and other uses. The camera has great reviews in terms on image quality and I really don't mind its lack of professional controls for the use we have in mind. However, I've actually had problems in another area, I'm getting terrible image quality in both Premiere and AE CS4, which have native AVCHD support. Regardless of camera setting, I keep getting images that are quite jumpy, where anything other than the camera completely still, yields very unnatural motion. Image quality is also poor and lackluster, nowhere near what I've seen in other people's samples. What am I doing wrong? do I need to remove a pulldown or any other step I'm missing? Even when rendered out to H.264, AVI, QT, MPEG-2, etc, the files exhibit the same choppy motion...If I can't get this to work, then I guess I'll have to quit on this camera/format and find something else.

[Tom Lowe]

Is there any chance you have the framerates mismatched at any point?

I know when I was working with some EX1 footage, if I checked "non-drop-frame" in the initial CS4 project settings, that made a huge difference. Maybe try those settings both ways and see what happens. I can't remember whether it was drop frame or non-drop, but once I changed that, the footage became smooth.

Does the footage look better when you simply play it with VLC player before putting it into the NLE? Is it choppy when you play the files straight, right from explorer?

[J Davis]

Its a problem with all AVCHD (hard drive and SDHC card) canon cameras in this range and is especially noticeable on slow pans or tracking shots. I've been getting the same with slow shots off a slider.
I've tested by transcoding with CS4 as well as FCP to prores, jpeg A, smaller frame sizes - same prob.
The prob goes away on faster pans tho.
Playback in camera is fine so its definately a codec problem. Changing the quality setting in camera can reduce it.

I have scoured the internet and best posts I found are here
link (http://www.amazon.com/Jerky-shots-FXP30P-frame-rate/forum/Fx1G0VDNIDSV13C/Tx2ORF05Y7EBNXR/1?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B00114162K)

You might be better off with the tape HV30 model