Save Canon VIXIA HF200 HD Flash Memory Camcorder with 15x Optical Zoom

I had the Sony HDR-FX1 HD camcorder (1440x1080) a few years back and that was impressive then but this camcorder is even better at 1980 x 1080. I was trying to
decide if it was a good idea to go tapeless this time and make the transition to
SDHC cards so I ordered the HF-200 to see what I was getting into. Well after 2 weeks monkeying around with this thing I'm glad I bought it. I know some of you are complaining about the static electric charge that can remove all your photos
from the card. Well there is an easy solution to this. Make sure you back up all your videos to your hard drive. It's easy to drag and drop from the drive or using the imagemaker software. This is nice cause imagemake gives you the option of writing the mts files back onto the card. So save your stuff before you decided to
touch the card and remove it to a card reader. I have not had to take the card out yet anyway. And play it safe when you have the card in your hand. make sure you touch something first to discharge before pull the card out and don't walk around the room with that card in your hand. Remain stationary when inserting it and removing it.

The other problem I hear so much about is the editing part. Well I'm a guy who likes quick fixes and someone in an earlier post said that COREL VIDEO STUDIO PRO X2 DOES a great job. I downloaded the trial version (30 days) and it works flawless!!!! If you want an easy solution thats it. Here is how I did it. I hooked the USB connector to the computer (with play function on the camcorder) and imagemixer 3 software(provided with the camcorder) will automatically download all the m2t files. I prefer to just click on the drive and drop and drag all the files onto a file in my hardrive. Thats easy enough. Then bring up Corel VideoStudio program up, look for the file with the m2t files and it will make thumbnails of all the files you drag into the program. It also has a little viewer/player at the bottom so you can check out each file and play it before you drag in into the mainframe/timeline.

After you do drag the files into the program for editing and you cut, enhance, process, add titles or whatever. When finished just click on the the 'CREATE VIDEO FILE" and use either of these 2 settings. I tried them all and these gave me perfect picture quality.

HDV 720-30p (HDV)
HDV 720-30p (for PC)

Note files rendered in HDV are half the size of those in (for PC) mode. I could not get WMV to work right at all. It looked like a 25th generation VHS copy. I'll have to do more tests. My favorite video editing program is Magix Video Edit pro (11& 15) so I just load the HDV conversions into it and save it as
WMV-HD or other settings. This will save you a lot of head splitting aggravations!!! I spent almost a week trying to find a program that could just read the m2t (mts) files from the HF-200 and kept getting blocked one way or another, Corel Video Studio pro takes care of the whole problem. In fact it has a feature called "SMART PROXY" that makes handling any size m2t files like regular
old analog video. If you had a 2 hour video in HD you could go from one end of the
mainframe layout to the end in a second!!So there is your quick fix for the average guy and I am a guy who always looks for the quickfix when I have a problem.

PS: One thing I have not read on any of these posts is something also that needs to be addressed. Ever wonder why some people rate software 5 stars and other people rate it 1? When you are editing video on a computer--that computer needs to not only have all the engine power, ram, etc. It also needs to be a dedicated computer. A dedicated computer is one that is only used for editing and you must keep it off the internet. No computer can be protected from the digital filth floating (spyware, malware, viruses) etc. in cyberspace.

That should be stated on every editing software package sold on the market and every professional review made available to the public (videomaker magazine etc)
does use an unpolluted PC for proper function. Furthermore! Though I have a dedicated computer for video editing you must keep it defragged monthly and use a registry fixer (windows has one free on the internet)to keep internal bugs from bugging your good working program. Kenn


Here is a link to some test footage I uploaded on YOUTUBE:
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