• Apple OS X

  Panasonic With My Mac

  Posted by Jacob Fravel on January 4, 2011 at 3:52 am

  Recently I bought a Panasonic HDC-SD60. I am young (16), and an aspiring filmmaker, so I cannot afford a professional quality camera, this was the best HD camcorder I could get. When shooting indoors the video comes out kind of grainy on the camera, not too bad though. When I shoot outdoors, the video comes out crystal clear, great quality.

  When I import it to my mac via iMovie, the picture looks poor, very grainy, either way (inside or outside). According to reviews, I should not get this poor of quality (indoors or out) I’ve tried to import into Final Cut Express, but it crashes every time. I also have the (Student Edition) Adobe Production Premium. When I try to import into Premiere of After Effects, the quality is still poor, but not as bad as iMovie. So, for the sake of editing, I went to export it as a .mov file in Apple Intermediate Codec. When I opened the file, Quicktime said it did not recognize the codec.

  I’ve read on various forums that usually the cause for this grain and poor quality the lack of the right codec. I have no idea whats left to do. I’m considering returning the camera and saving another $100 for a sony that apparently has better quality. I just don’t know if it will work.

  P.S. Recording in HA mode, 1080i, 8 GB Class 10 SanDisk SDHC Card, Macbook Pro 2.44 Ghz, 4 GB RAM, 250 GB HDD, Intel Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA GeForce 320M

  Jacob Fravel replied 15 years, 8 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Zane Barker

  January 4, 2011 at 9:03 am

  Will the files from the camera play on the Mac if you simply copy them to the computer directly from the camera?

  If they do try converting the footage using mpeg streamclip.

  **Hindsight is always 1080p**
• 

  Jacob Fravel

  January 10, 2011 at 11:27 pm

  So I talked with Apple, and we were able to work out that the stabilization feature in iMovie was causing some of it. I’m still getting grain, mainly in solid colors, almost like the pixels are having a hard time interpreting the color. I’m also getting pretty bad motion blur when I pan the camera, this thing is supposed to shoot at 60 fps. I’m seriously getting sick of this. I’ve tried final cut, which apparently produces a better image, but it crashes every time.

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