Wednesday, October 13, 2010

There's HD, and then There is ....

Well bother. As I was messing with my camera at the football practice yesterday, I noticed multiple settings for HD recording. I have HD-FH, HD-FX, and HD-HQ. I've been recording in HQ, so I switched it in the middle of practice to FX. The difference in my still captures is noticeable, with more clarity and absolutely no blur when I pause the video to capture a photo. There is one setting that evidently is higher (FH). It warns that it can't take stills while videotaping, however.
Does this mean I also can't do captures from the video once I put it on computer?
Is the detail so high that my computer won't handle it?
Most importantly, am I better off with higher definition at night, or will that make everything worse?
I don't have the answers to those questions, yet. I wonder if I can convince my son to run around the yard this evening, or even up on the football field with lights? It might be time to call in some favors with the athletic director at the high school. Maybe I can trade some video footage for a short session on the football field in the evening.
One bad side to changing the HD settings is that I can't fit as much footage onto my card, and it pulls a little more battery to record in the higher settings. The translation? I'm going to have to pick up another battery, and another card, if I'm planning on getting an entire football game recorded.

On a separate note, my teaching mentor uses Corel Video Editor pro for his work, so I'm going to try that program and see if I like it as well as Pinnacle. Corel is less expensive to purchase. He was able to open up the HD videos from my camera on it, so it's worth trying, especially since he is pretty knowledgeable about video editing and recording.

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