urgent plea RE: MTS file transfer problem
 

With my apologies for this (sort of ) cross post, please read my plea in the other "file transfer" thread. I'm desperate to find a useable way to transfer MTS files from my Canon Vixia HG20 to my computer's HD. Drag & drop isn't working. Canon recommends using Windows Live Movie Maker, but this tool is also so slow (3 hours transfer time for a 15 second clip!!) that it's impossible to use.

Computer is Intel i7 960 at 2.66 GHz - 6 GB of RAM - NVidia graphic card with 1 GB RAM. (And the computer is not overheating - operating at 24 C, which is ~ 80 F))

Bill Hansen

Bill -
Something is seriously wrong somewhere - I presume that the computer can see you camera as a "drive" (that's how my Sony cams work)? If the clips are under the 2G size (less than around 17 minutes), you should be able to just locate the files and drag and drop - pretty basic file management, but you say that's not working?

I've run into very few incompatibilities with Win7 so far, and your system should be more than powerful enough to work with the AVCHD files native (no transcoding).

Any chance you've tried other USB ports on your computer - that's the only thing I can think of is a bad port... it's basic file transfer stuff, but SOMETHING is choking the transfer.

just doesn't work
 

Dave -

Thanks very much for your reply.

Yes, the camcorder shows as a drive. Drag & drop from the camcorder doesn't work at all - not at all. I've spent much of the last several days trying every conceiveable method to get several irreplaceable files out of the camcorder's HD and into the computer. I was finally able to do it, using Windows Live Movie Maker - the only program which Canon says will allow file transfer. It took almost 36 hours to transfer about 20 minutes worth of video. I know that's almost impossible to believe, but that is what happened.

I even picked up another video camera to make sure it was the camera and not something in my new computer. The other camera, a JVC, transferred data almost instantly.

I was actively shopping for another camcorder (the JVC's video quality isn't what I wanted) when someone suggested trying the SD port for storage. Using a class 6 SDHC card, I can transfer 2 minutes of video in 21 seconds, which I think is acceptable. I'll hang onto the Canon Vixia for a while, because as a consumer level camcorder, it's pretty nice. But I'll never again record to the camera's HD. That worked just fine with Windows XP, but I guess it's just not going to work with Win 7.

My experience with Win 7 may not have been as good as yours, or as good as many people's. To me, it's an okay OS - but there are dozens of small things which are just not as easy to find, or to access, or which require 2-3 more mouse clicks. People say it's more secure than Win XP, which would be good. Otherwise, it seems to me that many things have been changed just for the sake of making them look different.

Thanks again fro your reply. My apologies for sounding off about Win 7 - I'll get used to it, I promise.

Bill

Weird! But, as you say, just use SD cards. I have an HF10 with internal storage but I never use it ... faster to just pull the card and injest with a USB card reader.