AVCHD back up question
 

I have a Sony HDR-HC3 HDV cam and I am having problems capturing sometimes. Im thinking of getting a HDR-SR7 for easy/faster upload of videos on the computer.

I have 4 questions

Are AVCHD HDD cams like the SR7 Drop out free since it is a hard drive ?

Is AVCHD really hard to edit ? It still comes out as a m2t right.

How much faster is it to tranfer over tape, twice realtime ?

And

If I edit the AVCHD videos can I render them to HDV 1080i and back them up to tape through my HDR-HC3 ?

Thanks

I have had my SR7 just a few weeks and my answers are approximate.
No drop out as per tape dropouts
AVCHD is hard on a computer to edit, just like HDV. Vegas seems to edit just fine and transcodes to SD MPEG2 for DVD in about half realtime. Much like the Sony Motion Browser software that comes with the camera.
You can just back up the files to DVD using Nero, as files or use Motion Browser software to create an AVCHD DVD that will play on the PC or a BluRay player.
I haven't done a timed test but transfer seems to be faster than half realtime, maybe faster since the only time I did this was initially with loading of software and about 2 hours of video and that took about 1 hour on my AMD X2 4200, WIn XP. IT should be like a laptop transfer to a desktop PC as these are the drives used in the SR7 I think.
I see no reason you can't back up to HDV tape. You will suffer the HDV render time though. Haven't tried that so can't tell you how long that would take. Seems cheaper and quicker to just make a few discs. You will get about 30 to 40mins on a DVD at the highest data rate. So far I have made both AVCHD and SD DVD's of the same clips and these took about the same time to create from the Motion Browser software. Play fine on PC and SD one work great on DVD player.

Ron Evans

Thanks Ron