Vixia HG-21 Video Capture Issues

October 3, 2009 10:27 AM

Hello, I am trying to capture AVCHD footage from a Canon Vixia HG21. The proprietary software included with the camera is no longer available to me and I need another solution. I would ideally like to use Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 but it is not recognizing the camera.

There is very little documentation regarding how to actually capture this video and maintain the HD quality. The .mts format, when pulled from the drive has significant ghosting, etc due to the encoding. Is there a simple solution to obtaining the footage that I am missing? I do recall at one point in the past seeing a post on a forum describing a precise order to plug in the camera but I can no longer locate it.

I am using Vista 64-bit with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.

It is not Vista's fault but thanks for asking.

posted by occidental to technology (6 comments total)

I should add, that canon and the company that makes the capture software bundled with the camera have been of no help. It is the other company's fault to each of them.
posted by occidental at 10:31 AM on October 3, 2009

There shouldn't be "ghosting" in the source - do you mean interlacing? Run MediaInfo against an .mts file and post the output of the text view here.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 10:47 AM on October 3, 2009

I believe I do mean interlacing, thanks!

General
ID : 0
Complete name : E:\SleepingSoundsVideo\00007.MTS
Format : BDAV
Format/Info : Blu-ray Video
File size : 31.5 MiB
Duration : 11s 488ms
Overall bit rate : 23.0 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 24.0 Mbps

Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Duration : 11s 378ms
Bit rate : 21.8 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Resolution : 24 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.352
Stream size : 29.6 MiB (94%)

Audio
ID : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Duration : 11s 488ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 256 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Video delay : -67ms
Stream size : 359 KiB (1%)
posted by occidental at 10:57 AM on October 3, 2009

I would like to jump in here and register my intense dislike for this format. We had to support it at work for Podcast Producer (OS X Server software) and ended up jumping through all sorts of hoops. Eventually, we settled on using ffmpeg with a script wrapper to encode it to Quicktime mov.

Sorry I can't help more. If you can find a Windows version of ffmpeg you might be able to write a bat script to do the same thing. But it's pretty challenging.
posted by sbutler at 12:26 PM on October 3, 2009

OK, you have an interlaced video. So you start with the MTS file. Here's how to get it in edting software:

1) Download and install Avisynth. You'll want the 32-bit version, as the 64-bit version is not yet all that stable.
2. Grab DGAVCIndex, extract it to a folder of your choice, and copy the DGAVCDecode.dll file to your Avisynth plugins folder.
3. Open DGAVCIndex, use it to open the MTS file, and index the MTS file using "Save project...". Once this completes, you'll have a .dga project file and a demuxed .AC3 audio file with the correct delay in the name (may be different than MediaInfo, trust DGAVCIndex).
4. Now make a new text file in Notepad that looks like this:

AVCSource("C:\Path\to\my\file.mts"

and save it as something.avs . This is an Avisynth script which can be opened as a "fake" raw video AVI file by any editing software which supports it.

4a. Should your software be unable to open AVS files, you can make an AVI from the AVS using MakeAVIs, which comes with recent builds of ffdshow. This file will work with any application that can handle YV12-in-AVI: e.g, most editing applications.
5. Open your AC3 file in your editing software and handle as usual. If your software doesn't support AC3, convert it to WAV first with BeHappy. If your software has no option to fix AC3 delay, then run the file through delaycut first to hit a delay of zero.

Should DGAVCIndex fail on this file (as it does on some types of interlacing), let me know and I can recommend a few alternate methods. Remember to deinterlace in Premier before resizing at all and/or cropping by other than a multiple of 4 vertically!
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 12:38 PM on October 4, 2009

Whoops, should be


AVCSource("C:\Path\to\my\file.mts")
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 12:52 PM on October 4, 2009