I bought the SR-11 here from Amazon. Got it in time to head straight to my son's basketball game literally right out of the box (I had bought an extra battery that was fully charged).
Programed the date/time, no prob. Then just started shooting the game (My son scored 31 pts..and we won!) I recorded in the HD just so I could see what it was like (plus it was by default set on that). Got home found the cables and plugged into the HD TV and it looked fantastic. Played back fine.
Then for the next test- iMovie and Final Cut Express... It mounted for iMovie and I was able to bring in the footage. I made a 25 minute highlights show. Went fine. At one point, had a little glitch when in the editing area the filmstrips weren't visiable, but you could tell they were still there because the pointer would show the dates/time of the shots. I know this may not be clear, but I think it happened due to me taking 80% of the footage and dragging it into the project window at one time. iMovie suggested I not, but I did. It was OK.
iMovie changes the file type so that it is not HD. I don't know much about the technical side of all that.
So I thought I would try to see the HD footage by importing and saving it with Final Cut Express (I don't own Pro.) I am not familiar with Final Cut Express only bought it so I could do slow mo because iMovie can't, but haven't used it once. I read a bunch around the forums, etc. and learned FCE will recognize the camera as "unknown" and it clips with the "Log and Transfer" (which I had no clue what it was). I really just wanted to get the HD footage on one of my backup drives to save (it was my son's career high pts).
FCE did see it with the Loop and Transfer. I really didn't know what I was doing, but started "saving" the clips in its original format, except I understand, it is "converted" to Apple Intermediate Codex...so something like that..read around you'll see info on this. The point is supposedly the file sizes increase. Bottomline line....it worked, BUT the file sizes are huge! I mean something like a 17 second clip is like 200 MG file.
I am thinking about getting Sony's DVDirect/Recorded/Blu-ray Disc Player and not using the computer to "save' the files at all. Also, I understand, if I shoot in "standard" mode and have HD files on the camera's harddrive , there are some problems...don't know the details...had something to do with either retrieving the files or the quality.
I am going to shoot footage in "standard" mode. The file sizes are smaller and I can use it easliy with iMovie.
Anyway, sorry for the typos and poor sentences....but that is where I am after 36 hours of owning this camera. Oh yeah, the software won't load on a Mac, fyi.
One a 1-5. I'd say a 4. The quality is excellent (of the footage). It is just I am not a "video" guru...the different file types, etc. and it is a little bit of a hassle not being able to work in it and save it as a native file (which isn't practical anyway due to the huge files, unless you are a professional, but for the average Joe- we have to figure out how to save the HD files, which is why I am looking at the Sony DV Direct. Burn them in HD to DVD and them take the footage to the Mac and then save it as a standard non-HD file type to play with in iMovie.
Hope this helps. I like the camera. The little face boxes are pretty cool when you are shooting footage at a basketball game. So, far I am pleased.
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