I guess there just aren't enough people demanding more logical video stuff.  I've learned from school projects that it is basically impossible to do something with a video camera without having at least some trouble.  Finding the right wires to get video off the camera, finding a port on a computer that can take the wire, editing it well, getting it onto a useful format (Never use Windows Movie Maker to put a video on a DVD - it likes to do it in a format that no DVD players can read), etc.  Most people who get video cameras just want to record home movies and plug it into their TV to show to relatives and don't know anything about computers, so the video camera companies can get away with having lousy stuff .

I use dazzle. * Now known as Pinnacle* It came with a box and cable set to hook any and all items to my PC for converting Movies from my older style Micro8 VCR style Video cam as well as it works for Older VCR's etc. Pretty much any thing with a video out, you can record from.

The down side is you have to record in real time, being you have to watch it as it records. But it does burn straight to DVD that is compatible with most DVD players. I do not know if the newer versions record in HD as I bought mine several years ago.

http://www.pinnaclesys.com

Frogboy, here is a link to a Wiki page discussing the AVCHD format. At the bottom is a list of editing software that supports AVCHD, some of which are known to be both very capable and multi-threaded (like Adobe Premier Pro).

I don't know what your system specs are, but AVCHD editing takes a pretty high-end computer.

if you have access to mac osx you might try final cut.  

for windows, give tmpgenc xpress 4 a try.  (outputs in hd & blu-ray i believe).  relatively easy to cut and re-encode.

AVCHD is an Mpeg 4 based codec though.   AVC is used on Blu-ray which is why it gets itself such a high spot.

Other then that, I feel your pain frogboy.   There is some open-source tools you might be able to use, but since they are open source the UI leaves something to be desired.   You're a programmer though, so I suspect you'll be able to deal with it.

If you say exactly what kind of video editing you want, then maybe I can help find some good software for you.

(don't you have the power to produce such video software that is efficient?)

I honestly can't imagine that frogboy has anything less then a high-end computer.   If nothing else he could just go to his work where they have machines I'd assum designed for video processing (they make their own cutscenes right?)

Well, I've used Movie Maker and the latest iteration of Roxio's Creator. While Creator 2009 is a lot less buggy than previous versions I've used (specifically, 8), all of the apps that I've ever used for editing haven't been the most stable apps I've ever run. The old Roxio crashed on me all the time, especially when trying to use the MyDVD module to create a DVD with menus, music, et cetera. I've only had one or two annoying and inexplicable crashes with the latest version. I have no experience with any of the Adobe products and because I just tinker with videos shot on a digital camera, buying an Adobe package specifically to edit video isn't in my budget.

I suspect part of this is the proliferation of formats, many of which are proprietary and don't play well with much of the available software. Anecdotally at least it seems as though many people have issues with Apple's QuickTime format, especially on PCs; oddly enough, that's the only format my Kodak camera records video in, so I have to use Roxio to convert any of those videos to something else--there really is no free software that does this, except for some dubious and buggy items you can find on download.com.

I don't think (if I recall correctly) that Vista's built-in apps can even handle .mov and similar formats. So maybe Gnats3 is right--maybe it comes down to too narrow a consumer base for people to produce really good software that works well for a variety of users.

For what it's worth, Roxio's website says that Creator 2009 can burn AVCHD to HD DVD (and I guess Blu-Ray discs too, if you buy the extra plug-in). Honestly, I think it's a bit ridiculous that they charge an extra $30 to burn to the format that "won the war," while you get HD-DVD out of the box!

Now that just takes all the fun out of it!

I'd argue that editing is a lot easier nowadays than analog with VHS or Betamax.

I sent you a pm on the sins forum *doesn't know how this whole intermingling with stardock sites works*

yeah, but what is the sacrifice.  Its one of those things, in on end of the field we could have a nice set of standards for video encoding, but in the other we have the fact that almost every standard for video encoding sucks, and good video codecs don't become standard until they are pretty much outdated.     So do we use crappy old codecs or try to keep up with the hardware.   *pulls at hair*

And lets not forget stupid video encoding algorithms.  "I can make this video encoder more efficient if I do it this way" says one programmer.  "But we have to use multiples of 4 for the screen dimensions.  Thats easy right?"   but, then joe so-mey wants his video to be 9 by 3 for some reason, but it doesn't fit the math of the compression software.  "Better make a new standard!" says joe.