Canon VIXIA HF R20 Full HD Camcorder

Just received this yesterday, and I've had a chance to experiment with it in a nearby park today, a beautiful, sunny day in Southern California.Let me first say that I have relatively big hands, and have no trouble whatsoever operating this unit. It's very lightweight and fits quite nicely in my hand, with shooting controls (start/stop, zoom, power) pretty much where I expect to find them. Despite some reviewers' complaints about difficulty using this camcorder, I've had no trouble getting it do what I wanted without referring to the manual much at all (although I found that when I did have a question about a more obscure control or setting, the abbreviated printed manual is not very useful and tends to refer you to the PDF version on the accompanying CD-ROM disc annoyingly often).

A key consideration for me with this purchase is the ability to not only create very high quality 1080 resolution video, but also to have a way to easily watch the recordings on our 60" plasma TV and then store them on a shelf. The camcorder does have an HDMI port, but this is kind of a hassle when you want to watch your videos, as connections are not always convenient to make. So I wanted to make use of this camcorder's AVCHD function that allows a lossless transfer to DVD-R discs that will play on most Blu-ray players. To record an AVCHD Disc, you should use the FXD quality setting while shooting, which is the second highest bit rate (17 Mbps); using the higher MXD setting (24 Mbps) will require the accompanying PC software to scale it back down to 17 Mbps, so there's no point in using the highest setting if you want to make AVCHD Discs. Fortunately, the FXD setting looks great, and I was able to make a test AVCHD Disc without any difficulty using the "Video Browser" software that's bundled with the camcorder. Don't bother with the "Video Transfer" application that also comes with, as it's just a subset of the Video Browser tool and does not have as many features.


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