I found the beta AVCHD Splash Player and gave it a try. I looks very nice so I emailed them with a question:

I just downloaded your player and I am impressed – it looks good!

I like to shoot a lot of short video clips on my HD camera and I would to view them back to back in one continuous “stream”. For instance selecting a folder of files and playing them all back without any gaps in between files.

Can you are player do that, and if not is it possible in your product?

They quickly replied with:

We are happy that you like our player.

In next Splash BETA releases there will be available playback of all files within a folder.
The gap between files should be around 500ms for AVCHD.

Continuous playback of files in playlist (or folder) with no gaps and with optional video translations will be available later.
Probably we will add this feature after Splash PRO release.

So I replied back with:

Thanks for replying so quickly.

Do you know of any hardware solution to “Continuous playback of files in playlist (or folder) with no gaps”?

I have owned an AVCHD camera for almost two years and I can’t believe the only place I can play my files back to back without gaps is on my camera hooked up to my TV. I can’t understand why someone can’t take that chip within the camera and put it in a black box that I can stream from my network.

I have tried the Popcorn Hour, Xbox360 and the Western Digital WD devices but none of them will play my files seamlessly.

Looking forward to when you have this issue resolved from a software perspective.

They Replied:

We are sorry but we do not know any h/w or s/w solution to play AVC video with no gaps.
It’s tricky to develop, and probably not much desired by users – otherwise it would be available in software on the market.

We are going to develop this feature after we release Splash PRO version.
However Splash beta will feature playlist playback mode without black screens between files (last frame will be displayed for a while instead of black screen).

Best Regards
Mirillis Team

[7/21/09] Then I replied after I downloaded version Beta 4:

I just downloaded version beta 4. I was wondering if there is a way to play multiple files yet from a folder or is that coming in a later release?

They Replied:

At the moment you can browse through video files within current folder by “previous” and “next” buttons (or by keyboard: PageUp/PageDown).
Automatic playback of next video file in a folder should be available in Splash BETA 5.

Then I replied:

I just downloaded your player and I am impressed – it looks good! I like to shoot a lot of short video clips on my HD camera and I would to view them back to back in one continuous “stream”. For instance selecting a folder of files and playing them all back without any gaps in between files. Can you are player do that, and if not is it possible in your product?

Mirillis Replied:

We would like to inform you that released Splash BETA 5 supports automatic playback of next files.
The gap between files should be quite short, especially on Windows Vista and 7.
This is probably the shortest gap available in software players and shortest gap that we can achieve at the moment. We will work on more advanced solutions, it will be available probably next year.

I replied:

Wow, you are so close to having that working. I have not timed it accurately yet but I am thinking there is about a 500ms gap between files. Basically what I see is last frame of the clip freezes for 500ms before the next clip in the folder begins. Very very impressive, you are so close to having this work. By the way I am on Vista, I will try it on my Windows 7 machine soon. I can’t wait to see what you have planned for next year.

UPDATE: this has been fixed with version Pro 9.0a. I am glad they fixed it because using the Sony AVC encoder for instance would create a 50.9 meg file while the MainConcept one did it in 26.1 meg for a minute and a half video.

I got my copy of Pro 9 the other day and I can’t seem to render to MainConcept with the two-pass parameter checked.

I have been working with Sony’s tech support but no resolution yet, is anybody else getting this problem?

This is the response I got from Sony:

Thank you for reporting this. I was able to reproduce this exception error when rendering as .mp4, two-pass. This is a known issue and our development team is aware of it. They are currently working on fixing the problem. In the mean time, a possible work-around would be to render your footage as Sony AVC and choose any of the Memory Stick options from the Template drop down menu. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused, but do appreciate your understanding.

Unfortunately, there is no known resolution date as of yet. Please check out our website in the coming weeks for an updated version of Vegas Pro 9.0.

Check for updates here:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/updates/vegaspro

Here is a video of me boarding with David Besnette at Eldora Mountain Resort just 30 minutes from Boulder Colorado.

I always thought it would be fun to capture a day of boarding on video, so I took the risk and packed the HD camera in my pocket. Luckly the camera survived the day and I was able to edit this video together.

I have a new site called Learning DSLR Video if you want to see more videos like this one.

Here’s a tour of my DIY (do-it-yourself) video studio in my basement. Several people have asked how I create some of my videos, so I thought I would give back to the web community and provide a tour of how I do it.

Steve Higgins is filming the video and he is the one I am giving the tour to. He wants to create similar videos to mine.

This is part 1 of a 3 part video series I will finish off later when I have time.

I have been doing video for a little over a year and have learned a ton from watching others online like Eric Franks, Mark Apsolon, DJTV and Izzy Video.

In this video I just brush over a lot of topics quickly but I think it gives you an idea of the equipment involved to create videos like I do. If you want to learn more about doing video lights on the cheap and green screen, watch Mark and Eric’s videos on the topic – they are excellent!

I think the total budget for all the equipement including the $1,000 camera and $150 Vegas software is less than $2,000. But the free info I got from others was priceless, so I want share so of that knowledge and give back if I can.

Next in the series will be editing and then uploading to YouTube (watch Eric’s first – it is dated but good). You can also watch me imitiating Eric in this video about how to upload to YouTube.