The transcend 32gb class 10 SDHC flash memory card

Whenever your shooting in AVCHD on a professional camcorder like the Panasonic AG-HMC40 you are going to need a quality SDHC Card like the transcend 32gb class 10 sdhc flash memory card to capture all of your footage.  These SDHC cards are some of the highest rated, fastest and most reliable cards available today on the AVCHD world, and in the following article I will lay out why you want to go with a higher end card and why you want to go with a class 10.

What is SDHC?

Just a few years ago everything in the flash media world was simply referred to as an SD card.  SD stands for Secure Digital, and it is  one of the most popular form factor’s for flash memory storage on modern digital cameras and camcorders.  Some of the benefits for using SD based flash memory for recording include:

• all solid state design, no moving parts
• light, easily interchangeable format
• small form factor for each card (actual card dimensions are 32 x 24 mm)

Standard SD Cards come in storage capacities of 2MB – 2GB

SDHC or Secure Digital High Capacity cards are the most popular as of this writing because of their increasing speed and capacity.  SDHC Cards range in capacity from 2GB – 32GB in storage size, giving enormous flexibility to someone filming business commercials, weddings, or corporate events all day.  If you were filming an all day conference for example using the Panasonic AG-HMC40 in HE Shooting mode (6Mbps) on a Transcend 32gb class 10 sdhc flash memory card you could shoot continuously for approximately 12 hours without switching cards.

What’s with the Class?

On each SDHC card that’s worth looking at there will be a small number circled on the front of the card, and that’s called the class.  A class of an SDHC card is simply a speed measurement to indicate how quickly information can be written to the card.  This is important because you would never want to be shooting in a camera mode that’s faster than what the card can record, otherwise you could lose information in the middle of your shoot.

There are several classes of SDHC Cards including Class 1, 2, 4, 6, 10 and most recently class 30 cards.  The class number indicated the number of MB or Megabytes of data that can be written to the card per second.  For example, a class 4 Card can write data to the card at 4MB / second, or 32Mbps, (4MB, 8 Bits = 1 Byte, 4MB * 8 = 32Megabits per second recording rate)  The Panasonic HMC40 Professional Camcorder natively shoots at up to 24Mbps, but the camcorder also has a buffer that’s being written to in series with the card, and you have to factor in overhead.  The rule of thumb I use when considering which frame rate to use is take the data rate of the maximum rate that you shoot in (24mbps) double it to factor in the buffer and speed shots (48Mbps) then calculate a class of card that will keep up with that shooting rate.  Class 6 cards * 8 = 48Mbps shooting rate exactly equals maximum capacity, so just to be safe and because the price difference is minimal, I jump up to the Class 10 cards * 8 = 80Mbps.

The next generation of standards is called SDXC cards, and they hold true to the same concepts as SDHC, except their capacity ranges from 32GB – 2TB in total capacity.  Everything in the AVCHD workflow that I recommend is based on SDHC flash memory, so that’s why I recommend purchasing the 32GB transcend class 10 SDHC cards for implementing your video solution.

Here is the price breakdown for various card capacities (based on November 2011 prices)

Transcend 8GB class 10 SDHC Card:   $11.29 = $1.41 per GB

Transcend 16GB class 10 SDHC Card: $22.31 = $1.39 per GB

Transcend 32GB class 10 SDHC Card: $42.81 = $1.32 per GB

Over time prices are continually coming down for electronics, so please don’t hold fast to these prices.  The point that I’m trying to make here though is that Flash Memory is generally cheaper when you buy in bulk, the 32GB card is 7% cheaper in the price per Gigabyte of storage capacity, even though you pay a little more up front.  Any and all of the products that I recommend are an investment.  If your ready to invest in your business now, then follow the link below to purchase the Transcend 32GB class 10 SDHC card on Amazon, the only place I recommend purchasing hardware.