AVCHD Decompression?

Hey guys,
   I recently bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS19K for $220.00 (awesome deal!) and it records AVCHD 1920x1080 60p at 28-30 mbps bit rate. The quailty isn't bad, I just like working with uncompressed files like YUV 4:2:2 etc. Since I upload to YouTube, which compresses like crazy, I want to keep the crisp image I get on my monitor on YT as well.. Now, I understand that AVCHD uses a proprietary algorithm to compress data so it can write it on a standard SD card. I want to decompress the video to a uncompressed format( reverse the compression), but various google searches have yielded old 2008-ish answers.
   If there are any of you who knows how to decompress the compression on CS6 (I bought the master collection... pricey), please share any info.
As for my hardware, I am an avid gamer, so my PC serves a dual purpose when editing PS. I am using windows 7
Here are my specs
Intel 3770K @ 5.2 Ghz watercooled by XSPC 360mm rad ( over 24 hrs of O.C to get here)
16 GB DDR3 @ 1866
Asrock OC Formula Board
4 x 1000 GB Carviar Black drives in RAID 0 @ 420 read / 380 Write
Asus GTX 560 Ti ( in Mercury Playback Engine config)
LSI 9207-8i RAID card
4 X Samsung 128 GB 830's RAID 0    Read seq: 2014 mb/s Write Seq: 1228 mb/s

I thought that compression worked like a .zip or .rar file.
That depends on the compression scheme used. Zip and RAR are lossless, meaning you can reproduce the original exactly as it was. There are lossless video compression methods, like the Lagarith and UT codecs, but AVCHD (or anything MPEG based) isn't one of them. Even ProRes and DNxHD aren't lossless.
Now the reason this is important to understand is that you can't see a compressed video signal. It has to be decompressed for you to see it. PP will decompress each frame as it shows it. Your DVD or Blu-ray player will do the same. Windows Media Player and QuickTime players, the Flash player on the YouTube web page, all will decompress the video so you can see it. And despite some claims to the contrary, you not only can put back what was thrown out during compression, you have to put it back in order to see the image.
The issue is how accurately it gets put back. With lossless compression codecs, it gets put back exactly as it was originally, without alteration. With lossy compression codecs like AVCHD, there are always errors recreating what was thrown out during compression. Those errors are called artifacts.
Here's the point I'm getting to. Once the image is compressed using a lossy codec like AVCHD, those decompression artifacts are going to show up whether PP decompresses it for viewing or another program decompresses it to a new Uncompressed file. You can't avoid it. There just isn't enough data to restore the image without errors, no matter what hardware or software does the work of decompression. This is why people are saying there's no point turning your AVCHD into Uncompressed for editing. The errors will show up regardless. All you do by converting is waste time and disk space.
Working with Uncompressed YUV 4:2:2 is a nice idea, but unfortunately there isn't a camera on the market that can do this. The only 'exception' might be the new Black Magic Cinema Camera, which can record to lossless CinemaDNG RAW files. But that's a pricey proposition with a headache of a work flow. Other than that, every camera out there will compresses the video in some way, throwing out data that causes errors to show up when decompressed. Even the RED cameras Peter Jackson is using for The Hobbit aren't perfectly lossless. Of course, the errors are likely to be so small and insignificant that no one will ever see them.
While the AVCHD codec will generate more errors than Redcode RAW, it's still a pretty clean codec overall. The errors are likely to go unnoticed by most people in most situations. So, for your YouTube uploads, you're fine just using the AVCHD media from the camera.

Similar Messages

Do I need to transcode .MTS (AVCHD) files before editing?

I am quite new to all this, so forgive me if my question is unclear or just plain dumb. I am shooting footage with a Panasonic GH2 which outputs clips as AVCHD. I understand that this is highly compressed. I am perfectly able to edit these short clips (less than 1 min) in PP CS5 and export them as mp4 or .MOV files. They seem to play back just fine in the Windows Media Player. However, I am shooting footage destined for online stock companies and I am concerned that, without some form of decompression prior to editing, I will be degrading the footage too much. Is this the case? If so, what should I transcode to before importing to PP? I am using Adobe Media Encoder as part of CS5 Production Premium.

You are mixing a few things up.
CS5.5 can edit AVCHD natively.
What MPE can do for you read the link
http://blogs.adobe.com/premiereprotraining/2011/02/cuda-mercury-playback-engine-and-adobe- premiere-pro.html
function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
In another way, I guess it's not good news if I have to do any color/exposure correcting, etc inPrPro or After Effects, as I'll be degrading the footage further. Is that correct?
Yes, but a certified card wont change that.

AVCHD to DVD

I have hours of footage to edit in .MTS format (1440x1080, 1.3333 PAR, 29.97 fps), and I figure since I will be burning the end resut to a DVD anyway, it would make sense to decompress all my raw footage into something a little less taxing on my hardware before I start editing it. My head is spinning after reading through the forums on editing AVCHD files and I'm overwhelmed by all of the video encoding options available. I'm thinking Adobe Media Encoder should do the trick (I'm running CS4 on a mac), but which format should I choose?
My inital thought was MPEG-2 DVD (duh), but that separates the audio out and I don't want to deal with linking the audio back up every time I need a segment from that clip. Plus I can't believe that is the same quality of a DVD - it seems so bad compared to the 1080 footage!
I also thought Quicktime (NTSC DV Widescreen) would be a good option, but it seems like even lower quality than the MPEG2 for 6 times the file size.
If anyone knows of a good resource to learn about the myriad of video file formats, I would love to try and understand the differences.

iDVD does not author Blu Ray discs...besides the S300 apparently does not play back BD-R discs. See the threads below:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1073231&tstart=0
Message was edited by: Eric Pautsch1

AVCHD Camcorder to DVD Advice Needed - Am I Doing This Right?

Hi All,
I have a MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz Intel Core Duo with 2GB memory. I also have a Canon HG10 AVCHD Camcorder. I took a total of 2.5 hours of video footage.
1. I attached the camcorder to my computer via USB and downloaded the movie off of my camcorder onto my laptop - this took about 2.5 hours to do.
2. Then I wanted to make a DVD out of the footage and created a DVD in iDVD. I loaded the movie from iMovie and created a DVD - this took about 5 hours.
3. Then I burned the first DVD - this took over 2 hours.
4. I burned additional DVDs as gifts - and each of these took about 19 minutes.
My questions are: Am I doing this correctly? Does one 2.5 hours of filming really need to take so long to decompress or whatever it is doing? Would I have been better off using iMovieHD? I'm sorry to sound so stupid, but I am very new to camcorders and iMovie/iDVD. Many thanks for your help and understanding.

Let me see if I can describe it easier
Step 1 - transferred 2.5 hours of video footage from my Canon HG10 to my MacBook Pro (took about 2.5 hours to do) this was put into iMovie '08 with no problem
Step 2 - I created a DVD in iDVD with 1 song out of iTunes as the Main Screen of the DVD, created 1 chapter for the Movie itself, and 1 Slideshow of pictures with 1 song from iTunes. I then pressed burn DVD - which it took over 5 hours to burn the first DVD
Step 3 - additional DVDs took 19 minutes to burn after the first one.
I hope this helps. I might of messed up on my first post. Thanks!

Multi-camera AVCHD editing workflow in Premiere CS4

I have a client project that has me wondering what workflow to use and I someone on this forum probably has the expertise to know the right solution. My requirements...
1. Client is recording a scene using 4 cameras at once, like a live TV show is shot, all AVCHD footage, 1920x1080px 17mbs, square pixels.
2. I must playback in Premiere the 4 video streams in real time and choose one camera to output, like a director would switch a live TV show. So, all 4 streams are playing in Premiere's multiple-camera editing windows. Each show I'm editing is about 1 hour long. The advantage of multi-camera editing of course is I can play all 4 cameras at once and live switch between them in Premiere to arrive at a 1 hour show in 1 hour of editing time.
3. Until I can upgrade my hardware that can possibly handle 4 streams of AVCHD, I'm stuck needing a workflow to convert the original AVCHD to some lowres format, edit those offline low res copies to get my edit decision list, and then reconnect the online HDV AVCHD clips to export through Media Encoder for a final production. My output format is Flash F4V 640x360 px square pixels for Internet playback.
4. Hardware: I'm running Windows 7 RC using CS4 Premiere 4.1, 4gb RAM, 2.4ghz dual-core processor with 64mb Intel turbo boost on a notebook PC. I do have 4 hard drives to hold each camera's footage on its own drive, and a fifth drive to ouput the edited version to, in addition to a drive to hold my OS and Premiere. The external drives are connected via eSATA to the notebook.
Question 1: what do you suggest as the lowres format I should convert my AVCHD footage to for multi-camera playback/editing in Premiere?
Question 2: do you think it's even possible to buy a desktop PC that can handle playback of 4 multicam AVCHD native format files in Premiere in real time? I'm concerned this may be too much for even the most powerful systems, and I would need to resort to editing lowres footage even with the most powerful desktop. As you know, decompressing one or two AVCHD streams is taxing to a PC so 4 at once is a challenge.
Question 3: an alternative workflow would be to feed live video out of the HDMI connectors on the cameras into four HDMI capture cards (Intensity Blackmagic) and capture uncompressed HDV bypassing AVCHD compression altogether, but the disk space required would be substantial. Does this make sense? I've even considered feeding those 4 HDMI feeds into a video switcher between the cameras and PCs but the cheapest solution I can find that can provide genlock (frame sync) between the 4 cameras for clean glitch-free switching is quite expensive, thousands of dollars invested.

I must playback in Premiere the 4 video streams in real time
Good luck with that. Many folks have trouble with even one stream.
edit those offline low res copies to get my edit decision list
I'm not sure offline editing with AVCHD will be possible because of the folder structure. You may not be able to 'replace' the lower res copies with AVCHD.
My output format is Flash F4V 640x360 px square pixels for Internet playback.
Oh, man. Shooting HD of any flavor is just overkill that adds unnecessary work to the process. Have your client shoot in DV.

Best method for importing AVCHD

Another AVCHD question. Which method would give the best quality?
1) Import AVCHD via FCP log and capture using Pro res.
2) Import via HDMI using Blackmagic Intenisty card.
Thanks in advance. I've found a lot of good info so far by reading older posts.

Much of a muchness really ... do you intend to work in ProRes?
Log and Transfer will access the RAW data, decompress it in software and the recompress to ProRes, whereas Log and Capture will access an the uncompressed data as provided from the camera via the Intensity card and then compress that to whatever you've chosen.
If you want to work in ProRes (or AIC) then you may see faster than realtime ingest using Log and Transfer, but if you want to work in DVCProHD or other then you'd want to use Log and Capture.

Decompressing video files using After effects

Hello!!
I have a SONY Full HD camcorder that records in an AVCHD format.
So when I import my clips into my computer's hard drive, they are compressed. That meens that I have to decompress them in order to work with the best quality.
So, I use After Effects to export the AVCHD clips totaly uncompressed (I export them into none compressed Quicktime files). Then I re-import the uncompressed Quicktime clips into After Effects and start working with them, adding effects, color correction and so on. When I finish, I export them again totally uncompressed, in order to import them to Premiere for the final editting. I do that because I do not own an Adobe production suite so that to use Adobe Link for transfering files from After Effects to Premiere.
I decompress all my AVCHD clips because I won't need to apply effects to all of them, so some will go straight to Premiere without passing through After effects, since there is no need. So they must be decompressed.
I have noticed that when I decompressed an AVCHD clip, it got 578 GB from 84GB. So when I re-imported the uncompressed 578 GB clip in After Effects and added some effects and color correction, the final clip got out 392GB, although I chose the uncompressed settings and although I added effects. Normally it should be more than 578 GB.
Would you happen to know why is that?
Do you have any other suggestion of how should I decompress my camcorder clips? I have Quicktime but I cannot play AVCHD files, since it is an unsupported format for Quicktime.
Thank you!!
Giannis

After Effects and added some effects and color correction, the final clip got out 392GB, although I chose the uncompressed settings and although I added effects. Normally it should be more than 578 GB.
The default QT output uses the Animation CoDec, which is a visually lossless compression. No problem here and I think you are overdoing. There is nothing wrong with converting files e.g. to LZW compressed TIFFs, PNG or EXR files, all formats producing much smaller file sizes than QT files and without losing any info...
Mylenium

Audio conforming nightmare - Premiere 2014 - Mac OS 10.9.5 - AVCHD

We shoot a lot of AVCHD and I've often had audio conforming problems but I think it is actually worse in the latest version.
I did a four camera shoot of a guest lecturer yesterday. I archived all four cards (entire cord structure) and then wisely put them onto our pristine backup because I know Premiere 'touches' source folders. Then I brought them into Premiere and waited for the clips to conform. After they did **none** of them had any audio (even though the original files were fine). I couldn't find any evidence of conforming files in the STREAM. Where is that information stored?
I decided the easiest thing to do was just to trash the project and start again. This time I imported each card individually, waited for it to conform and checked that the audio was there before I brought in the next card. The first three went in fine; the last one did not. The audio conformed but it sounded garbled, like it decompressed wrong. Also, it stopped about halfway through even though the audio on the card was fine.
Finally, I connected to our pristine archive to retrieve the original, untouched files. That's when I noticed that the files in the local, Working Scratch, folder were about 2 gig bigger than the original files in the Pristine Archive for the cameras that *had* conformed properly. Clearly Adobe is storing something in there somewhere but Apple, in their infinite wisdom, has determined that I don't need to know what is it or where it's been put! Help! If I could find the files I could trash them locally and re-conform. Thank goodness for the Pristine Archive and I *always* put stuff there before I start to edit but... um... other folks don't.
Where does Adobe store the 2 gig of conforming info and why won't Apple let me see it?

We shoot a lot of AVCHD and I've often had audio conforming problems but I think it is actually worse in the latest version.
I did a four camera shoot of a guest lecturer yesterday. I archived all four cards (entire cord structure) and then wisely put them onto our pristine backup because I know Premiere 'touches' source folders. Then I brought them into Premiere and waited for the clips to conform. After they did **none** of them had any audio (even though the original files were fine). I couldn't find any evidence of conforming files in the STREAM. Where is that information stored?
I decided the easiest thing to do was just to trash the project and start again. This time I imported each card individually, waited for it to conform and checked that the audio was there before I brought in the next card. The first three went in fine; the last one did not. The audio conformed but it sounded garbled, like it decompressed wrong. Also, it stopped about halfway through even though the audio on the card was fine.
Finally, I connected to our pristine archive to retrieve the original, untouched files. That's when I noticed that the files in the local, Working Scratch, folder were about 2 gig bigger than the original files in the Pristine Archive for the cameras that *had* conformed properly. Clearly Adobe is storing something in there somewhere but Apple, in their infinite wisdom, has determined that I don't need to know what is it or where it's been put! Help! If I could find the files I could trash them locally and re-conform. Thank goodness for the Pristine Archive and I *always* put stuff there before I start to edit but... um... other folks don't.
Where does Adobe store the 2 gig of conforming info and why won't Apple let me see it?

PS CS6 Processing of Canon Camcorder AVCHD Files

Trying to process MTS outputs from my Canon Camcorder. Files run in WMV and Windows Live Movie Maker (needs to wait while the files are uncompressed). WHen opened if PS CS6 files is present. When playing, frame rates drop to as slow as 3 fps. I have a quad processor and as I have indicated, the files play at normal speed. Have tried saving but have seen that the saved file is also dropping frames.

Jeff
I had to build a new system to run Premiere Pro CS5 with 1080p H.264 files from a Canon DSLR, and they are similar in that they are highly compressed, which means a lot of work for the processor. You are running Windows, so bring up the Task Manager and monitor CPU and memory usage while CS6 tries to play your video. I am betting one or both will be maxed out. There is a difference between playing the file in Media Player and Photoshop, because the former does not need to decompress the file on the fly. Photoshop does.
In order to satisfactorily view my DSLR footage on the timeline, I built a system with an 17 3930K six core running at 4Ghz with 32Gb RAM and a GTX570. When I first tried this system it still wasn’t coping because the drives were not fast enough, and I had to create a couple of raid0 arrays. I am now able to smoothly scrub through anything I care to throw at Premiere Pro. I have not tried video with Photoshop CS6, but I would imagine the same constraints would apply. What we need in this thread is for people with mid spec’d systems who have tried CS6 with 1080p H.264 or AVCHD, to say how their systems faired.
If Photoshop CS6 does have the same sort of system requirements as Premiere Pro, then you’ll find all the info you need over on the Premiere Pro hardware forum, But Bill Gehrke spends time here, and will likely have something to say.

AVCHD and iMovie 08

Ok, I tried to do a search as to not clutter the discussion forums any more than they are.
I am considering purchasing the new Canon HG10. It uses AVCHD. Now I know that there is a lot of dicussion on this. So .. here is my question.
I understand the iMovie 08 imports it in and converts it to a Quicktime format of some sort. How does this effect it being "HD Quality"? Does it stay in the same size and quality? I know that AVCHD is a complicated compression but I just want to know if it impairs the quality a lot by this process.
Also when burning these files do they burn in HD? IE: Do I still need to play them on a particular player or use specific media to burn them?
I am sorry for the N00BIE questions but I am a Noobie when it comes to this stuff.
Thanks for any information you can provide to me.

Winston Churchill wrote:
This couldn't be more wrong.
AIC is lossless, indeed when converting your compressed AVCHD file, AIC decompresses it and stores each and every frame as a key frame (full quality) hence the large file sizes.
That couldn't be more wrong! I thought I'd be original and change "this" to "that"! You probably shouldn't speak in absolutes, unless you are absolutely sure of what you are talking about and absolutely clear in what you mean. I'm not sure whether your understanding is at fault or your clarity in expressing yourself, so I will explain below.
I'm pretty certain that you are mistaken about AIC being lossless. From what I have read, you are correct that AIC stores each frame as a key frame. However, you are incorrect in your assumption that a key frame is "full quality".
There are two primary ways that video compression algorithms work - spatial compression and temporal compression. Spatial compression involves compressing the data in each frame. This is often done using a discrete cosine transform (DCT) algorithm and is lossy. Simpler video compression algorithms like DV only use spatial compression.
Temporal compression schemes divide up frames into two types: key frames and predictive frames. There can be multiple types of predictive frames. The key frames are spatially compressed and occur throughout the video stream at regular or irregular intervals, depending on the format type. The frames in between key frames are drawn only by referencing the changes that have happened since the last key frame and the changes required before the next key frame. This greatly reduces the amount of data stored between key frames.
MPEG-2, for example, utilizes spatial compression in the key frames (I-frames) and temporal compression in the form of P-frames and B-frames. AVCHD also uses both spatial and temporal compression schemes, although AVCHD (based on H.264) is much more advanced than MPEG-2 in the algorithm by which this compression is achieved. AIC on the other hand, only uses spatial compression and thus every frame is a key frame (a key frame, but still a compressed frame!).
Where you may be correct (and where I may be incorrect) is in the conversion between AVCHD and AIC. The AIC codec is lossy, but the conversion between the two may be lossless IF AIC builds all of its frames directly from the AVCHD frames without decompressing and recompressing them.
Here is where my knowledge begins to run dry. If you have a reference or link to an article that establishes that the conversion between AVCHD and AIC is a lossless conversion, then I happily concede that no quality will be lost in converting between AVCHD and AIC. However, if you cannot establish this, then I will continue to play it safe and assume that there is some quality loss in the conversion. Thanks for tuning in

Please doublecheck my understanding about AVCHD and Macs

Ours is substantially a Mac household because we appreciate the simplicity of OS-X and Macs in general. I am in the market for an AVCHD based HD camcorder and a new computer to handle its video. After a few weeks of reading here, I am leaning towards a PC, but before I do that, I would like to lay out my reasoning on the chance that I misunderstand some things that could tip the balance back towards a Mac.
First, with a powerful enough computer, under Windows, Sony Vegas (for well under one hundred dollars), will edit AVCHD directly. There may be other PC software that does this as well or better. Using such software, I can burn the AVCHD file to a standard DVD disk and play it on a blue ray player, or to an SDHC card and play it on a device that plays AVCHD from an SDHC card. I have been running the Windows 7 RC on our one last remaining PC, and it has been a pleasure to use. Maybe not all the way to OS-X, but close (in fact, compared to the one computer I upgraded to Snow Leopard and the problems I had with Front Row, in some respects the Win7 RC has been better than OS-X).
iMovie will import AVCHD, but in doing so it will convert it to AIC. That will cause the file size to grow by about 4X. And editing a 1080i video (or any interlaced video) will strip out half of the lines to down convert it to 540p. The alternatives are to either download and install some other software (free or low cost) to convert the AVCHD file from interlaced to progressive, or to limit my shooting to 24p....so I would be limited to only cameras that support that mode.
With all these changes to the file in iMovie, I would not be able to burn the file to a DVD or an SDHC card in AVCHD format to play on my blue-ray player or HDTV (both of which have AVCHD-capable SDHC slots for this purpose).
The other Mac software alternatives are either Final Cut Express, or Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Express has the same issues as iMovie. FCP will not down convert the file to 540p if I import to Apple ProRes. It has a list price of about one thousand dollars.
When I balance the issues, it is pretty clear to me that Win7 on a PC quad core desktop with a beefy video card is my best option for video. I still have my old Macs for doing day to day stuff. But I would love to find out that I have missed something and that I can edit and export AVCHD on a Mac without the hassle of bloated files and kludgy workarounds.
Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Barry Speronello wrote:
Thank-you both for your responses. Winston, please let me ask for clarification of some of your points. If I understand you correctly, maybe I can stay with a Mac and just buy a much bigger hard drive to handle the big AIC files.
It's possible to save a great deal of space by importing your AVCHD files as AIC for imovie and copying them (drag and drop to an area on your drive for archives), once you have edited your video in imovie, you can delete the project and associated AIC files content in the knowledge you can always import to AIC again from your archive should you ever need to return to re-edit.
You wrote: "...well it's not actually all that bad since your 1080i is actually only 540 fields every frame". I am impressed by what I see as a significant difference between 480p (p, not i) and 1080i images on a large TV. That is why I was focusing on 1080 HD camcorders. Is there something special about the 540 line export that would make it materially better than 480p for display on a modern 46" plasma HDTV?
I suppose you could say there was something special about 540 lines of resolution, in that twice 540 is 1080. 1080i actually displays 540 odd and then 540 even lines 30 times a second, throwing away the odd lines and making the even lines progressive isn't quite the same thing but it gives a surprisingly good result, much better than proportionally better than 480.
Take a look at this movie (ignore the camera work/standing to near the bass player - it's our party and I'd had more than a few beers),
http://gallery.me.com/gartside1104#101874
I used a Sony HDR SR8 AVCHD camera (1080i/25 fps @ 15 mbps) and a canon xm2 DV camera (576i/25fps) the later being quite a good camera. I made the mistake of shooting in 4:3 with the DV camera so had to crop the video to the equivalent of around 433 vertical lines which makes it a little worse than your 480i but you get the idea. Don't forget to view the video as large and set it to play at full screen.
The information that one can export nearly source-quality 1080i video after editing in iMovie as AIC is encouraging to me. There are 3 points to that for me.
You can't export 1080i from imovie, I didn't actually say that, what you can do is export 1080p, Although I think we are supposed to be able to export 1080i because there is a setting for it although it doesn't work. I'm assuming it's a bug that will get ironed out, the same 1080i export option in QT works just fine.
1) The point that you make earlier in your note that upon conversion to AIC only "...technically speaking only a small amount of loss in quality..". And the inference that there will be no further loss in quality upon the back-conversion from AIC to AVCHD. That is a pretty subjective analysis and I'd appreciate others' opinion on the degree of quality-loss upon that double conversion (AVCHD to AIC to AVCHD). I am skeptical, but open to the possibility.
You can't export to AVCHD with imovie, I didn't actually say that, what you can do is export to AVC. (AVCHD is h264 in an mpeg2 stream, AVC is h264 in an mpeg4 stream, they may contain the same codec but have different containers). And yes I agree, every conversion will result in some quality loss, noticeable or not. I don't use a pc for editing and have never used sony vegas, but I would imagine that native editing merely means the particular chunk of video you are applying an edit to is decompressed rendered and re-compressed and would result in a similar loss of quality.
2) I wasn't aware that Quicktime would export 1920x1080 AVCHD video from a file that had been converted to AIC from 1080i AVCHD. What version would I need, and is it still available. I have Snow Leopard that I will eventually be re-installing on my machines (once the issues with Front Row and some other things are corrected). Will QT-X in Snow Leopard do this? I do not own QT-Pro. Can I still purchase it if I need it to do the export?
Again Quicktime doesn't export to AVCHD, but it does have 1440 x 1080 and 1920 x 1080 AVC export settings. What I was trying to say was that while I don't have one, I was assuming that many blu-ray players and tv's with card slots would support the playback of AVC as well as AVCHD, although I can't in anyway be sure.
3) I presume that the re-exported files go back to being much smaller than the AIC version...ie, that they are about 1/4th the size of the AIC file from which they were created? Please confirm that. I need the compactness of AVCHD to fit a reasonable amount of video onto standard DVDs and reasonably sized SDHC cards.
The AVCHD files that I started the aforementioned movie with were 15 mbps, AIC decompresses these to between 80 and 100 mbps, the movie I created at 960 x 540 is about 3.6 mbps
Regarding burning of the exported AVCHD file to DVD or SDHC card, couldn't I use Toast, as suggested by Steve Mullin above, to do that?
Sorry I don't know anything about toast, I'm assuming you stick the AVC file on the DVD or data card as data and not as a DVD or other format.
Finally, I am not familiar with AVC and don't know if my devices will handle it (the user guides only mention AVCHD). If it is just a lower-res version of AVCHD, then I suspect that they might handle it, but I don't think that it would do what I want it to do. Is it lower res AVCHD, or is it a different way to output 1080 resolution video?
Hopefully I've answered that.
QT Pro is a key that unlocks a number of features in QT 7, QT 7 is still available and so is the pro key, although as I say it does not export to AVCHD. If the AVC format is a problem for you getting it to your tv, then the mac may be an issue for you as I'm not aware of any software that will create AVCHD on the mac.
Message was edited by: Winston Churchill

Canon Camcorder AVCHD Unreadable?

I Am very frustrated right now.I've been spending Hours and hours trying to figure this out! I am using a Macbook pro. I purchased a PNY 8gb sd card along with a Canon Vixia HF R300, I recorded some video clips.I got all excited until the files were unreadable, I thought its just the Mac, I then try Toshba Laptop and a Hp desktop. and the files still can't be read. I went to bestbuy for help, and installed the Image Browser EX from the CD, Still it can't see my SD cards video clips files! I tried google online and downloaded VLC and aimersoft video converter, I dragged the files and it showed the files 0.0 seconds of play. UNREADABLE still. But I can play it on my camcorder.PLEASE HELP!! I'm so MAD AT these Technology and products!!! What is the problem???Thank You , The Files are in format AVCHD.

Jeff
I had to build a new system to run Premiere Pro CS5 with 1080p H.264 files from a Canon DSLR, and they are similar in that they are highly compressed, which means a lot of work for the processor. You are running Windows, so bring up the Task Manager and monitor CPU and memory usage while CS6 tries to play your video. I am betting one or both will be maxed out. There is a difference between playing the file in Media Player and Photoshop, because the former does not need to decompress the file on the fly. Photoshop does.
In order to satisfactorily view my DSLR footage on the timeline, I built a system with an 17 3930K six core running at 4Ghz with 32Gb RAM and a GTX570. When I first tried this system it still wasn’t coping because the drives were not fast enough, and I had to create a couple of raid0 arrays. I am now able to smoothly scrub through anything I care to throw at Premiere Pro. I have not tried video with Photoshop CS6, but I would imagine the same constraints would apply. What we need in this thread is for people with mid spec’d systems who have tried CS6 with 1080p H.264 or AVCHD, to say how their systems faired.
If Photoshop CS6 does have the same sort of system requirements as Premiere Pro, then you’ll find all the info you need over on the Premiere Pro hardware forum, But Bill Gehrke spends time here, and will likely have something to say.

Convert AVCHD to H264 without transcoding?

Is it possible with PRE 9 (or 10?) to bring in AVCHD clips (MTS's) and output a H264 file without transcoding (decompressing and recompressing). I am trying to get the highest quality and highest resolution file that is Quicktime compatible and/or playable on Apple TV. Thanks

PrE does not do smart rendering, in that it WILL Transcode on Export/Share.
I would look into Apple's QuickTime Pro (US $ 29 upgrade/unlock), as I believe that it will do just what you want.
Good luck,
Hunt

AVCHD import question

Some great people explained the options to bring AVCHD into FCP 6.0.4 (both converting it to ProRes and using Toast to convert it into DVCProHD).
My questions are: is there a quality issue between the two? Is there an advantage to using the Toast conversion and pulling it into the browswr (is it more like it's original quality)?
Second, why is the AVCHD file, when dragged from SD card onto desktop, only about 2 gig, and then after using the Toast program to convert, it's now 20 gig (aprox sizes)???
Is it decompressing? Is it normal to be so much larger? Why is this? What is it adding?
Thanks.

Hi
No you are right on. AVCHD really does a great job of reducing the enormous amount of Data in an HD video stream. However playing this back and editing it is currently beyond the power of most native computer/software configurations.... so we have to convert it.
As you noticed Apples' ProRez gets really big. It's designed to 'hold' most of the resolution of an uncompressed HD stream (200MB + per sec!), yet provide real time playback and editing on a current Mac.
Given your AVCHD footage has already disposed of most of it's native information (ie resolution) the question is 'do you need such a big container for editing?' I suspect not.
If your AVCHD format / cmera is already supported by FCP, then check preferences of the Log and Transfer window of FCP (click on the little gear icon at the top) and try changing the codec setting of the AVC HD line to AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec). Its much smaller than ProRez and will do a good job of editing your work.
As you mention DVCPro HD is also a terrific choice. I think its even smaller than AIC (but still a bigger container than AVC HD so you won't lose much) and edits well. It is even a great presentation format if you play back from a Mac with the Codecs in place. But as you note, FCP won't convert to DVC Pro from the Log and Transfer window yet. Toast is a good option for this.
I like DVC Pro HD ... but that might just be because I've used it for a while....
Try a sample of both ... see which floats your boat!
Lee

How in Bridge to view AVCHD files using Adobe Media Player

a) AVCHD is not in the list under Edit / preferences / File association !!!
b) Where is the Adobe player located ?
Operating System: Windows 7

Hi Natarajan,
Did you check the configuration check for the Adobe seems configuration issue could you try with below link
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nwmobile71/helpdata/en/43/f31e3082221595e10000000a1553f7/content.htm
If you find any difficulty need to contact BASIS team to fix this.
Here is the link which guide you to configure the service, you should have installed and configured in the SAP before you use this service....
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nwmobile71/helpdata/en/45/143023c3af21a3e10000000a1553f6/content.htm
Please also check the below Form
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/adobe
Regards,
S.Manu.

AVCHD Decompression?

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