AVCHD Import = Jerky Motion

OK this is doing my head in, not least because it should be one of the most common and therefore simplest / most reliable workflows Apple should have ensured would work with iMovie.
I have some m2ts files from a Panasonic HD camera. They are 1080i as that's all the camera will do, with an AC3 soundtrack.
To get these into a format that iMovie can import, I'm remuxing with ffmpeg, copying the video untouched and converting the audio to alac so there's no loss of quality. The resulting files play perfectly in both VLC and crucially in Quicktime.
However when I import into iMovie and they are converted to AIC the motion becomes jerky. Single-stepping frames you can see that iMovie has duplicated frames every half second or so which makes the resulting clip completely unusable.
To see if the issue was caused by incorrect video/audio sync from the ffmpeg remux I tried a version with no audio at all ie just AVCHD video copied across, and the result is exactly the same. iMovie is destroying the video on import.
So as it stands, iMovie is of no use to me and I have no way to edit movies on the Mac.
Surely loads of people must have imported AVCHD into iMovie without this issue, so can someone tell me where I'm going wrong please, or is this really a serious bug in iMovie? I'm on the latest version BTW - (9.0.8 - 1778).

Agree with your assessment of the issue Brad and no I haven't tried to convert to AIC but I agree that's the logical next step. Issue is the best way to do so, so that iMovie will not try and optimise further and thereby recompress a second time when rendering the movie. I notice from your original pitch about BlueXFree that I should be able to use that although I didn't see that option when I tried it.
Maybe I'll be a bit more patient with your program and see if I can get it to do the conversion
Will post back how that goes......
----- edit ------
Yep - perfect thanks! Using BlueXFree to convert to AIC first, then doing a non-optimised import into iMovie results in a perfectly working clip. It's a bit of a pain in terms of workflow, but this is only for my existing stuff as iMovie imports correctly from the camera directly so in future I'll use camera archives rather than the camera's own software which is what created these m2ts files in the first place.
Great catch Brad - much appreciated.

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Jerky Motion of MP4 file

Problem: Jerky Motion of MP4 file
Adobe Production Suite CS4
Windows XP Pro SP3
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Composition: 1280x720 HDV/HDTV 720 29.97 square pixel
Layer: 4288x2848 jpeg image
Duration: 15 seconds
I slowly rotate the image.
In AE, it plays smoothly using the space bar.
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Codec: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
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kbps: 6176
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Codec: avc1
Name: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
Container: mp42: MP4 v2 [ISO 14496-14]; - mp41: MP4 v1 [ISO 14496-1:ch13]
Recommended Display Size: 1280 x 720
Size: 1280 x 720
kbps: 6176
Frames/s: 29.97
Pics/s: 29.97
I play the file in Adobe Media, QuickTime, and Real Players.
The motion is very jerky.
The time progression bar moves in stops and spurts.
I created a new MP4 file with kbps: 13,000.
It was also jerky.
I created an AVI file, it plays smoothly.
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Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the feedback about why H264 is jerky on my computer.
As you suggested,
I used the FLV preset to create two FLV files.
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Name: Flash/On2 VP6
kbps: 1699
kbps: 5409
Both files work much better than the H264 MP4 file.
The kbps:1699 file is a bit jerky.
The kbps:5409 file is more jerky.
Since the files are on my hard drive, I am not sure why the kbps:5409 is jerkier since that is the rate DVDs play 720x480 movies at. I would expect the kbps:1699 to be of poorer quality because of the lower bandwith.
Just so you know where I am heading. I want to place my 1280x720P HDV/HDTV 720 29.97 square pixel AE composition on Vimeo.
Vimeo recommends "using the H.264 codec at size 1280×720, bit rate 3000-5000 kbits/sec (optimized for “download”), key frame every 30 frames (frame reordering on), using whatever frame rate you shot in. For sound, use AAC at 128kbps in stereo."
By the way, there is a HD video on Vimeo called "FIA GT3 Video Battle" which GSpot says uses
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Is there a white paper or book that explains in detail the tradeoffs and recommendations for both HD web based and Blue Ray situations like this? Thanks again for your help.

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Hello
I'm new to this forum and have just recently begun working in the film and video industry. I am also new to the Apple community. So please excuse any misuse of terms as am not fully integrated into the business yet. I have created a background that has a lot of motion as well as an emitter in it and duplicating the sequence didn't seem to be the way to go. So I looped the sequence to run for 90 minutes. I am trying to decide if there is a need to export the file from motion as a quicktime file or should I just import the motion document into FCP and overlay my text elements (also created in motion) on V2. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Thanks for your input. What I'm building is a sponsor loop for a banquet. I needed a 90 minute graphics bed over which to apply my text and logo elements. I ended up modify and existing 15 sec clip from the motion library tossing in an emitter and looping it for 90 minutes.
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Jerky Motion on TV

Hi
I'm shooting HDV on a Canon HV20. Exporting finished sequence as QuickTime movie using AIC works fine - plays perfectly full-screen on this Mac. Burning to DVD using iDVD for widescreen PAL playback produces very jerky motion and panning. Any ideas why this might be? Camera set on auto for all this material.

Hi Falco,
the problem you are experiencing is a known bug of the 6.1.3 firmware version.
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Import fl.motion

I'm trying to get this code working from the help file.
import fl.motion.MotionEvent;
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function afterMotion(e:MotionEvent) {     trace("animation complete!"); }
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girod_mc.stop()
//girod_mc.autoRewind = true;
play_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,playMovie);
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play_btn.addEventListener(MotionEvent.MOTION_END,reStart);
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If I replace abox_animator with girod_mc, I no longer get an undefined, but the code doesn't seem to get exectute.
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I had supposed that if I executed the help file code exactly as it, that it would work.
Can anyone please help me, or point me to a page that will explain this ?
What I am trying to accomplish :
In my code I have a play button, when the internaute hits this play button it disappears. That works fine.
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TIA
Pat

Sorry I made a typo error.
I have put the following 2 lines in the last frame on the layer with the video girod_mc
dispatchEvent(new Event("ended"));
stop();
I have 3 layers, 1 for the movie clip, 1 for the button, and 1 for the action script.
Untill you told me to put the above code.
In the video layer I now have 2 frames, the second one containing the above lines of code.
and I put the below lines on an action script layer frame 1 but it still isn't working.
thanks for sticking with me.
// ******************** and change your current code to:
play_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,playMovie);
girod_mc.addEventListener("ended",reStart);
function playMovie (event:MouseEvent):void
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function reStart (event:MotionEvent)
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Hi folks and special thanks to those whom put forward suggestions.
As mentioned in my original post, the external Iomega Ultramax 1Tb drive is MAC formatted, (and journaled).
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I deleted the import, rebooted, formatted the drive as a MAC NON journaled drive and did the same import. A worked fine and it took a fraction over 57 seconds. i.e. the overhead was just a few percent for journaling.
At this point it seemed to prove that something was very odd indeed going on with the Iomega Ultramax drive. This drive is used for time machine backups and time machine had never informed me of any inability to write to the disc.
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Importing a Motion file into FCP loses quality

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When you used "Send to Motion", did you check the "embed motion project file" checkbox? If so, you shouldn't have to import the Motion project.

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Hi Falco,
the problem you are experiencing is a known bug of the 6.1.3 firmware version.
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National Instruments

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ta

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Hello Tom,
as you could take from my post:
iMac 27", Core i7, 4GB RAM, 1TB internal HD, no external Drives, Mac OS 10.6.2, FCE 4.0.1, rest of the software up-to-date. QT Player 7, QuickTime MPEG-2, Perian, Flip4Mac WMV installed.
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Hi there,
I got a brand new camcorder from Canon (HF11), that records movies in AVCHD (1920x1080i - 50 ips - 24 Mb/s).
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However, when I do exactly the same operation on my mac mini late 08 (intel core2duo), the import fails in iMovie, that just inform me of the failure, without any feedback.
Console reports the following messages:
[[0x0-0x47047]].com.apple.iMovie8[[381]]: Mon May 25 20:41:22 2009 MIOUnit_HelpersQTFileWriterBase.cpp:2508:WriteTimeCodeTrack ### Err -2008
[[0x0-0x47047]].com.apple.iMovie8[[381]]: Mon May 25 20:41:22 2009 MIOUnit_HelpersQTFileWriterBase.cpp:1381:WriteMovieTracks ### Err -2008
[[0x0-0x47047]].com.apple.iMovie8[[381]]: Mon May 25 20:41:22 2009 MIOUnit_HelpersQTFileWriterBase.cpp:1313:WriteMovie ### Err -2008
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I can't post a screenshot because the internet on my conputer doesn't work. I'll just type it out:
(Network Name)
DIsconnect from (Network Name)
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AVCHD Import = Jerky Motion

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