CS5 - Any improvement to AVCHD footage!?

Hey everyone,
I've seen a couple of new the feature in CS5 already, but
I am wondering if there have improved working with AVCHD footage
as there has been some problems in rendering (bringing out jumpy
clips), etc.
Lookin forward to your answers and experiences.
Best,
Alex

I was demonstrating After Effects and Premiere Pro at the NAB trade show last week, and this was a common question. I asked the people who had had bad AVCHD experiences to bring me their bad media, and we could try it out right there on the show floor. Three people took me up on this and brought me USB drives with clips that had failed to import correctly using the CS4 applications; and they turned out to work fine using the CS5 applications on my computer.

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Kernel panic rendering AVCHD footage in Encore CS5 or CS6

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro running CS6 and 10.8.2. My usual workflow is burning two hour multi-cam live performances to DVD. Usually this is two cameras of DV, one camera of AVCHD, all in a DV timeline.
Lately I've been trying to burn DV timelines of nothing but AVCHD footage, and somewhere through the rendering process I always get a kernel panic. This happens with different projects, footage from different cameras (I'm using a Panasonic AG-AC130 or HMC40), whether I'm using Encore CS5 or CS6. The projects never finish. It seems to get 50-75% through rendering video before crashing. Rendering these projects on my MacBook Pro work just fine (though much slower). Timelines where it's not 100% AVCHD are still working fine.
I had began having kernel panics unrelated to Encore, but traced this back to a heat issue. It's an old machine after all. After installing smcFanControl, this problem has gone away. I don't normally burn timelines of nothing but AVCHD, but I'm certain there was a time in the past I was able to burn these without issue. I monitor my system temperature during rendering and I'm somewhat confident that's not what's crashing the system.
The top part of my latest crash report is listed below. Can anyone help me figure out what's going on?
Thu Mar 21 02:32:47 2013
panic(cpu 6 caller 0xffffff800fe9db1b): "TLB invalidation IPI timeout: " "CPU(s) failed to respond to interrupts, unresponsive CPU bitmap: 0x1, NMIPI acks: orig: 0x0, now: 0x0"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-2050.18.24/osfmk/x86_64/pmap.c:2337
Backtrace (CPU 6), Frame : Return Address
0xffffff8101e53c20 : 0xffffff800fe1d626
0xffffff8101e53c90 : 0xffffff800fe9db1b
0xffffff8101e53d10 : 0xffffff800fea2330
0xffffff8101e53dd0 : 0xffffff800fea2b65
0xffffff8101e53e20 : 0xffffff800fe66a1c
0xffffff8101e53f10 : 0xffffff800fe6a8f0
0xffffff8101e53f40 : 0xffffff800fe18aea
0xffffff8101e53f70 : 0xffffff800fea5b16
0xffffff8101e53fb0 : 0xffffff800feced53
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: PProHeadless
Mac OS version:
12C60
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 12.2.0: Sat Aug 25 00:48:52 PDT 2012; root:xnu-2050.18.24~1/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: 69A5853F-375A-3EF4-9247-478FD0247333
Kernel slide:     0x000000000fc00000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff800fe00000
System model name: MacPro3,1 (Mac-F42C88C8)
System uptime in nanoseconds: 1380749415118119
last loaded kext at 1365787386464065: com.apple.filesystems.afpfs    10.0 (addr 0xffffff7f9262e000, size 348160)
last unloaded kext at 1360973799296735: com.apple.driver.AppleUSBEthernetHost    2.3.6 (addr 0xffffff7f9260b000, size 20480)

After a not-too-intense Bing search, the particular panic you're getting seems to be an indication of:
Your Mac Pro is dying.
Bad drivers in combo with an unforgiving OS.
I don't have any easy advice for number 1. If it is still a heat issue, you may need to redo the thermal paste on the CPU and blow the dust out of the heat sink. If it's a deeper problem than that, some serious repair work up to and including replacement may be required. Either way, it will be a painful fix. For number 2, try updating your graphics card drivers (which card do you have?) and/or going back to 10.6.x or Lion 10.7.x and see if things improve.
Jeff
EDIT: Although Encore and Premiere Pro have their share of bugs, a lot of times they expose weaknesses in a system because of how much they tax all of the hardware and software.

Help with getting high quality DVDs from AVCHD footage

Hello,
I know enough about video editing with PE7 to be dangerous, and was hoping someone could help me out.
My question is regarding getting the highest quality standard DVD from AVCHD footage. I have a Sony HDR-SR12 camcorder recording in AVCHD. I am editing footage natively in AVCHD with PE7 on a quad core system. No problem with that. However, when I export to standard DVD the quality of the video goes down drastically. (Yes, I know burning to Blu-ray would give me higher quality, but I am giving this DVD to a friend who doesn't have Blu-ray).
So far I have tried starting my project in both HD 1080i 30 5.1 channel:
General
Editing mode: HDV 1080i
Timebase: 29.97 fps
Video Settings
Frame size: 1440h 1080v (1.333)
Frame rate: 29.97 frames/second
Pixel Aspect Ratio: HD Anamorphic 1080 (1.333)
and Full HD 1080i 30 5.1 channel:
General
Editing mode: HD 1080i
Timebase: 29.97 fps
Video Settings
Frame size: 1920h 1080v (1.000)
Frame rate: 29.97 frames/second
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels (1.0)
But I see no discernable difference in the quality of my output onto DVD.
This is where my knowledge is lacking...how can I get the best quality output from my AVCHD onto a standard DVD? Is there some format I can convert to first, and then burn to DVD? Also, I am willing to break the footage into a couple of DVDs to improve the quality, but I don't know how or what to do for that.
My footage looks REALLY great when viewing from the HDR-SR12 direct to HD TV with HDMI cable, but not very good on the DVD. My footage is of a ballet recital, and I lose definition in the faces, costumes, etc on the DVD output.
Any help is appreciated! Thanks!
Gina

Hey Gina,
This may be a year late, but as I have been pulling my hair out trying to solve this problem for the last 48 hours I finally did find somewhat of a work around, but it requires Adobe PP CS4.2.
There is a plug-in here:
http://www.mainconcept.com/site/prosumer-products-4/mpeg-pro-hd-7850/features-7861.html
Which will actually output your edit as an AVCHD file. You can then burn this straight to an AVCHD using Nero 9 and keep the highquality level of your clips and not need Blu-Ray. The DVD player will need to be AVCHD capable, but I just bought one of those for $40 as compared to the $200+ of most Blu-Ray players.
Hope that helps.
Regards,
DSW

Jumpy/repeated playback on rendered AVCHD footage

Hi folks!
I am experiencing multiple jumpy & sometimes repeated frames during playback on rendered AVCHD files on Premiere Pro CS4. It's really hard to catch since it happens on multiple files and the jumpyness can be like a rewind or it skip frames.
The 5 second file sample below skips a few frames, pay attention to frames 38 to 39(Man does the cross). It skips! Also notice the first few frames of the footage gets jumpy.
Playback inside Premiere is fine and smooth. The problem only shows on the rendered footage's playback.
File: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=30XONDN2
Software: Premiere Pro CS4 4.2.1
Output: H.264 or Quicktime MOV(Animation)
OS: Mac OS X 10.6.2
Camera: Panasonic HMC150 (AVCHD)
Settings: 720/24p
Any ideas on the solution?
Thanks!

ah right, you're on the Mac, I missed that in the first post, sorry.
try re-installing quicktime by going to the Apple site and downloading it. This page should open up with your detected OS:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/
give that a try and see if you get any improvement.
Matthew

How to back up projects and raw AVCHD footage???

Please bear with me as I'm really new to digital editing. I'm trying to understand how to work with AVCHD files. Obviously, these are too large to store on my computer once they are ingested; hence, the only option is to store the raw footage. I can burn the raw AVCHD footage to DVD no problem (I use an optional DVD burner that works with my Canon HF-10 camera). Now I'm trying to understand how to work with the system (i.e. save project files for re-editing later on). I'm using a Canon HF-10, and Final Cut Express 4, on a new MacBook Pro.
Here's how I think it might work, but please correct me if I'm wrong:
1) I begin a new project, ingesting the raw AVCHD footage as I need it.
2) I edit the footage and save the completed project.
3) With the project completed, and since the ingested video files are too big to save, I delete the ingested footage from the scratch drive, but still saving the FCE project file (This means that if I open the project file now, I will get a message telling me the media files have gone offline).
4) I move on to my next project, and carry on ingesting new AVCHD files as I did with the original project.
Here's where I'm confused...
5) I later come back to the original project to make a few changes.
QUESTION: Can I simply re-ingest the raw AVCHD footage into the scratch folder and carry on editing the first project? Or will I have problems with Final Cut Express finding the media files??? Or any other problems??
There may be easier ways to do this for someone who understands computers better than I do. I am looking for the simplest solution that will work for me, since I really don't have any technical computer skills/abilities. Will the procedure I described above work???
Thanks so much for your advice!

I'm no pro, and surely not a technical wizard, but what I plan on doing is this:
Back up the raw AVCHD files on DVD (2 copies ideally). Delete them from the camera. Ingest the files into FCE and edit. I won't change the name of the raw media files at any time, to avoid confusing FCE. Once I've finished editing, I'll keep the FCE project file (and any related files) on my hard drive. However, I will delete the huge ingested files from the hard drive (because, no matter how big an external drive you have, to me using 160GB to store two hours of video is nuts). Then, if at a later date I want to re-edit, I'll re-ingest the original files back onto the scratch drive. I figure FCE will read them fine, since they haven't changed; they've merely been removed and replaced. One key point here is that, when ingesting the AVCHD files, you must ingest the complete clips, not just a part of them. That way, nothing about the files (such as the length, starting and finishing points, etc.) will have changed. It may seem a bit awkward, but that's about the only way I, being a technophobe, can understand how to do it without keeping huge files on a hard drive. And, I am only speculating that this will work. At this point, I'm still waiting on the DVD burner that works with my Canon camcorder to arrive in the mail. Then I'll do some testing/experimenting. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Elements is inteferring with playback of AVCHD footage with Windows Media Player

I recently downloaded a trial version of Elements.
As soon as I installed this, I started having problems with playing ACVHD mts files in Windows Media Player. Whereas I have never had trouble playing these files in Windows Media Player before, after installing Elements the footage suffers from significant stuttering and the sound drops in and out. Interestingly, the footage continues to work perfectly in VLC and in Pixela ImageMixer. There is also no problem with AVI-DV footage.
As soon as I unistalled Elements the problem disappeared. I have replicated this several times by reinstalling an uninstalling Elements.
Can anyone explain why this could be happening? I am running Vista Busiess. My video camera is the Cannon Legria HF20, and I captured the footage using the supplied ImageMixer 3 software.
Unlike Windows 7, I don't believe that Vista has native support for AVCHD, and the only reason I can play AVCHD footage is because I have ImageMixer software installed (which came with the camera). Could there be some conflict between this software and Elements?
Any help would be appreciated. I am really tearing my hair out.
Update: I have also noticed that the same problem occurs in Windows Live Movie Maker when I install Elements.

I'd be inclined to uninstall both PRE and ImageMixer. Then install PRE first and ImageMixer last.
Cheers,
Neale
Insanity is hereditary, you get it from your children

FCP Crash when opening log and transfer with some AVCHD footage on a card

Hi,
I'm using a freshly (re)installed version of FCP 7 on a brand new macbookpro loaded with 8gb ram and equipped with a small 2ghz Intel Core i7
I get footage shot on Panasonic ag-hmr10 minicams coming on SD cards as AVCHD footage. Sometimes the files are quite big, 17gb of compressed footage.
When I go to log and transfer, to convert the footage in apple prores, the l/t window opens, I see a preview of my footage, than the spinning beach ball of death shows up and FCP crashes every time. I've tried deleting the preferences and reinstalling the software. Still, it keeps crashing. Now the same file on a different computer equipped with FCP will be processed, slowly but surely.
Now I know I can work around this problem by going to toast as an encoder, but I want to fix this issue so I can operate from FCP. I've seen this problem posted before but never found any good solution.
Any suggestions?

Have you tried setting the L&T AVCHD audio conversion prefs to plain stereo?
Open the L&T window.
Click on the gear icon towards the upper center of the frame.
Select "Plain Stereo" For the AVCHD plugin.
MtD

AVCHD footage won't let me use transitions

Hi,
I just imported some AVCHD footage into Final Cut Pro 7 using Log and Transfer.
When I try to add a transition between two clip it keeps saying there is not enough footage to do the transition. The thing is, there is enough footage as the clips I'm using are both about 2min long.
Any ideas on what could be the problem?
Thanks a lot.

This is FCPX forum try here https://discussions.apple.com/community/professional_applications/final_cut_stud io?view=discussions

Burning AVCHD footage in full HD (1920 X 1080)?

I am trying to burn AVCHD footage (taken with a SONY CX7) imported in Full HD in iMovie 08. I would like to burn in Full HD (1920 X 1080) so that I can play the results on a Bluray player. My choices with Mac and iMovie 08 seem limited to 960 X 540. On a PC and using SONY Motion Picure Browser I can burn in Full HD easily. Should I not be able to do the same with iMovie 08? I am new to iMovie, I love the interface and the very smooth scene transitions (compared to XP and SONY MPB) but so far the better resolution of XP/MPB generated footage really makes a difference when viewed on a 46" LCD monitor. Is there a solution?
Louis

latan -
This is the 'gotcha' that got me and for over a week no one responded to my exact question you are asking...I'll save you the grief of asking this same question repeated times on several different Mac forums. After over a week of investigating, reading and learning more about HD video, I realized that iMovie only allows you edit, not burn.
Burning is done through iDVD and iDVD DOES NOT BURN HIGH DEF VIDEO.....PERIOD....or specifically, does not "author" HD video.
When you export to iDVD, it will only encode/transcode/convert (what ever you want to call it) into standard DVD format...aka for 480p/i playback. Kind of a bummer and almost useless to 'support' HD video if you can't produce a high def video for distribution...after all, that's the whole hook with the iLife suite....right?
After some more investigation I found a few interesting solutions.
1.) Roxio Toast.
--> According to the product information. It allows you to burn videos to BluRay. However, I'm still trying to figure out if that means "produces" bluray content or just allows you to burn an already-made composition to BluRay disk.
2.) DVD Studio Pro 4
--> DSP 4 can take several different video formats/resolution and author them into an HD DVD format.
However, this is a pro-level application and far too complicated and expensive for just HD burning.
3.) MovieFactory 6 Plus for Windows
--> MF 6+ can actually take your HD video and burn an HD DVD or BluRay format disk onto a standard DVD or DVD DL that will play in either type of player (depending on format). About 40 - 45 minutes of HD video will fit on a DL disk.
However, since this is a Windows program, you'd also have to run Parallels or some other Windows virtualization to run it. I don't know if MF6+ is compatable with AVCHD format.
Of course, any of these options would require you to have a high-def capable player (hd-dvd or bluray player). Possibly a cheaper option is a used mac-mini connected to your TV and use it as a media server. Just copy the files over to the mini and use it as a player.

CS3 - Can I Import AVCHD footage into Premiere and if so, how ?

Hello All;
Can you tell me if I can Import AVCHD footage (Like from a Panasonic Professional Camcorder) into Premiere CS3 ? My version doesn't recognize the .MTS files that the camcorder generates. If there is any way to import AVCHD footage, could you tell me how ? Thanks.
Tim

Convert AVCHD to HDV http://forums.adobe.com/thread/390605?tstart=0
or Cineform Neo Scene $100-$129 http://www.cineform.com/neoscene/

Importing C100 AVCHD footage (timecode, media start, clip names)

I primarily shoot and edit AVCHD footage from Canon C100. Typical ingest workflow is to use the Data Import Utility by Pixela. This creates individual .MTS files on my with unique file names (GREAT)...BUT when I bring the files into PP CS6 it sets the media start time for each clip at 00:00:00:00 (essentially wiping out the timecode reference). Alternatively, if I simply copy entire contents of the card to my raid then use the Media Browser in PP to import the footage, the timecode—and media start time—is maintained from the shoot (GREAT)...BUT the individual clip names that it assigns always start with 00000.mts, 00001.mts and so on). This creates a problem when relinking footage...because now I've got multiple projects with the same file names. Any ingest workflow recommendations?
Appreciate your perspective(s).
~ Brian

Use the original media, which gives you the timecode, and upgrade to CC, which gives you the new Link and Locate feature, making relinking a breeze.

Canon Vixia HF20 AVCHD footage - Do I need to backup the originals

Hi folks.
I have a Canon HF20 HF20 which records in AVCHD. I always import footage into new events on iMovie 09 at "original size".
My questions:
1. Does iMovie cause any degrading in the quality of the movie clips when importing/converting them?
2. Do I need to backup the CANON folder as well which contains all the data for the AVCHD footage or are those files the SAME quality as the iMovie ones once imported?
3. a little unrelated: am I better off (quality-wise) recording in 1080 30p or the camera's default 1080 60i?

I suggest before doing anything else, I make a "Disk Image" of the camera contents. In fact, I save those copies in two places.
Use Disk Utility, located in Applications/Disk Utilities to create disk images.
I use the default settings for the image file: compressed, no encryption (none).
I then work from the disk image rather than from the camera (double click it, and it turns into a pseudo disk mounted on the desktop which is indistinguishable from the actual camera).
With iMovie, you may have to select Import from Camera, although in most cases, if the pseudo disk is mounted on the desktop when iMovie is launched, it will be recognized automatically.
I have copied the resulting data both back into the camera and onto a flash-drive. Both work as you'd expect. For example, I can plug the flash drive into a PS3, and it thinks the camera is plugged in.
Note that my Canon HF10 format is FAT32, which is preserved by the disk image builder.
Once you have this copy of the raw camera data, you can always return to it. It also takes up minimum possible storage space, unlike the results of iMovie import.

AVCHD footage trancoded to ProRes have no image...

In FCP, when I want to use AVCHD footage from a Sony Camcorder, I choose as usual the "log and transfer" in the File menu that opens the transfer window. I can see all MTS files and I am able to watch them in the monitor window. After selection, I add the clips to the queue. The prores 422 is clicked as required. I can see the transcoded files but when I want to use them I have no image but a white screen but I still have the sound. The same procedure with the same files undergone with Final Cut Express does work and I can see the transcoded clips. On the other hand, every attempt with Final Cut Pro leads to the same problem. Any idea? As you can imagine, it would help me a lot!

In FCP, when I want to use AVCHD footage from a Sony Camcorder, I choose as usual the "log and transfer" in the File menu that opens the transfer window. I can see all MTS files and I am able to watch them in the monitor window. After selection, I add the clips to the queue. The prores 422 is clicked as required. I can see the transcoded files but when I want to use them I have no image but a white screen but I still have the sound. The same procedure with the same files undergone with Final Cut Express does work and I can see the transcoded clips. On the other hand, every attempt with Final Cut Pro leads to the same problem. Any idea? As you can imagine, it would help me a lot!

Timecode and AVCHD Footage

I have a Panasonic HDC-TM700 camcorder that shoots AVCHD footage. I can use ClipWrap to transcode the footage to Apple ProRes 422 or I can use Toast Titanium Pro to transcode the footage up to Apple ProRes 4444. Both of these have worked wonderfully as far as just getting footage into Final Cut Pro 7. However, neither of these methods provide any workable timecode. I used the log and transfer window in FCP and set In and Out points on my clips before capturing them, but once they got into FCP all of the timecode disappeared. How is it possible to share the footage with other editors or, for example, work with an offline quality, when there is no timecode to share and no timecode with which to reconform to online quality?
Does anyone know how to assign timecode to clips captured on file-based, as opposed to tape-based, media?
PLEASE HELP

I completely understand the "tortilla chip" analogy, and I don't wish to argue that point. It's a logical argument. But I was given AVCHD footage to work on that I Quicktime converted to ProRes 4444 and the image quality WAS far superior. The footage was simply an actor in front of a black curtain. Before the conversion there was all kinds of pixel-shifting on the black background, as well as on the actor's suit, and there was no real definition to the image at all. After the ProRes 4444 conversion all pixel-shifting disappeared and some definition definitely appeared. It was a far cleaner image, and I had a few other people look at it to verify this fact because I couldn't believe it myself. Of course, the 4444 option was overkill. I'm sure 422 (of any kind) would have achieved the same effect. In any event, the image was superior AFTER the conversion. Perhaps an external NTSC monitor would be better suited for color-correcting (and the cost of that device would be justified if I was doing work that needed to meet broadcast-quality standards), but the fact remains that the image was much "better". This was not imagined. No eyes were tricked.
True, a broadcast monitor is much better at evaluating image quality than a computer monitor. But sharper is sharper. Cleaner is cleaner. Pixel-shifting is pixel-shifting. And in 2011 many, many more videos are meant to be watched on a computer screen than on a television or movie theater screen.

WANTED: AVCHD Footage

I have an opportunity to test editing with AVCHD footage but I don't have a AVCHD camera.
Is there anyone who can send me a few seconds of footage (the more the better). I would be happy to download a minutes worth if I can get it.
Click on my name for my email address. Just send me a link. Or, I can set up a ftp site for you to upload it to.
Preferably the footage will have some motion, and be tripod mounted. Something you are proud of, nothing that would make it difficult to judge the quality of the editing experience.

I can do that Steve. just uploading three clips - sorry no tripod - but got some motion - just holiday stuff - shot with a SR7 Sony on best quality setting. Will send you link. How are you editing. I have found that avchd is always a pig on the timeline (any program that so called supports it) unless it is pre converted to HDV
Mick

CS5 - Any improvement to AVCHD footage!?

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