FCE 4 with Panasonic SD5

Hi folks. I thought I'd share my experience so far using FCE 4 with AVCHD material on a Panasonic SD5.
Getting material into FCE4:
It works. Just plug in the camera, go to "Log and Transfer," and you can select and import any video from the camera. It's also possible to preview and trim the material you want to import, but it's at normal playback--no quick scrubbing while you're still looking at native AVCHD files on the memory card. Importing/ingesting is done through Apple's Intermediate codec, which means transcoding that takes some extra time and a lot of extra drive space.
Working with material in FCE:
I'm able to work directly--no rendering required--on the material transcoded when shooting in HN and HE (1440x1080) mode. I end up having to do an additional render on imported material taken in HG (1920x1080) mode, though I'm not sure if that's unavoidable or caused by a mistake on my end in the settings.
All in all, I'm happy with the performance, and I'm glad Apple finally got this feature added to FCE so that us AVCHD folks didn't have to keep suffering through iMovie 08 or convoluted codec workarounds.

Hi dc John,
best regards from Germany. I have had the problem to get the data from my SD5 into my Mac Book Pro for a couple of weeks. Yesterday I saw your hint and everything works. Thanks again.
Now a new challenge is coming up. Everything works as long as I read my data into the Mac from the Card reader. BUT: I also copied the complete content of the SD card onto my hard disk. When I try to get the data into the Mac by log and transfer it does not recognize the .mts files.
Do you have any idea what I am doing wrong.
Any help appreciated very much.
Mac freshman
Message was edited by: Mac freshman
Message was edited by: Mac freshman

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figure 5
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figure 6
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Message was edited by: shuggyboy2

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