Ingesting AVCHD workflow

I'm coming from FCP where I ingested AVCHD footage straight from my camera, and only brought in the footage that I needed using I and O points during the ingesting process. With CS6 I see lots of people copying their entire cards to their hard drives and from there ingesting it into CS6. This seems it could quickly eat up a lot of hard drive space with copying large clips when you only need small segments. Is there a reason why it seems to be generally recommended to do it this way rather than just ingesting straight from the camera the parts you need?
Thanks.

Ingesting from a camera is real slow, because of the slow speed of the cards used. Second, you need the complete directory structure for reliable operation. Third, you need reliable backup of your source material. Last, HDD's are cheap, so what is a couple of 100 GB's of disk space.

Similar Messages

  • STILL NO FLUENT AVCHD-WORKFLOW in PPro CS6??? COME ON, ADOBE!

    I am very pleased with my CS6 Suite. I cannot tolerate the fact, that an issue like the AVCHD-workflow in PPro CS6 isn't patched until today. AVCHD is a very common Codec and a professional NLE-Software has to able to handle it! Transcoding from one Codec to antoher and back is a time killer! It leaves my work less profitable. So what is the status quo at the moment? Please be honest and do not tell me "We know about the issue, but don't have a timeline yet.."
    Thank you very much.
    Best,
    ABR

    Please be honest and do not tell me "We know about the issue, but don't have a timeline yet.."
    Well, which is it, honesty or a fabrication?
    "Hi All,
    My name is David McGavran, I am the Senior Engineering Manager on Premiere Pro.   We are aware of the issue and are able to reproduce it.    We are currently investigating what we can do about it.   We apologize for the issues and hope to be able to give guidance soon.   I will continue to check back in here and update you guys as we have more information.
    Cheers
    Dave"
    http://forums.adobe.com/message/5339963?tstart=0#5339963

  • Ingesting AVCHD Footage into FCE (shot 720/24p)

    Hi, I've been reading up a lot on various problems with ingesting AVCHD footage into FC Express. I'm using a Panasonic HM150 camera. I've transfered the footage from a SD Card reader to my Iomega 500GB external drive. We shot our footage at 720/24p. I tried to use easy setup for this, but there is no format for this in FCE 4.0.1. The best that I can do seems to be AVCHD 1080i. Can anyone assist me with how I can get FCE to ingest AVCHD footage shot at 720/24p and the exact settings I need to use to ensure correct ingestion? Upon trying to log and transfer it, I keep getting the red exclamation mark. Would this be because the settings are incorrect? I'm surprised that FCE doesn't have this particular setting since many people do shoot in the 720 mode.
    Many thanks,
    J.D.

    Although FCE isn't designed to work with 24p footage, I've heard of a lot of people recently being able to ingest it anyway into FCE, but then getting stuck when it's time to put it into a sequence.
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    If it doesn't work, you may be able to use [Voltaic HD|http://www.shedworx.com/voltaichd] to convert from AVCHD to the Apple Intermediate Codec at 29.97fps for editing.
    Message was edited by: skalicki`

  • XA10 AVCHD workflow

    Hey everyone,
    As Apple is frustrating me to no end, I am slowly trying to get used to Premiere, but this means establishing a new workflow.
    When using final cut I would convert the AVCHD footage to ProRes. This worked great accept for the large file sizes.
    I know Premiere can handle AVCHD natively, so that was a plus. I shot an event last week which was around 2 and 1/2 hours long. This would be HUGE as a ProRes file.
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    Try to bring the MPEG file into Media Encoder and the program freezes. Compressor on Apple's end doesn't do much better.
    So i'm obviously doing something wrong, and was wondering what the best AVCHD workflow would be for Premiere.
    Many thanks.
    Dan
    Computer:
    MBP Core2Duo 2.53
    8gb DDR Ram
    500 gb internal
    1 tb FW 800 Media drive

    Computer:
    MBP Core2Duo 2.53
    there's your problem. thats a pretty underpowered processor for avchd. i have a quad core 3ghz, and still is a struggle at times, but neither of us have a Cuda Card for MPE. (its not that important to me, but i dont mind doing edits unrendered cause i dont do anything breathtaking, yet). not familiar with pro-res cause i have neevr used final cut, but how long did it take to convert from avchd to pro-res? anywho, when i get ready to do the final export, i just set it to go overnight and leave it, and it works fine until i can get something that chews the avchd faster.
    Then when I went to export I tried to go straight to mpeg 2 DVD, but it would take something like like 10-15 hours, so instead I exported "sequence settings" which ended up being 1920x1080 30p .mpeg file. The resulting file is a much more acceptable size at around 29gb vs 300 as ProRes.
    i have a problem with this... you are essentially compressing your footage twice, which is never good. going to mpeg2 sequence settings first, is essiantially an intermediate format (and not a good one, either) may as well just encode it to avi or prores, you'd atlest get a better intermediate. but Premiere doesnt have a NEED for intermediates. until you get a more powerful pc, i just sugest encoding it, leaving it. sleeping, take a shower, eating breakfast, and you should be good as gold.
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  • Ingesting avchd from sony hdr-sr11-Editing 1080i 60 need a workflow

    Hello all,
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    1) In the log and transfer window do I need to check remove pulldown? I though this was for progressive mode
    2) Should I edit in a native 1440x1080i 29.97 sequence? then render and export that sequence?
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    I have monitored it out through my canopus and it looks terrible. Alot of jagged edges. I have tried the deinterlace filter. No go. I looks fine on my monitor though?
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    4) Once complete, do I render out a reference quicktime apple pro res import that into compressor
    then import that into studio pro? What is the best way to downconvert this final locked sequence?
    5) What would be a good workflow? I do plan on doing some after effects work for this.
    I have searched all over for a workflow and everyone seems to have their own opinion.
    Anyone?
    thanks in advance,
    darryl

    No. It doesn't work. The Log & Transfer window still shows "downmixing to stereo"!
    I have also read in the Apple HD Users Manual that ALL AVCHD 5.1 surround sound will be DOWNMIXED to Stereo. Why they would do it is only they know! G H U !
    Most Gurus very silent on this issue ... ignorance is bliss ... As the Silfen said (a long time back) Ozzie's lost to the pathways - don't let the glitter of mobility pale your thoughts of the solidity of the apps!
    Satya - A truth

  • Ingesting avchd on my new iMac11,2

    We ended our Wedding Video business last summer to focus on family as the mileage was to much with a baby in the house.
    There were other reasons but I wont bore you all...! ...anyway I have been using the wifes laptop (toshiba i3 & fast) but cant cut it with editing our family AVCHD video and the screen is impossible to work with but Sony Vegas ok to work with, now we have a shiny new 21" imac i3 (iMac11,2) hopefully being delivered by the weekend.
    Here's the question: I have dug my old FCE4 from the store, I have my AVCHD footage backed up on a DVD ready to injest into FCE, my camcorder is a Panasonic SD10 is there anything I need to be wary of as my workflow previously was MiniDV that was straight forward.

    Congratulations on your growing family!
    Regarding the iMac you should have no problems.
    However, when you install FCE 4 make sure you get the FCE 4.0.1 Update from Software Updater as it has all the AVCHD Easy Setups.
    An external Hard Drive would be very useful even if not essential, as your AVCHD will be coverted during ingestion to Apple Intermediate Codec which takes up about 40GB per hour of video . . . . . more that 3 times as much as DV.
    I hope that your AVCHD backups contain the whole folder structure and not just the video files or you might have problems.
    Message was edited by: Ian R. Brown

  • Ingesting AVCHD footage without MODELCFG.IND file

    I am trying to ingest footage from a Sony HD11 via log and transfer from a copy of the camera's directory structure. Problem is that the MODELCFG.IND file is missing from the directory structure.
    I was always of the opinion that this file was essential but I have another copied directory structure also missing this file which I have been able to ingest. I have also just read that you can ingest directly from the AVCHD folder within the master folder.
    Can somebody clarify this for me? If I am am unable to ingest (even without the MODELCFG.IND file) does this suggest that the video files are corrupted? Or is there a work-around?
    Thanks.

    Yes it does, I also messed around with it last night.  The clips import very quickly since they aren't transcoded, and playback from the "events" view was very smooth with no frames dropped.  Even with some realtime effects applied (like auto-enhance, color correction) the playback was still mostly smooth with minimal frames dropped.
    The same clip played back from the timeline though was very choppy; but not using much CPU either.  I think it may depend a lot on the GPU and my Mac Mini only has the HD3000, but with the quad core 2.0GHz i7.  So I think you still need a fast GPU in order to effectively edit AVCHD or it will be annoying.
    Those hiccups shouldn't appear in the final exported output, but I was unable to get that far since iMovie ran out of memory during the export to file (and I have 16GB ram!)

  • Cannot Ingest AVCHD .MTS files in FCP 7

    I am trying to Ingest .mts files into Final Cut Pro 7.
    I dragged all of the files from an SD card onto one of my External Hard Drives.
    I open up Final Cut Pro 7, Go to Log and Transfer, Navigate to the AVCHD folder then to the BDMV folder then finally to the STREAM folder. In the STREAM folder sits all of the .mts files. They are all greyed out and I cannot Ingest them. They will not add to the Log and Transfer Window in FCP 7.
    What am I doing wrong? How can I Ingest these files into FCP 7 so I can edit with them?
    Thanks in Advance.
    I have a Mac Intel
    Final Cut Studio 3
    10 GB RAM

    Just saw that Adam's original post was an older one.  Will keep this here anyway to maybe help the most recent poster.
    Sharon
    Adam, did you try what David said about pointing to the root folder?  Did that work?
    When I copy the SD card, I name a new folder on my hard drive something specific, like Smith Wedding.  Then I copy everything inside the SD card to that new folder.  The first level inside my new folder now has folders for
    AVF_INFO
    PRIVATE
    and on down from there.  When you open Log and Transfer, point it to the Smith Wedding folder (of course whatever you have named yours).
    ClipWrap2 also works great to convert the files beforehand if you want.
    What camera are you using?  I have the Sony NX30 and it was giving me fits because the .mts files don't ingest if the clips are longer than 11 min. My problem is that I'm still on FCP 6.0.6.  I think 7.0.3 fixed that.  But I did find enough work-arounds to keep the camera. 
    This is a link to the full discussion if you are interested.
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/19085158#19085158
    Sharon
    Message was edited by: SSteele

  • AVCHD workflow and quality loss

    I have been trying to establish a workflow with imovie and my Canon HF100 to make a BD with menus. I tried the Canon program on windows that edits AVCHD natively, and it is miserable. I still keep parallels around just in case I decide to use the Canon program again, but I probably need to move on for the power of iMovie and FCE. I absolutely love the new iMovie for really quick edits and I have FCE on hand for the advanced stuff.
    The reality is that using iMovie entails quality change. I have been spending weeks looking over clips on my PS3 and 52" panny plasma to decide which workflow to chose. I am sharing my experience for anyone who cares and please comment.
    I have taken screen shots, because they are easier to show differences, but the missing comparison would be MPEG compression noise, which I will comment on. The lighting and backgrounds were chosen to show the differences more clearly. I watched many more video clips than Im showing, but the findings are all pretty consistent between clips.
    http://picasaweb.google.com/robanderi/CanonHF100AVCHD17mbpsIMovieComparison#
    A. The 1st set of cat pictures were done to test the workflow AVCHD -->import to AIC -->export to mp4 18mbps --> Burn Blu-ray disc using Toast 18mbps. I think the end product is ~8% inferior due to a what you can see in the pictures (brightening, maybe a loss of detail and more ...green?) PLUS this test had the largest increase in MPEG compression noise during playback.
    B. The second set of pictures shows: AVCHD --> import to AIC --> export to AIC --> Burn Blu-ray 18mbps. The changes seem to be similar to the first test, but the MPEG compression noise was not as bad after the conversion. I would call this 5% inferior. Whatever percentage YOU give test A, I would say B will always be slightly worse by a tiny margin factoring in the MPEG noise.
    C. Same as B.
    D. Adding an h.264 conversion to another h.264 conversion changes the picture ever so slightly as I mentioned before, but you cannot see the MPEG noise that is the biggest deal.
    E. Importing the media from AVCHD to AIC in Imovie seems to not be that big of a deal, except the picture darkens slightly resulting in the loss of information upon subsequent conversions.
    CONVERSION TIME: Doing TWO h.264 conversions takes longer than going from AIC --> AIC then AIC --> mp4.
    SPACE: Option B consumes massive space, because then you have TWO collections of AIC's plus space for the end video. My hour video thus needed 110GB! 50 + 50 + 10.
    END RESULT: Option A: you can keep the best copy for viewing on the computer and have a BD. Takes longer, but you get two products. BD is not as good. Option B: Faster and better BD, but you really only have a BD and no copy for the computer (unless you fish out the .mts files). You would have to convert the iMovie again for a computer copy.
    The last option is to eliminate the double conversion and just not have a BD with a menu. Will a regular BD player play a straight mp4 file?

    AIC is a lossy intermediate codec.
    You need to consider moving up to FCP which facilitates pro res HQ conversions.

  • Final Cut Pro: Ingested AVCHD clips are sometimes distorted

    Apple has released this support info:
    Last Modified: February 03, 2009
    Article: TS2572
    Symptoms
    AVCHD clips you transcode to ProRes from the Log and Transfer window are sometimes jumpy or distorted.
    Products Affected
    Final Cut Pro 6.x, Perian Quicktime component
    Resolution
    This may happen if you installed the Perian QuickTime component.
    To temporarily disable Perian while using Final Cut Pro:
    Open System Preferences.
    Click the Perian icon at the bottom of the System Preferences window.
    Select the General tab in the Perian preference pane.
    Click Remove Perian.
    If you would like to enable Perian after you finish working with your AVCHD clips, return to step four but click Install Perian to enable it.
    http://tinyurl.com/bvzxx8

    1. FCP does not work with material this is not "native". To see what "native" formats FCP supports, look at the standard presets. If you don't know what a FCP standard preset is, do some research. The Manual is a wonderful place to start.
    2. FCP does not work well when you play material from the system drive. Editable media MUST be stored on a non-system drive.
    The key points to understand are - if your material is not a FCP native format (codec), convert it to one (pro res 422 works just fine) and use a non-system drive as your media storage/ playback drive.
    If you do this and you still have problems, post back. We'll do what we can to help.
    cheers,
    x

  • Ingesting AVCHD video already copied to Mac?

    Someone dragged the contents of the SDHC card onto a Mac and wiped the card. How can I now ingest this video from Log and Transfer on the Mac.
    Thanks.

    If you have the entire contents of the card you can click the Add Volume button in the upper left of the log and transfer window and select the archive. If you only have the .mts files you'll have to use ClipWrap2 to transcode the media.

  • Problems ingesting AVCHD in FCE 4.01

    When I connect my Panasonic camera to FCE or plug in the SDHC memory to a USB reader, FCE 4.01 crashes in an almighty heap of errors. I am new to FCE and i had it working one time - now it abends every time.
    I have tried deleting cache and prefs as Tom Wolsky suggests but to no avail. I would be really grateful for some advice and help here. The files are MTS and the camera is a Panasonic SD700 with AVCHD set (not 1920x1080p) . Many thanks to any and all

    Hi the AVCHD is 1920x1080 but not "p" and the files are MTS. The setting is the highest on the camera.
    The Easy Setup settings are HD, 25fps and Apple Intermediate Codec 1920x1080i50. This is the correct codec I believe. Yes I am using Log and Transfer with the SD card in a USB card reader; I could try the camera but don't think that would help
    The error is Exception Type: EXCBADACCESS (SIGBUS)
    Exception Codes: KERNPROTECTIONFAILURE at 0x00000000000000b8
    Crashed Thread: 9
    To both of you : Many thanks for taking the time and effort to respond I really appreciate your help

  • AVCHD  WORKFLOW

    I have iMac-2,66 Gz Intel Core2 and FCP 7. I intend to buy panasonic HDC-TM 700 with the little chip.
    Now is it as easy as to plug the chip with USB to computer and open "Log & Transfer" and ingest
    all the clips ? or need extra shareware like clipandwrap ? Thank you so much for your kind help .
    Because I am so much afraid to buy me trouble.

    Should have nothing at all, or very little, to do with the shutter speed. It's variable on most cameras. It usually is changed with the data rate. Honestly I don't even know if this camera is capable of it' the Sony web site is complete garbage, tells you endless useless BS about the camera, but zero, I mean absolutely freekin' zero about the formats and specifications of the media these cameras shoot.

  • Rookie has some "easy" AVCHD workflow questions

    Hello all,
    I just started with that whole video thing. Last week I got my Canon HF S10 (Full-HD). And so far I'm pretty happy.
    I hope you can give me a little kick-start. I use a iMac 24" with 2.4GhZ Intel Core 2 Duo and 4GB RAM.
    I've successfully edited my first little test movie. But... some questions came to my mind:
    1. When I select "Log & Transfer", do I have to select a specific codec FCP is converting my AVCHD footage to? I went with defaults for now (AIC?). Should I select a Pro Res codec?
    2. When editing, my video had these horizontal lines (I recorded in 50i). I applied a video filter to de-interlace the video. It looked way better. But do I have to apply this filter to every piece of my video, or can I apply that effect globally. Or are there video preferences somewhere, which I didnt find?
    3. The preview in the Viewer/Canvas was very unsharp. Is that normal (due to "realtime" editing)?
    4. When editing was done, I exported via Quicktime to the Vimeo-specs I wanted (1280x720, H.264, AAC, etc.). It went well, but: 8 minutes of video took 4-5 hours to render. When working on a 1hour movie, do I have to render the whole week-end? (Yes, I just stepped up from SD & iMovie ^^)
    5. FCP made some pretty big files. What is the smartest way to store/compress my video?
    Thank you very much for reading. Any thoughts, suggestions & experiences are welcome.
    Kind regards,
    Jan
    Message was edited by: Jan Riggert

    Jan Riggert wrote:
    1. When I select "Log & Transfer", do I have to select a specific codec FCP is converting my AVCHD footage to? I went with defaults for now (AIC?). Should I select a Pro Res codec?
    Yes you should, and if you have FCS 3 you can use ProRes 422 (LT) and you won't lose any disk space.
    2. When editing, my video had these horizontal lines (I recorded in 50i). I applied a video filter to de-interlace the video. It looked way better. But do I have to apply this filter to every piece of my video, or can I apply that effect globally. Or are there video preferences somewhere, which I didnt find?
    If you want progressive video in the end, you might look and see if there's not a PF25 mode. I know on the NTSC versions there's a PF30 mode that shoots progressive video, thus avoiding the whole need for the filter.
    3. The preview in the Viewer/Canvas was very unsharp. Is that normal (due to "realtime" editing)?
    If it looked ok when you were done, I wouldn't worry about this.
    4. When editing was done, I exported via Quicktime to the Vimeo-specs I wanted (1280x720, H.264, AAC, etc.). It went well, but: 8 minutes of video took 4-5 hours to render. When working on a 1hour movie, do I have to render the whole week-end? (Yes, I just stepped up from SD & iMovie ^^)
    As someone else suggested, use Compressor for this step - not QuickTime conversion.
    5. FCP made some pretty big files. What is the smartest way to store/compress my video?
    It depends. If you think you may want to work on the project again you can use media manager to consolidate things a bit. Otherwise I just produce an archive file that is super-high bitrate h.264 or MPEG-2 at full resolution.

  • Can AVCHD be copied to a mac and ingested later?

    Would it be possible to offload video from a SDHC card being shot with AVCHD using by using a high capacity card reader, and later ingesting it into FCP using Log and Capture while the file already resides on the mac?
    Thanks.

    Hi. I'm no expert, but here has been my AVCHD "workflow" using the Panasonic HDC-SD1.
    1. I capture my material to 8GB class 6 SDHC card
    2. I remove the card from camera, place it in my sonnet expresscard34 card reader, insert into MBP
    3. I copy the card contents, with its directory structure to an external fast FW800 disk
    4. I run Toast to burn that directory to a dual layer DVD, with verification
    5. I store the DVD in a case in my DVD storage rack
    6. I start Final Cut Pro
    7. I type shiftapple8 to run log and transfer, invoking FCP's ProRes transcoding ingest
    8. With the log and transfer window open, I click the disk icon, select the BDMV directory
    9. FCP loads icon view of the clips (.mts files) that are in the Stream directory under BDMV
    10. I select a clip in the icon view, and preview its contents in the clip viewer to the right
    11. I highlight the clips which I want to ingest (ProRes will transcode) and click Add to Selection
    12. I take a break, since it will take a while to ingest all 80 minutes of material
    13. I then edit in FCP as I normally would
    So, I hope this helps anyone using AVCHD footage, but I also would like to hear what some of you are using in the way of presets in Final Cut Pro's audio/video settings with the AVCHD footage.
    Regards

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