No AVCHD lite import - really? Suggested Workflow?

Being thrilled as I was to upgrade to Aperture 3, I now find myself stuck and disappointed with one of the main features I was excited about - video import along with photos. I shoot with a Panasonic GF1 that shoots both RAW images and AVCHD lite video. This is an amazing camera for having the best of both worlds - great photos and beautiful video. But Aperture 3 doesn't recognize the video!!! Huh? There are many consumer and pro cameras that are AVCHD video enabled and it seems strange and disappointing that Apple would not support this widely used format. So now, in addition to not having A3 support the RAW format on the GF1 (which will hopefully change soon), the video is not supported either.
Does anyone have a suggested workflow for easily getting this video into a Aperture 3 project?
-dm

I found a possible solution that does not (exactly) require transcoding and allows the video to be loaded into Aperture (and edited directly in iMovie):
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2411037
The product is called ClipWrap 2 and it worked with a test file of AVCHD lite video from the Panasonic GF1. I downloaded the trial version of the software and it seemed to work perfectly with the sample .mts file. It unwraps the mts file (a H.264 variant) and rewraps into a QT format (H.264 format with .mov extension) without transcoding (it also has options for transcoding). It is VERY fast and there is no generational loss. It can be found here:
http://www.clipwrap.com/
I haven't purchased it yet, but plan to when my GF1 arrives next week (after I perform additional tests). I don't see many downsides to using this (other that spending $50!). It seems to preserve the original video quality and it imports into Aperture. The main downside I see is that Aperture regards the re-wrapping date as the creation date, so metadata is not preserved. On the other hand, you keep the small file size and video quality of the original file. You can always transcode these files if you want something to edit in FCP, although iMovie seems to handle these files without problems.
Dave

Similar Messages

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    I had the same question recently. Go to the right of this box and a little above, into the Search Discussions window. Type in this: Is MPEG2 the answer
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    Message was edited by: AndrewSmith

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    Message was edited by: Michael Grenadier

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