Transcoding from AVCHD 60i for 24p

Sorry for this long post. I have spent a long time looking for answers.
I would like to combine different formats into one sequence. I primarily have AVCHD 1080p24 but need to include some 1080i60. All shot with Panasonic Lumix GH2.
I have logged and captured with FCP7 – Target Format = Apple ProRes 422 (HQ)
FCP7 says:
- Source Format 1080p24 is Vid Rate 23.98 fps / 1920x1080 / TC Format = Non-Drop / Pulldown = None
- Source Format 1080i60 is Vid Rate 29.97 fps / 1920x1080 / TC Format = Drop Pulldown = Upper (Odd)
I would much prefer to make the 29.97 conform to the 23.98. But I don’t know exactly what my workflow should be. Want to retain highest quality possible for eventual DVD and Blu-Ray. Do I need to use compressor on the 29.97 before dropping them into my Sequence set up for 23.98?
All of my clips look good in the viewer slug. They also play fine when I put them individually in my sequence with conformed setting (letting FC change settings automatically). Only issue was some slight alternating horizontal lines in the 29.97 clips. The lines are tolerable, but in any case, I thought that I needed to deinterlace the 1080i60 - 29.97 fps. Is that correct? CompressorManualLink
I put the quick time files transferred through fcp into compressor and tride some different transcodes.
- Apple ProRes 422 HQ Reverse Telecine. (This produced 24p).
- Also tried this with the “for Interlace material” and “for Progressive material” versions also set at Telecine and got the same result.
- Apple ProRes 422 HQ for Interlaced Material with Frame Controls set to Resize Filter “Fast”. Output Fields “Progressive”. Deinterlace “Best (Motion compensated). Anti-alias & Details Level “0”. Rate Conversion “Best High Quality motion compensated”. Duration 100%. (This took a long time to process).
I imported these new transcoded clips into Final Cut.
Once again they, all play fine in the viewer slug except for some strange blotchy pixel distortion at one part on the clip that I did not use Reverse Telecine on.
However, I did the same test with the timeline and all of the clips now have horizontal lines at least 10 times worse than before! The clip without reverse telecine (still in 29.97) is slightly better off. My sequence settings are:
HDTV 1080i (16:9) - I’m not sure what this should be…
Pixel Aspect Ration = Square
Field Dominance = None
Timebase = Set according to clip I was testing
Quicktime Compressor = ProRes 422 (HQ)
Quality = 100%
I’m guessing my workflow is wrong. Do I need to just drop the non transcoded 29.97 clips into the 23.98 sequence and then “send to” Compressor? What settings would I need to use? Or am I supposed to some how transfer/capture the clips into compressor before trasfering to FCP? I don’t know how to work with AVCHD format without first transferring to FCP via ProRes compressor.

Still hoping for a reply on this. If anyone has any advice would much appreciated.

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Transcoding from AVCHD to ProRes

Hello and Happy New Year to all.
I have a question to ask yourself.
I have edited a project in AVCHD.
When importing the clips I've checked the option to transcode to ProRes, not because I wanted to work in their native format.
Well, the clips were imported to H264 and not to Apple ProRes.
I did all the tests without any success.
Transcoding after the acquisition only if the operation is successful.
Does anyone know give me useful information?
Thanks in advance.

The dvd obtained previously in ProRes editing, encoding with Compressor and burning with DVD Studio Pro, in my opinion were the best.
Today I notice a loss of quality that I do not know whether it is naive to be connected to the editing of files in format AVCHD although it should not be so.
Thank you.
Greetings.

Is MP4 or AVCHD format from camera better for editing n PE12?

Hi!
I got a Canon XA25 that can record both in Avchd and mp4. Which format works best for editing in premiere elements 12?
I´m mostly interested in getting elements to work smothly and lagfree.

torbjorn68
Just in case note....AVCHD (MPEG4 AVC/H.264) and MPEG4 are the video compression choices that I believe your Canon XA25 is offering. Do not get confused with .mp4 container which is the file extension representing a container format that wraps the video and audio compression.
I think that you would get good quality with either the "AVCHD" or the "MPEG4" video compression choice, but you would probably get excellent quality with AVCHD. The AVCHD seems to be the online preference in the comparison of AVCHD and MPEG4 video compression. I suspect one of the differences between the two choices would be the audio format that each uses in your camera....AVCHD, probably Linear PCM or Dolby Digital and MPEG4, AAC.
I am not sure of the file extensions that come with these video audio compressions. In the case of AVCHD, probably .mts and in the case of MPEG4, probably .mp4.
On general principles, I would go with the AVCHD choice for import into Premiere Elements. But, if you have problems with Canon AX25's AVCHD.mts, then determine how the best quality alternative behaves. I am not 100% on what Canon is offering in what it is calling "mp4"....whether that is AVCHD video compression with a .mp4 file extension instead of .mts or whether it it MPEG4 video compression with a .mp4 file extension. I have been up and down the Canon AX25 User Manual and have yet to sort that out to a 100% satisfaction.
I am not sure if the following online article will answer all the questions about the differences in the closely related video compressions
http://wolfcrow.com/blog/understanding-mpeg-2-mpeg-4-h-264-avchd-and-h-265/
But, when all is said and done about projected best quality results...for now I will stand by my
On general principles, I would go with the AVCHD choice for import into Premiere Elements. But, if you have problems with Canon AX25's AVCHD.mts, then determine how the best quality alternative behaves. I am not 100% on what Canon is offering in what it is calling "mp4"
ATR

AVCHD Media for PowerPC based hardware

I have posted this earlier in an other thread but my posting has so far been ignored, so I am trying a new thread:
We have just invested over 1500$ to upgrade to FCStudio 2 as well as stashing 3 more gigas of SDRAM into a G5, as I need to edit HD video from 2 different media: HDV and SDHC cards with AVCHD formated video content!
Obviously, Apple hasn't been shy trying (and succeding) in selling me the upgrade from Production Suite to FC Studio 2 as well as recommanding me to install at least 4Go of Ram to handle uncompressed HDVideo, but forgetting entirely to point out that my set up would not work with AVCHD media (as I am such an old customer that runs a real nice but 3 year old PowerPC !)
Having installed FCStudio 2 and the extra 3 Go of Ram, I got really quite confused discovering in the FCP6 "Working with High Def Infos" one fateful line stating that AVCHD media is unsupported on Power PC based hardware! Right after installing FCStudio 2, I did install the Upgrade to FCP 6.01 and the Note that goes together with that upgrade proudly states that the AVCHD codec is NOW supported! (But again it is not saying that AVCHD is NOT supported on Power PC based systems).
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So my question is: If the VOLTAIC people are able to supply a seemingly perfectly good AVCHD converter for 30 US$ (while giving away half of its price for cancer research), you would think that the FCP people or the QT people would have been able to do the same! I have no idea why this is not the case! I don't like to assume things but one thought is kind of nagging at me: Could it just be that the Apple marketing people told the FCP or QT people to drop this idea as they really now have to have me buy a new Intel based machine ... Am I missing something ? Am I confused ? Am I frustrated ? YES, at least for the two last questions.
I still have to discover if the AVCHD converter will work with my PowerPC based hardware ! If not, what would be the way to convert my AVCHD files to another HD format supported by my system ?

FC6 deals with AVCHD by converting to AIC or ProRez. This is not a native solution. Yes you need to convert, and I can't remember if this Voltiac works on PPC or Intel so that may be a source for you.
To transcode in real time means converting right out of the camera if it has an HDMI port. If it does then the conversion happens in real time from a processor inside the camera and converts to uncompressed HD. Then you would need an HDMI to HD-SDI converter to send this to an HD-SDI Capture Card if you G5 was a PCI-X slot so you can use one. Have I lost you yet? I hope you have a fat wallet for this.
One way for sure to work in real time is with a new Mac Pro and a Black Magic Intensity HDMI capture card for those who want solid solutions to these small cameras.
Does this help you now?
Good Luck
Z1&V1user

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I'm trying to burn a very simple Blu-ray project, just as a workflow test. I use a Mac, it runs 10.6.7 and has 8GB of memory and plenty of drive space. My footage is from an older AVCHD camera, so it's in 1440x1080 (anamorphic). There are about 130 clips in the AVCHD disk image that I'm working from, and they total about 11GB in size and about an hour in duration. I'm just trying to burn a very simple Blu-ray project to a BD-RE as a test.
I can bring in my MTS files just fine, they appear as assets and I can add them to a timeline. I make sure to check my project, everything seems fine including that I've remembered to tell Encore what to do when the timeline finishes playing or when someone presses the Title button. I can hit the Preview button in Encore and watch my stuff, even skip through the chapters, no worries.
I make sure that everywhere I can find a drop down mentioning anything about quality or output format, everything is set to "Blu-ray" and "Don't Transcode."
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Thanks in advance for your advice!

See if this old message helps http://forums.adobe.com/message/2785066?tstart=0

Ingest from AVCHD Canon VIXIA HF10

After quite a bit of research I purchased a Canon VIXIA HF10 with the hope that FCE would ingest footage from the camera. However, FCE does not recognize the camera. I've also tried to capture once the program is open but it tells me it is "unable to initialize video deck". Any recommendations?

Is this the case with any AVCHD camcorder?
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Why FCP X cannot import 5.1 channel audio from AVCHD

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iMovie and FCPX both offer transcoding of AVCHD to an editing codec. In iMovie, it is transcoded to Apple Intermediate Codec. In Final Cut Pro X, AVCHD is transcoded to ProRes 422. In Final Cut Pro X, you have the option of editing natively in AVCHD, but most Pros will transcode to ProRes 422, because speed and quality of editing is more important to a Pro than saving on disk space. For why this transcoding is done, see this post. https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3941
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With Final Cut Pro, the transcoding and analysis do not slow you down, because it can happen in the background. You can start editing immediately.
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http://www.dingdingmusic.com/DingDing/Manuals.html

Transcoding from 1920 X 1440 query

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Unless you capture the HDV material in ProRes, then both the AVCHD media and the HDV media will be in ProRes throughout your editing. Keeping an HDV workflow might be going initially it can be very time consuming on the back end of production when it becomes more render intensive and the project needs to be conformed. Unless of course you have to go back to HDV tape for some reason.

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).
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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

Capturing in FCP6 from XH A1 in 24p please help

Hi, I'm using my new final cut studio 2 to copture from Canon XH A1. I shot some footage in DV SP 16:9 in 24f.
When I capture my footage it appears very blurry, many lines are washed out and it looks like a bad footage. Now, I've watched the same on TV and it was very nice. The question I have is if I'm setting my FCP and XHA1 correct for the capture. Here are the capture settings:
XHA1:
In VCR menue:
Signal Setup:
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HD Down-Donv_OFF
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Thank you both for replying to me.
I have tried DV payback and not auto and I've also tried 480. I also did try to capture with this camera at 1080i60 HDV and it was GREAT.
I'm gonna try all over again tonight, but one thing I've noticed is my by browser under the clip discription it shows 29.98fps. This is how FCP captured the video. I know for sure I've recoreded it at 24. I know for sure I was trying to set settinging at easy setup for 24p I don't know why it captured at 23.98.
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Thank you

Graphics for 24P

Is there an effective way to create graphics in Motion for 24P footage that doesn't look like video graphics?
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You just need to create your project with a frame rate of 23.98 (the effective frame rate for 24P as used by video cameras) and field rendering turned off.
There's no preset for that, but you can quickly create it by modifying the mentioned attributes from the DV NTSC preset.
One related comment, though. While field rendering is usually associated with the video look for footage, animations rendered as "progressive" suffer from a lack of temporal resolution that often creates strobe-like motion. So there's a compromise there, beyond the oversimplification of terms like "film look", "video look", etc.

Whats the best/fastest format to convert avchd to, for edit purposes?

Whats best format to convert 1920/1080 avchd to, for editing purposes?
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Looking for a codec that is fast to convert to & clean.
I have aPC, Win 7, 6 core, 32 gig ram,Raid 0, fast cuda card ect...

AVCHD has the same data rate as DV, so shuttling that fast will not be a disk problem, even from a single drive, let alone a RAID 0. If it stutters, it's a CPU thing.
Conversion to any other format is going to expand the data rate significantly, requiring your RAID to work harder. Though the CPU will likely work less, so that could fix the stuttering.
You can always add all the clips to a sequence, and then add that sequence to the Source Monitor for editing as if it were one long clip.
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Using Compressor 4, How do you create a droplet to transcode from final cut files to mp4, mp3 and m4v formatting?

Using Compressor 4, How do you create a droplet to transcode from final cut files to mp4, mp3 and m4v formatting?

Take a look at this section; it's pretty clear.
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Hello there. Any tips for an affordable AVCHD camcorder for Final Cut Pro X?

Hello there.
I am enthusiast for the new Final Cut Pro X.
I am now starting to learn with iMovie '11 and I would like to buy a AVCHD camcorder. It should be affordable and compatible with iMovie '11 and Final Cut Pro X. Any tips? I live in Italy.
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PE7 Locks up while burning Blu-Ray from AVCHD project

I am having problems burning my completed project to Blu-Ray. It is a large project at just over 2 1/2 hours but I have successfully burned projects like this in the past. My source files were AVCHD from my Sony HDR-SR11 camcorder. I know that AVCHD is very challenging for even the fastest PCs so I knew to break the project up into approximately 20-minute segments to complete my edits, voiceovers, transitions, etc. I then converted each of these files to MPEGs in the format H264 1920 X 1080i 30. I imported all of my individual H264 projects into a single new project and I even rendered that complete mega-project before attempting to burn.
The resulting file burned to DVD without a problem of any kind. But when I try to burn the project to Blu-Ray, I get tantalizing close to the end (98 - 99%) and then encounter some sort of error. Sometimes the program will pause with a dialog box saying that PE is runnning low on memory and that I should save my project and "proceed with caution". Sometimes if I click "OK" the encoding process will resume, but most times it just freezes at that point. And often the project will halt at 98% without ever giving any error messages. All that you see is the label on the progress bar chart changes from "encoding media" to "error."
I've had this failure to complete burning about six times in various forms. I even tried making two half-sized projects out of my big one and the smaller ones bombed in exactly the same way. I've tried disabling all background programs such as defraggers, virus scans -- anything I could think of that would be competing for my system's memory. All to no avail. But, of course, it takes at least ten hours before you find out that you are still having the same problem.
My computer is about six months old and I tried to get the top-of-the-line at the time. I have an Intel quad-core processor @ 2.66 GHz, 4 GB of DDR2-800 RAM, ATI Radeon 3650 video card with 512 MB on-board memory, 500 GB hard drive (that had about 425 GB free when I started) and Win XP SP2.
These same techniques and hardware burned a 1 1/2-hour AVCHD project for me about six months ago with minimal hassle, but all the same procedures this time have had nothing but failure. Anyone got any ideas about where I am going wrong?

Yes, it surprised me too. Not sure what to make of it but I fear it is only an indication of how flawed the processes are for my particular burn. No, no scene markers closer than a couple of minutes to each other. Most are separated by 15 minutes or so.
I placed the menu markers by clicking on the scene in the sceneline view. Silly me, I just assumed that the first frame in the scene is where the menu marker would be placed. Didn't work out that way. You really couldn't see the offset until you blew the timeline scale 'way up. However, I had noticed while previewing the project that some of the scene markers seemed to be off a bit. In other words, when I clicked on a scene to preview it, I seemed to get a flash of a few frames of the previous scene before the view switched to what I had anticipated seeing. I didn't think too much about it at the time and dismissed it as one of the approximations used in the preview process. Closer investigation yesterday showed the offsets to be genuine.
But the heartbreaking thing about those offsets is that correcting them didn't have any effect on my problem. The burn process still froze at 98%.
I'm suspecting now that "98%" is not 98% of the timeline but rather 98% of all the processes that the software is going through in formatting the data for burning. In my continual clutching at straws, I'm going to turn my scrutiny next to the musical background tracks that I added to my project. There are unquestionably gaps between those tracks. The software simply would not allow me to butt two background music tracks right up against each other. Every time I tried to drag and drop them into that position, the software would offset my video track by the duration of the music clip I was trying to add. Only when I offset the music clip a couple of seconds would the video clip stay where it was.
God and the software developers only know if such a thing could be a problem for burning an AVCHD-based project. I know for sure that I had these audio gaps in previous projects and they never seemed to cause a problem. But the size of my current project may be driving the processes into areas where they are not able to reliably go.
I've got a couple of things to try next. I'm going to delete all of the background music tracks to see if a fault in their rendering may be what is going on at the 98% point in the burn process. The second is to position myself in front of my computer when the process reaches 98% thereby to see if any "magic" dialog boxes spring up to explain what is happening. What I've been doing so far is to just let the burn process go while I go off to do other things - like sleep. This time I'm going to make it my mission to be there at 98% to see if there will be any leads to what is breaking down at that point.
This has been a very frustrating process. I've basically tried to do exactly what I did successfully a couple of times before. Last time I successfully burned an AVCHD-based project, I wrote out a set of step-by-step procedures so that I would not leave out any of the esoteric little steps that can be so important. I've followed them religiously but this time they haven't worked. Aaaarrrgghhh!!!!
Don

Transcoding from AVCHD 60i for 24p

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