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Problems using FCP 7 and .MTS / AVCHD files
I have a video blog/diary for which I throw all sorts of video files into FCP7 every month, sort them by date taken in the browser, place them in the timeline, keep the best parts of each shots (lots of ripple delete, some speed change), and then throw it into After Effects to do some colour grading using the Automatic Duck plugin; then export from AE in glorious H.264.
I really love this workflow, because it allows me to edit very quickly in FCP7 (lots of ripple delete, lots of changing the speed of some shots to faster / slower), and the audio and video layers are always transformed in synch in FCP (be it speed change or ripple deleting, the audio layers just “follow up”).
Recently I started shooting using Sony NEX and Panasonic Lumix cameras, which produce very nice HD video files, but they always make FCP 7 crash when I shoot in AVCHD formats.
Sometimes, the crash reports blame Perian, but when I uninstall Perian, I still get a “general error” message whenever the thumbnails of the MTS/AVCHD are being generated in FCP7’s timeline. FCP just crashes all the time as soon as I’ve dropped the files from the browser to the timeline.For time reasons, I would love to keep this FCP7-based workflow, but I understand that FCP7 might be getting old for recent file formats (although I recently boosted my iMac with 12gb of RAM, so WTF?).
I tried doing everything in AE, but “ripple delete” doesn’t exist there, I have to do a process called “extract work area” which works only once in a while (I’m currently stumped trying to do it all in AE and the “extract work area” doesn’t work at all).
Same thing when I try to change the speed of a shot in AE, the duration changes in the timeline but a very annoying gap appears, which is a hell to close (making sure the audio files – both left and right channels layers – will also close the gap and stay in sync with video layers whenever you move layers, etc).So my question is: is there a way to edit MTS files “simply” in FCP7 (without going through log & transfer or converting everything) – maybe disabling thumbnails in the timeline? – whether there is an alternative editing software that would allow me to do basic editing tasks to replace FCP7 such as ripple deleting or changing of speed, or if you think I should convert the files to another format (which in this case I might lose the precious timestamps I need to organise shots by date taken?).
Sorry if this message seems complex, it’s actually quite simple what I’m trying to do 🙂 Thanks a lot for your help.
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8 Replies
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[Fabrice Ducouret] “So my question is: is there a way to edit MTS files “simply” in FCP7 (without going through log & transfer or converting everything)”
Nope. FCP 7 won’t work with the files natively. Gotta convert. The only app that will, that works on a Mac, is Adobe Premiere Pro. And even then it’s tough. AVCHD is a complex format, takes a LOT of horsepower and resources to deal with it. A better Graphics Card than your Mac has, for sure.
OK, I lied. FCX will do this too…but it too like the files to be OPTIMIZED to ProRes. But you can cut natively…just not as smoothly or as fast. BUT, you can tell FCX to optimize, and then cut with the native files, until FCX is done optimizing, and then switch the optimized media.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
If you only knew sometimes how much I want to go back to shooting 16mm and Super-! 😉
And editing them of course… -
Thanks Shane, I’ll try and see what this does in FCPX.
How would I “optimize” the files? Could MPEG Streamclip do it?
I’m just trying to do the cutting before I send everything into AE…Or maybe I can just work on Premiere Pro from now on, I’m not too familiar with it but I assume it does ripple delete 😉
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I am trying it in Premiere Pro – it seems just as simple to use as FCP7 and deals much better with AVCHD files (although FCP7 sometimes works without crashing with these files, it’s quite irregular).
The problem I encountered was that the files browser in Premiere Pro couldn’t read the date EXIF data of the shots the way FCP7 did (to sort them out by date).
Do you know this problem? Here is a screen grab of both files browsers, FCP7 and Premiere Pro, Premiere Pro not showing any “date created/modified” data:
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Did you Import the files or drag and drop them into Premiere? I’ve had better success with Premiere reading the AVCHD EIXIF data by Importing via the Media Browser.
Also, click on the pop-up menu in the Project tab and choose Metadata Display, this will open up many options.
Joe
Living the SuiteLife!
Stuff for editors http://www.cafepress.com/suitelifehttp://www.facebook.com/pages/SuiteLife/1524456414462851?ref=hl
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My apologies, you are new to Premeiere, here is the menu I mentioned above.
Joe
Living the SuiteLife!
Stuff for editors http://www.cafepress.com/suitelifehttp://www.facebook.com/pages/SuiteLife/1524456414462851?ref=hl
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Hey Joe!
Thank you so much for your great answer.
I ditched FCP7 and used Premiere for my project. It worked great.
But I couldn’t get premiere to read the EXIF data from the AVCHD files… no matter how I tried 🙁 🙁
As you can see in my capture from my previous post, some files have a creation / modification date in FCP7 but not in Premiere (for example 0012.MTS).I was wondering; maybe I should just use “NameChanger” for Mac to rename the file to its creation date?
For example 2015-03-15-14-27.mp4?
This way I could organise them by name instead of by date created and have them in the order?
I’ll do it if it’s the only way… (see below)Maybe I should start another topic about this?
Any help appreciated anyways 🙂
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I’m about to start a long-form documentary project in FCP7 ultimately destined for DVD, BluRay & Vimeo distribution. I have approximately 100 hrs of footage from HDV tape, GoPro, Canon 5dII & III as well as Si-2k – all at 1080. Since edit will be ProRes, 29.97 sequence, I’m converting all footage to ProRes 29.97 in MPEG Streamclip first to avoid render issues once on FCP7 timeline. Conundrum arises about how to then log and then capture only clips I want to use into FCP7. For instance, I’ve converting entire HDV 60 min long tape to ProRes which results in one 60 min long .mov file. I’d like to then comb through that .mov and choose ins and outs (to avoid clunky HDV deck slog thru logging ins and outs), and then log these selected clips if at all possible. Any suggestions on workflow for this project would be greatly appreciated and I haven’t gotten too far along yet so fully able to change horse mid-stream at this point – other than FCP7 aspect!
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