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What’s AVCHD like to work with these days?
I’ve taken the plunge and made the transition from PC to Mac (iMac quad core i7, 3.4GHz).
I do a lot of video editing (curenntly using Vegas) and will obviously be tranitioning to Final Cut.
I’m also in the market for a new camcorder and want solid state / flash as opposed to miniDV, which is all I’ve used. The camcorder I’m keen on records in AVCHD FX (highest setting 24Mbps, 1920×1080/50i).
Some research suggests AVCHD is hard and slow to edit (compared to hdv). But a lot of the info online is circa 2008. Is this still the case with modern camcorders and with the Mac I’ve ordered?
Many thanks,
Phil.
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7 Replies
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Phillip,
First thing you want to check out is Shane Ross’s tutorial on tapeless workflow.
https://library.creativecow.net/ross_shane/tapeless-workflow_fcp-7/1
Cody Walters
JW Studio LLC
Houston Video Production
Houston Wedding VideographerFinal Cut Studio 3
Adobe CS5 Master Suite
Panasonic HVX-200
Canon 7D -
Thanks Cody – really, really useful tutorial.
Shane mentions in that screencast that AVCHD can be heavy/slow to edit but doesn’t go into any detail.
Is that the general consensus even with the latest Macs and cameras? I was hoping that a 3.4GHz quad core could make light work of things.
Phil.
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It’s not the mac – it’s FCP7 – it just was never designed (in 99) to work with long gop codecs terribly well. The general rule is to transcode.
FCPX, Premiere Pro and Avid don’t have this requirement – although all of them work hard in different ways to handle h.264 codecs.
Best,
Jeff G
Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
New- my book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website -
It’s not the mac – it’s FCP7 – it just was never designed (in 99) to work with long gop codecs terribly well. The general rule is to transcode.
FCPX, Premiere Pro and Avid don’t have this requirement – although all of them work hard in different ways to handle h.264 codecs.
Best,
Jeff G
Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
New- my book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website -
Thanks Jeff.
The main reason I’m considering switching from miniDV to SD cards is to save time on capturing/uploading footage. We typically have an hour’s true HD footage to capture at a time (which obviously takes an hour with tape)…
Would you say that uploading data from the SD card and then transcoding it is going to save much time compared to tape?
Thanks,
Phil.
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Transcode to Pro Res and you will be fine.
Cody Walters
JW Studio LLC
Houston Video Production
Houston Wedding VideographerFinal Cut Studio 3
Adobe CS5 Master Suite
Panasonic HVX-200
Canon 7D -
Phil – well, FCPX does it in the background – and only optionally- if you want it.
FCP7? Most people are using MPEG Streamclip and it is faster than RT – but specifics are based on the system. It might make sense to find a camera that you can attach an AJA KI to – as it records directly into prores – truly a fast workflow.
Best,
Jeff G
Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
New- my book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website
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