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AVCHD and FCPX – my two scents
I have been reading posts on this site for years and it has greatly helped me. I was searching for info and importing ACVHD and couldn’t find definitive answers so I figured it out on my own and thought I would share some info for once.
My cameraman shot some footage for me on his Sony A7 camera. (We normally use bigger cams bu anyway…) I get back home to realize the footage is AVCHD at 60p. The folder structure in the card is weird and the there is no readily playable video file to be found.
I discovered that I can easily import AVCHD into FCPX, as long as the folder structure on the card (or wherever you copied it) is left intact. But the footage then has to be optimized by FCPX and is therefor saved within the library. This creates very big files – almost 10 times bigger:
Original AVCHD media folder – 17.24 GB
Optimized media folder (in FCP library) – 181.71 GBI then learned about CLIPWRAP, which was recommended by Shane Ross and others on this site. I got the app for $50 on App Store and converted the footage. I was able to change the frame rate to 29.97 and choose a lighter Prores setting (Prores LT). This reduced the file sizes to 125.11 GB for the whole folder.
However choosing the lower frame rate caused the footage to be in slow-motion (half-time). (I guess I was expecting CLIPWRAP to “resample” the footage to play in real time…) So I then re-converted in CLIPWRAP leaving the frame rate un-touched. This resulted in the same file sizes (since the number of frames didn’t change, only the number of frames per second.)
Although the file size was significantly reduced (30%), I decided to stay with the FCP-optimized media as I was concerned about quality and grade-ability of the footage. I know the original quality of the source file in AVCHD can’t be great to start with and therefore not very grade-able anyway but I figured I would keep my chances on my side with a higher bit-rate.
If any of you have any insights on this or know of better ways to convert AVCHD footage, I would greatly appreciate your posts.
Cheers
Sebastian W. Howard
Batchfilms
Sculpting Life Into Moving Pictures -
16 Replies
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FCPX can import AVCHD natively. Unless there is something different about the A7 files, I would imagine that FCPX could import the transport streams without much of an issue.
What does the file structure look like?
Jeremy
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Our FS700 uses AVCHD files and works fine natively with no transcoding.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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Well that baffles me…..
Can you tell me what bit rate your files have?
Jeremy, the file structure looks like this:
Does the FS 700 have the same structure?
Sebastian W. Howard
Batchfilms
Sculpting Life Into Moving Pictures -
ProRes LT is noticeably lower quality as well. 50GB savings doesn’t make a lot of sense considering how cheap a TB is these days. Why not slip Clipwrap entirely and just stay in FCPX. Faster and better quality…
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
Call Box Training -
As this is a still camera and video camera, are you sure you’re not trying to import off the photo side? I think Aperture/iPhoto will see one director and FCPX will see the other.
The bitrate for the FS700 is stupid. Something like 20Mbps. That’s why it needs an external recorder to get the good data rate.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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Thank you Noah. Yes, I agree the 50GB savings is not really significant, hence the reason I kept the FCP optimized footage. I guess I was wondering if there was something I was missing somewhere in the whole process…
John, what external recorder do you use if you don’t mind my asking? Perhaps that external recorder is transcoding to Prores on the fly? That’s normally what they do…?
Sebastian W. Howard
Batchfilms
Sculpting Life Into Moving Pictures -
No external recording in the past – but we have an Atomos Shogun on backorder with B&H should that product ever actually get released. We have in the past used an AJA Ki Pro with a Sony F55 and it worked great.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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That is truly AVCHD. IF you quick look the “AVCHD” file you should see a bunch of Thumbnails open. You can double click them to open in QuickTime.
You can right click on the AVCHD file and choose to show the package contents. In there you will eventually find a folder probably called “Stream” and perhaps another AVCHD bundle. If you open that package, you’ll find the individual clips. You can bring those in directly to fcpx without transcode or rewrap, but that is optional.
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That ratio, about 10 to 1 was what I used to get importing AVCHD back when it converted the AVCHD into ProRes. With FCPX and a new mac in 2011, I have been able to use the AVCHD files without converting. Maybe there are some settings in FCPX that can be changed at import time. My Canon XA20 records AVCHD at about 26 Mbs and that runs about 10 GB/hour on the memory card and on the imported files.
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I would have thought the only time FCPX is going to optimise AVCHD media is if your project format doesn’t match the footage – in which case it’s going to render to ProRes in the background.
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland
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