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AVCHD in Premiere Pro CC problems
I heard AVCHD is supposed to work in Premiere Pro CC. I’m importing the SD Card folder via the media browser. Sometimes it works fine and other times I have frame skips and playback errors. Why does this sometimes happen and not always. I’ve heard some people transcode to Pro Res on their Mac. I have an iMac 17 with 8GB of ram and a SSD external that I store my media on. It should be fast enough for AVCHD files right?
Bryce
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21 Replies
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AVCHD files are very small. they are limited by CPU decoding resources. When you go to a larger, less compressed format, you
have to playback more mb/sec. Have you tested prores yet? -
I have but I was told by another editor I shouldn’t have to transcode and AVCHD should be fast enough.
Bryce
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AVCHD is terrible and pretty much the only codec I would transcode.
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okay, Can I import AVCHD files into Prelude and transcode there without frame skips?
Bryce
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Transcoding should not drop frames. AVCHD just has a pretty bad realtime performance.
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now here is a question. If I record natively at 35mbps and I transcode to Apple Pro Res 422 will it change the fact that it’s a 35mbps file or will it keep it the same mbps? Do you recommend I transcode to 422 or 422HQ?
Bryce
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Prores files will be bigger because you can’t control their bitrate. It is controlled automatically by the codec. I would recommend Prores 422 over AVCHD.
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Before you spend a huge amount of time transcoding everything you shoot (which I rarely do), we haven’t asked a few basic questions.
What is the graphics card on that iMac? How much RAM does it have?
Have you checked using the Apple tool Activity monitor to make sure you aren’t running out of RAM? I’ve long ago had to upgrade to a minimum of 16 to effectively run CC.
I’m also curious about your choice of an SSD for external storage and whether it might be close to full. If you aren’t aware of the limitations of SSDs, especially as they fill up, you should do a search on it. They are usually better for read conditions, like a primary drive with more static applications, than ever changing data. Not saying it might not be AVCHD, but there are a few things to suspect first.I usually use AVCHD on my C100 and there is nothing that my iMac can’t handle quite well. I have 2 GBs of video ram, 32GBs of system RAM and an very fast RAID 5 external non SSD as the work drive.
Hope this helps!
Al
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first thing is first. I’m very cheap. haha I don’t have money for a Raid system. my SSD External is 1TB. It still have a good 700GB left on it. Here is the specs of my computer.
iMac 27 inch
Processor 3.4Ghz Intel Core i7
Memory 8GB 1600MHz DDR3
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048MB
I also have a fusion drive in my iMac.
Bryce
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Understood. Mine is the same. Only think to consider is adding RAM to the base. With that much space left on the SSD you should be fine.
Al
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