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Media Composer incapable of importing / transcoding AVCHD video without crashing
There are a number of posts on this on the Avid forums – but as I sit here baby sitting imports of a number of spanned AVCHD clips – I felt it necessary to vent my annoyance and frustration with my “top end” and supposedly professional video editing application.
Would you believe it – Media Composer is incapable of importing or transcoding AVCHD clips without crashing – and then displaying various bizarre and un-explainable error messages that really mean nothing to the end user – what exactly is an upstream pipe error anyway?
What should be a clean and smooth automated and unattended process of ingesting AVCHD files is a tedious time consuming manually intensive baby sitting job of either trying to import or transcode AMA clips.
For an application like MC to consistently fail in this basic but critically essential part of the editing workflow is completely unacceptable – surely the process of encoding video into a DNxHD format is not an overly complicated task – nor is it an uncommon requirement – I mean how many people are there that are able to edit without ingesting video?
Some of the posts state that the disk is too slow or the clip shouldn’t be in the source windows or we should stand on the left foot and sing hallelulah etc – but this error is so random I am reluctant to believe that these are the root causes of the problem –
I think it is purely shoddy programming on behalf of Avid’s developers.
Come on Avid for a top end media company the fact that you cannot even program a stable and reliable ingest function does not bode well for things that may be really difficult.
Maybe we can can find you a freeware version that works and you can package that into the next release and charge us all to upgrade to that version.
Unhappy clients eventually get fed up and move on!
Neil
Effective Video
http://www.effectivevideo.co.za -
5 Replies
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AVCHD is not an easy format to deal with. Not by a long shot. It is, by far, the most complex form of compressed HD there is. It’s harder to deal with than HDV and XDCAM…harder than H.264. Well, it IS a variant of H.264, and H.264 isn’t really an ideal acquisition format. It’s the most troublesome one do deal with.
This format isn’t easy for FCP…it isn’t easy for Premiere Pro.
[Neil Adamson] “surely the process of encoding video into a DNxHD format is not an overly complicated task – nor is it an uncommon requirement -“
It is an overly complicated task, as it is an overly complicated format. Uncommon? In the Avid world, yes, as most AVCHD cameras…the biggest percentage, are consumer level cameras. Yes, there are some Panasonic AVCCAM and a couple Sonys, but mainly it is consumer. Avid will catch up, it takes time. And it really is a bear of a format.
[Neil Adamson] “What should be a clean and smooth automated and unattended process of ingesting AVCHD files is a tedious time consuming manually intensive baby sitting job of either trying to import or transcode AMA clips.”
Yup…that’s what happens when you have a really complex format. It takes babysitting. It isn’t nearly as easy as P2…XDCAM…HDV…C300…heck, even Canon 5D H.264 is easier to deal with. The fact that Avid deals with many other formats well, but chokes on this one, should be a clear indication that this format simply isn’t that easy to deal with. Because it isn’t. I avoid this format at all costs because of how much of a bear it is in post. I recommend people away from AVCHD cameras.
[Neil Adamson] “I think it is purely shoddy programming on behalf of Avid’s developers.”
It’s camera makers making codecs without much thought about how to deal with it in post. Because this started out as a consumer format, not intended to be edited. It blossomed into a format that some camera makers made professional cameras around.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
The best way is to update to 6.5 and you can open them via AMA. Then transcode selected material to the DNxHD flavor of your choice.
You can always create a separate startup drive, install the 30 day trial version of MC 6.5. Use it transcode all your footage, then go back to your 5.x version to edit.
Terence Curren
http://www.alphadogs.tv
http://www.digitalservicestation.com
Burbank,Ca -
AVID has been, and always will be, a piece of crap, over-priced, editing system with millions of bugs and problems the company will never fix. AVCHD works flawlessly with Adobe and FCP with no need for 3rd party software. After working with FCP over the past two years, I dread tomorrow when I have to go back, against my will, to editing on AVID. Total piece of junk.
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[Michael Johnston] “AVID has been, and always will be, a piece of crap, over-priced, editing system with millions of bugs and problems the company will never fix.”
Yeah, which is why 99% of feature films are cut with it. 90% of broadcast TV uses it successfully. Because it is a piece of crap that just plain doesn’t work. How on earth do we get anything done with this crappy software?
[Michael Johnston] ” AVCHD works flawlessly with Adobe and FCP with no need for 3rd party software.”
AVCHD comes into Avid without third party software. Just install the AMA drivers…unless you count that as third party software. IN which case, you need to add FCP to that list, as it requires L&T plugins for many formats, including a couple AVCHD formats as well. FLAWLESSLY? Have you been on the FCP and Premiere forums? most of the questions there deal with trying to edit AVCHD formats.
[Michael Johnston] “After working with FCP over the past two years, I dread tomorrow when I have to go back, against my will, to editing on AVID.”
No one is forcing you to use Avid. Plenty of options out there, and I’ll wager they are better suited for your needs. You are panning Avid because it doesn’t work for you. Well, it works for many many people. If it doesn’t work for you…don’t use it. If someone is hiring people to edit on Avid systems…don’t take that job. No one is forcing you do to anything.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Till now, MTS is still not an ideal editing format for most of the NLE system including FCP, Avid MC, iMovie as well. For that reason, like Avid Media Composer has pushed the plug-in like AMA for user to link MTS video clips directly into Avid program. But some users still do not have the luck. Personally I don’t want to waste time and energy to find a workable plug-in for importing my MTS footage into Avid. Since some guys told me the best editing format for Avid is the DNxHD codec, a simple and fast solution would be to transcode all of you raw AVCHD MTS to Avid supported DNxHD. It ensures smooth editing all the time. Here is the tutorial someone shared with me that help me out: https://forum.moses.tu-berlin.de/index.php?t=rview&th=13156&goto=59674
https://video-playback-tips.com/
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