Working with AVCHD, how to leave “files in place”

[Liz Parham]

I actually found that recently I can highlight all the .mxf files directly + drag and drop from Finder into an event with library preferences “leave file in place” and it will not copy the clips.

[Dan Bowman]

Hi Liz,

Thanks for your help. But I can’t see the Sony FS5 mxf files when I look in the finder.

[Liz Parham]

I don’t have FS5 files in front of me but I think if you right click show package contents and go into the PRIVATE folder and XDROOT you’ll see all the individual clips

[Doug Metz]

This method ‘works’, but can be problematic for a couple of reasons:

First, it doesn’t resolve spanned clips. That 15 minute interview, depending on camera/card/format, may span several files on the card. When you import from the card normally, or use EditReady or ClipWrap or similar, the long segments come in as one file instead of 2 or more. When they’re dragged & dropped directly, you may end up with a missing frame or audible click at the seams.

Second, you likely aren’t getting all of the metadata into FCPX that’s stored in the folder structure of the card.

I used to use ClipWrap or 5DtoRGB to convert to ProRes prior to import (that way I could rename the files in the Finder first), but because the vast majority of my projects are short-form (usually under 2 min), I now create Camera Archives and just import what I need. The libraries live on the drives with their related jobs, so having a subset of AVCHD clips in the library isn’t really an issue. For me. :^)

Doug Metz

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[Joe Marler]

[Dan Bowman] “I’m trying to import Sony FS5 AVCHD footage into FCPX 10.2.3 without embedding the clips…But FCPX won’t let me leave files in place…having to copy clips before importing to FCPX is a deal breaker for me. Has anyone found a solution?”

If the AVCHD content is in the original tree format (despite being copied to hard disk before import), FCPX will not import that “in place”. You could copy the video files outside the tree and import in place from there — but this should NEVER be done with FCPX, for two reasons:

(1) Risk of missing metadata causing problems with clip spanning, or other unknown issues. However new cameras using SDXC cards automatically use the exFAT file system which has no practical file size limit, so clip spanning might be less a problem than previously. Unfortunately you never know — the camera might split the file even though the exFAT file system does not mandate that.

(2) Possible I/O performance problems from “in place” AVCHD files. This causes excessive small random I/Os when scrolling through the Event Browser in filmstrip mode. Even a small % of “in place” AVCHD content mixed in a large library of non-AVCHD content may cause this. I don’t know if this happens with all AVCHD content or just from certain cameras. I haven’t tested FS5 content but I’ve seen it from other cameras. It is potentially quite serious because there’s no obvious error — everything just seems slow. Isolating, removing, then properly re-importing just those AVCHD “in place” clips can be tricky — especially if they are already in projects.

By far the easiest, fastest solution for AVCHD is simply re-wrapping with EditReady before import. It is lightning fast, preserves all metadata, allows in-place import, and the import itself is much faster: https://www.divergentmedia.com/editready

[Dan Bowman]

Wow Liz, that worked, thank you so much. BTW I called Apple tech support and they told it is impossible to import AVCHD files without embedding them into FCP.

Anyway, Here’s what worked for me:
1-Copy the PRIVATE folder and all its contents from the camera SD card.
2- Open the PRIVATE folder, right click the AVCHD Icon and select ”show package contents”, this will reveal an icon called BDMV.
3- Right click the BDMV icon, and select ”show package contents”. This will reveal a folder called STREAM.
4-Open the STREAM folder and select the clips you want. They will be named 00000.MTS, 00001.MTS, and so on.
5- Drag the clips onto FCPX. There will be no progress bar, just the deadly colored spinning wheel, but fear not. If there are many large clips, go meditate. Eventually the clips will appear in FCPX. And no, the file size of FCPX will not suddenly jump to 50GB.

[Dan Bowman]

I think you’re right Doug. After importing AVCHD clips from my Sony FS5 by the drag and drop method I find that every time I open the library the colored spinning wheel pops up for several minutes. Looks like I’ll have to transcode. Trouble is, with EditReady the file sizes grow five-fold. Not sure what settings I need in order to closely match the quality and files size of the camera originals.

[Doug Metz]

[Dan Bowman] “Looks like I’ll have to transcode. Trouble is, with EditReady the file sizes grow five-fold. Not sure what settings I need in order to closely match the quality and files size of the camera originals.”

It sounds like you’re taking camera source H.264 encoded files, and transcoding with EditReady to ProRes… I don’t have EditReady – is there an option to simply re-wrap instead of transcode? That’ll be as original as you can get.

Doug Metz

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