[Cg Coffyn]

We’re using the Panasonic SDHC cards that are recommended for the camera, though we did look are other possibilities.

[Cg Coffyn]

Cool, FCPX also, as I mentioned earlier, has a superb and easy interface to view and transfer a few clips or all off a card, as I found in in my tests. BUT we switched from FCP7 to Premiere Pro for many reasons.

So ADOBE are you listening? We need you!!! 🙂

[Cg Coffyn]

Funny thing is that I know there must be plenty of other non-profits like us that are trying to do the best we can professionally on limited budgets. AVCHD is great for that. So I think eventually someone will come to the fore and make it happen and I hope make a profit as well so that they last a loooong time. But in the meantime we’ll figure something out.

[Cg Coffyn]

Thanks Patrick, I appreciate your thoughts! I’m surprised as well that somebody hasn’t created something really user friendly with a great workflow by now, dual platform. I’m guessing AVCCAM/AVCHD has not garnered much attention from the big video companies and developers since it’s not 100% focused on professionals in the industry.

[Cg Coffyn]

Thanks Dan, I appreciate what you guys are doing and I got the impression at last years NAB that ShotPut Pro has become a standard piece of software for many. I just didn’t particular like my brief experience with HD-VU.

I’m sure we are doing something that is not the norm for most. We just switched from tape-based HD to flash (SDHC) based HD, AVCHD. Finally we can cost effectively shoot for several weeks overseas and keep our cards as one backup. We also will be doing some editing in the field after offloading our media to a small portable RAID. It will make it so much easier to view footage off locked SDHC cards and transfer only what we want.

I did a test, only because we happen to have a copy of FCPX. The interface in FCPX to ingest directly from a camera or card is exactly what I’ve been looking for, I’m just not 100% happy with the results.

You can preview footage, ingest only what you want and create ProRes copy all in one easy go. The thing I don’t like is that FCPX rewraps the footage as an MOV and once imported back into Premiere it’s more of a dog (slow w/JKL) on the timeline than AVCHD. The ProRes works much better, but is 6x the size and I can’t afford that real estate loss in the field. On the scopes the AVCHD to ProRes looks really clean though. Unfortunately we have discovered a bug in PP where it squashes highlights in some movs. Not ProRes though.

[Cg Coffyn]

Hey Noah, I totally agree. In my searching for budget applications to do what I want with the AVCHD footage I stumbled on Shed Worx, an Aussie company. It’s all consumer stuff, but it looked like their “Cosmos” software might just do the trick. Nope, a least I didn’t find it workable for our purposes.

The search continues.

[Cg Coffyn]

I did a brief test run with the HD-VU demo software and it definitely feels like a beta. Very, very buggy. I was hoping I could actually select only the clips I wanted off the card to transfer, but it looks like it’s really not built for that. Of course, being new to the tapeless workflow I’m guessing that most would offload an entire card, but we would not always work that way.

Other than copying an entire card at times, in other situations all I would want to do is quickly find the newest clips off a card and transfer only those to a backup drive.

Oh, I also gave the AVCCAM Viewer a closer look. It will not transfer anything but entire cards from what I can tell, but it is nice to be able to view the footage as well. The interface seems a bit archaic though.

[Cg Coffyn]

It does look interesting, but I was hoping they might combine the two. Actually, it seems odd to me not too have it in one program, but maybe it’s a marketing thing.

[Cg Coffyn]

Hey Erik, thanks for the tip. We have used Mpeg Streamclip for other things, never thought of trying it for this purpose.

What I’m wondering is if there is at least a viewer that Sony or Canon users get when they purchased there H.264 camcorders/cameras. Still it would be nice to have once piece of software that would be an awesome viewer/mover of footage from the cards.

Maybe the Shotput Pro people will combine their viewer w/ShotPut Pro and lower the price. Hmmm, maybe I’m dreaming. Will definitely post when I find something.

[Cg Coffyn]

Hey Nic,
Maybe you have solved your problem by now, but I had something like crackling the other day, but I’m using a AG AC-160P. I was just doing some audio tests, trying to figure out how the “auto” switch worked for both channels, then I tried later setting the internal limiter. The crackling sound for me was the audio meters maxing out (ie hitting into the red) with the auto on, but without the limiter.

I’ve also had a crackling sound from a wireless lav we used years ago in an outdoor shoot. It was just interference and we later had to do a ADR in the studio.

I hope you figure out the cause quickly if you haven’t already. All the best!