[Gary Huff]

[Yair Bartal] “I still don’t think I have a definite answer.”

I gave you the definitive answer. Part of editing doesn’t involve just putting clips next to each other on the timeline, but following workflow best practices and having a fundamental understanding of what the process is and how it works. I even went so far as to duplicate, and yet your flow of information seems very constricted and I am at a loss why you still seem to be at a loss.

[Gary Huff]

[Billy Surf] “I mainly edit GH4 mov files BUT wanted to future proof!”

That’s heavily compressed 4K then, and with it being GH4, what kind of plugins do you typically add to your clips usually?

[Gary Huff]

[Yair Bartal] “As far as I know re-wraping means no transcoding from one codec to another.”

That is correct, the file extension changes while the actual data inside the container remains as it was.

[Yair Bartal] “Then you export from ProRes to QuickTime with h.264 codec, that means you transcode again.”

That’s correct.

[Yair Bartal] “Once you ingest into the library, you do transcode once from h.264 to ProRes.”

If you select “Create optimized media”, which you do not have to do unless you are having performance issues editing the H.264 stream of AVCHD. Is that what you did? Because, if so, you didn’t actually trash the original re-wrapped clips. In fact, if you right click on one of the clips and tell it to “Reveal in Finder”, it will be the original, re-wrapped AVCHD. That is, if you did the steps I just did on ingesting AVCHD.

[Gary Huff]

[Yair Bartal] “Now I’d appreciate if you can explain exactly how you used FCPX to re-wrap AVCHD into QuickTime, and especially what makes you sure this is indeed a re-wrap and not a re-compress process.”

No need to be flippant, Yair. You import the footage and tell it to ingest into the library. And there’s no way it can be a re-compression because the only thing FCPX recompresses into is ProRes, and the process of ingestion is far too quick to be a re-encode. Plus, the details for the resulting QuickTime file are the same as for the .MTS. There’s no reason FCPX cannot simple re-wrap the container.

[Gary Huff]

Uninstall any and all third-party plugins and see what happens.

[Gary Huff]

[Yair Bartal] “FCPX does not rewrap AVCHD material into QuickTime. That’s why tools like EditReady exist.”

Hey Yair, probably best not to state things like this unless you have first-hand experience. I actually just tested this out because I was pretty sure I had remembered that FCPX re-wrapped AVCHD into QuickTime, and it absolutely does.

EditReady has other reasons why I used it (there was a 30p issue with AVCHD from the C100 for a while), and it is absolutely a must-buy for anyone who works a lot with AVCHD.

[Gary Huff]

[dallas kruse] “Skin tones look yellow on my TV monitor when I’m shooting and I am using it just for focus and framing. “

That sounds like an incorrect white balance. Are the skin tones not yellow when you look at the footage later?

[Gary Huff]

[Yair Bartal] “It was easy to choose and pick up her files via FCPX and export those as single files (without the AVCHD folder structure which includes other projects).”

Does FCPX rewrap AVCHD material into QuickTime? It’s possible if you ingest into the Library itself, as opposed to leaving the media in its location.

That said, tools like EditReady exist in order to re-wrap footage into QuickTime files without re-encoding. I used to use this all the time because it was far simpler to navigate folders for specific clips.

However, even without all that, SD cards are incredibly cheap. There is no reason to be filming multiple client projects on a single card.

I’m going to say that this material’s quality or lack thereof is probably not going to be an issue. However, with a re-encode from AVCHD to H.264 QuickTime and then an upload to any video sharing service is going to be three generations removed from the source, a pipeline of which will always be 8-bit 4:2:0 and low-bitrate throughout. I personally don’t like the idea of that, but it is what it is, and a lot of people simply don’t concern themselves with any loss generated by a process such as that.

[Gary Huff]

[dallas kruse] “I’m not sure I trust the coloring of the LCD monitor. The cameras’ LCD screen’s coloring looks different than the TV’s monitor.”

If you white balance that T4i (which isn’t easy, but doable), then you’ll always have a neutral base to start from (where white looks white in the footage), and you won’t have to worry about whether the monitors are correct or not. In my opinion, unless you know for a fact that a monitor is calibrated, and calibrated correctly, you should only use monitors for focus (with the proper tools, a la peaking, mag assist, etc.) and composition.

[Gary Huff]

[nick hopman] “With Premiere Pro CS6 how can I edit captured .dv files (AVI DV Type 2) adding titles etc. and export and view lossless on an iPad? “

Have you tried exporting an MP4?