[Roy Plisko]

So I googled “headphone gain on Mark iii” and came to this post where someone actually took the time to look it up in the manual. . . just to tell everyone in a public forum the page number to go look themselves. There’s some lost time I will never get back.

[Roy Plisko]

I know that many DSLR cameras have a 30 minute limit before they stop. This is because in Europe a camera that makes more than 30 minute clips is considered a video camera which is in a higher tax category than a still camera, so the manufacturers create this artificial limit to make it easier to sell them worldwide. It has nothing to do with slow SD cards. I have witnessed this with a Canon EOS 5D Mark III. I haven’t shot that long a clip with my GH4 yet but I imagine it will do the same.

[Roy Plisko]

I’ll agree that Apple’s system is a little odd. But the torture is also because of the way the format must be handled. No other format must be accommodated like this one. . . except maybe optical discs. Even in Windows access to the .MTS files makes it slightly easier but it is still a Rube Goldberg contraption compared to other formats. Also, if you have spanned clips, then trying to keep sanity by dragging .MTS files out creates more problems.

The PC is the dominant market share in home business and gaming uses but the artistic market has always been dominated by Mac until only about 10 years ago when PC’s started making inroads. Most professionals seem to prefer Macs for this work. Maybe it’s because they have been doing it a long time. If you want to work professionally you will come across Macs all the time. I’m in an office where the “business/marketing” oriented people mostly Windows laptops and the other half of the building where the photography, graphic design and video departments are is all macs. Nobody in the art wing has a PC.

You were right to say I am ranting. I didn’t mean to rant at you if it sounded that way.

[Roy Plisko]

And before you pick it apart again, yes, quicktime does gather the files to a window. If you want to look at one it then creates a quicktime clip. Every other format reads directly in the OS as a “quick view” if you highlight a clip in the folder and press the space bar. You can scroll through the clips with the arrow keys and never need to open another folder or turn a harebrained clip into a special transcoded quicktime clip just to watch it.

[Roy Plisko]

“No offense, but your rant is about a problem that doesn’t exist.”

No offense but you must not be using a Mac which forces AVCHD through quicktime which reads it a totally different way and doesn’t respond to digging into the folders. So the problem exists. You just don’t deal with it. Yes, it is a little easier on a PC if you don’t mind drilling through 4 folders instead of clicking a file at the top level like every other format in the world.

[Roy Plisko]

“It sounds like your problem is with Avid and not AVCHD. These days, AVCHD is very easy too work with as David pointed out. I use it in Vegas Pro and Final Cut Pro X with no problems at all. ”

Premiere handles it OK too. The problem is managing the clips in the retarded bundled format that wants us all to think we are making DVD’s. If I have more than one shoot on the card I have to either spend a bunch of time transcoding what I want or I am forced to carry extra data I don’t need to save time. The same is true If I just want 10 or so clips from the card with 100 clips, I have to waste time transcoding or keep the whole PRIVATE folder because. . . AVCHD is fragile and neeeeeeds it’s file structure. If I want to browse the contents of the card real quick I need to fire up a special program that can read them rather than just quickly previewing the clip in the OS player. Even Apple OS is a clumsy mess handling AVCHD. This DVD like format is a joke. I could care less if I can go straight from the camera to making a blue ray disc. I could care less about some specs on paper that say the quality is better for the bit rate. My eyes tell me my Mark III and my GH4 make .mp4 clips that look better than AVCHD. The supposed difference on paper about stream efficiency isn’t worth the hassle to me. I’m not a spec. nerd that is proud of what a piece of paper says I get. I’m guy who wants to get things done efficiently.

My needs are simple. I want good looking video but I also want to my SD card to act like a hard drive. I want to use my mouse to grab the clips I want, drag them off the card onto a folder in my project and FORGET ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE. That’s what I do with my Canon Mark III and my Panasonic GH4. They both make EXCELLENT video in AUTONOMOUS CLIPS without beating me over the head with a convoluted DVD file structure and a bunch of excess baggage. They even seamlessly go together when the camera breaks them up and somehow they don’t need 15 extra folders full of crap to do it. THAT’S what I call more efficient, not some fancy techie talk about bit rates on paper. My eyes say the piece of paper is overplaying it’s hand.

I agree with the original post. AVCHD sucks. It is a bloated, folder fetish waste of my time as an editor. Accepting it in the name of being current?? The industry is out of it’s mind if this is what they expect me to swallow as “progress” or an “upgraded experience”. I don’t know a single professional editor that recommends AVCHD. It is a consumer format as far as I am concerned. It deserves to be abandoned by as many people as possible. That’s what I would call moving into the future.

[Roy Plisko]

I think the source patch and the destination patch need to match. . . or maybe it’s that your destination patch needs to be activated on the track the multi-clip is on. One way or another, messing with the patches fixed this problem for me.