[Sebastian Howard]

Thank you all for your interesting and insightful responses.

First, upon reading many comments above from people that said they could import AVCHD natively directly into FCPX, I got a little flustered, couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong… So went back to FCPX and tried importing again. Well….I discovered (with great embarrassment) that I could simply uncheck the “Create Optimize Media” option and that the footage would import and play natively in the FCPX timeline.

Now I have been editing for a long time and I have to say I was red in the face with humiliation. How did I miss that, I don’t know…

However, I still couldn’t check the “Leave files in place” option. For some reason the files had to be “Copi[ed] to library” It’s probably just a question of re-wrapping the files with the proper extension… And I guess it’s useful if you are importing straight from the camera or card.

But all this doesn’t really solve the problem in the end.

Having worked mostly with XDCAM, Prores and some 5D footage, I wasn’t really knowledgeable of AVCHD and I was under the impression that it was a “semi-pro” format… But after researching a little further, I confirmed that AVCHD is indeed an Interframe format, meaning the video file in there is compressed for playback, not for editing. It’s a consumer format that was designed by Panasonic and Sony for enhanced playback experience, hence the folder structure that allows for menus and such. The root file is MTS but the codec inside is none other than H.264.

Now I know our NLE software systems can work well with these compressed files now days but these files still remain Not-Frame-Accurate. And that’s an issue for me. Plus they can get buggy for a number of other reasons when you start to apply filters and other effects like colour grading and speed changes.

So bringing AVCHD into FCPX natively is no different than bringing in footage from the Canon 5D. It’s just another consumer format that is not favourable for editing. Yes it can be “optimized” through FCPX or transcoded through software like CLIPWRAP but the source footage remains 4:2:0 and thus a lower quality, especially with regards to colour space.

The article posted above by Joe (Thank you Joe for that) has more information on this topic.

And this video here offers a well summarized explanation of video formats and codecs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpBjGUlBTHU

This all makes me wonder why Technicolor bothered creating the CineStyle profile for Canon DSLR cameras when the video recorded by these cameras is still just H.264. Anyway…

So what is the FINAL conclusion? This is it: AVCHD is consumer. If you want good quality footage to work with (with wide colour space possibilities and frame accuracy), then try to use cameras that can record straight to a 4:2:2 “un-compressed” format, like the Canon C300 or XDCAM HD – OR – use an external recorder to record the raw footage straight to the desired Prores format, like the Atamos or AJA Ki-Pro.

Sorry for the long post. I felt the need to try to clear up the subject (somewhat). Hopefully it can help others.

Cheers

Sebastian W. Howard
Batchfilms
Sculpting Life Into Moving Pictures

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

[Sebastian Howard]

Thank you Noah. Yes, I agree the 50GB savings is not really significant, hence the reason I kept the FCP optimized footage. I guess I was wondering if there was something I was missing somewhere in the whole process…

John, what external recorder do you use if you don’t mind my asking? Perhaps that external recorder is transcoding to Prores on the fly? That’s normally what they do…?

Sebastian W. Howard
Batchfilms
Sculpting Life Into Moving Pictures

[Sebastian Howard]

I currently use Seagate Barracuda 2TB or 3TB drives.

I pack as many projects as I can on to 1 drive and then clone the content to a second identical drive. This gives me “some” security in case one of the drives fail.

If the client comes back for more work, I copy the needed content back to a work drive, do the work and then re-update the back-ups. So of course I leave some space on the back-up drives for potential future project updates.

I would love to hear other people’s strategies.

Sebastian W. Howard
Batchfilms
Sculpting Life Into Moving Pictures

[Sebastian Howard]

Well that baffles me…..

Can you tell me what bit rate your files have?

Jeremy, the file structure looks like this:

Does the FS 700 have the same structure?

Sebastian W. Howard
Batchfilms
Sculpting Life Into Moving Pictures

[Sebastian Howard]

AWESOME!! Thank you Bret!!! Your solution seems to have solved my problem entirely. I uninstalled the previous MBD driver (Desktopvideo_9.9.3) and installed the new 10.0 driver and have been testing various playbacks for a while now without hiccups. I am super grateful!

I am surprised however that my MBD Deckling Extreme card was affecting playback on the Finder level… I still don’t get that…

I certainly will be following Charlie’s recommendations nonetheless as my card is truly getting old and eventually will be getting a new machine. It seems these days the iMacs perform pretty well with FCPX. No crucial need to get a new Mac Pro for now – until 4K lands on my doorstep…

For others who might be experiencing the same problem, you can get the new driver here:
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/detail?sid=3945&pid=4004&leg=true&os=mac

Don’t forget to uninstall the previous driver first as per the instructions in the Read Me file.

Sebastian W. Howard
Batchfilms
Sculpting Life Into Moving Pictures

[Sebastian Howard]

Thank you Dave for your reply…

Yes, the video is at 1080. I guess this business of fields and frames leaves me confused every time… How can I confirm that my 29.97 frames per second video has indeed 59.94 fields in each of those seconds… Is it like this by default? I think I am going to have to sit down sometime soon with a book on this subject to wrap my head around the whole thing…

Many thanks again!

Sebastian

Sebastian W. Howard
Batchfilms
Sculpting Life Into Moving Pictures

[Sebastian Howard]

Hello there,

I was wondering if there had been any progress regarding this matter. Has anybody found a solution?

Has anybody tested this with FCP 7 on Snow Leopard, which is what we are about to set-up?

Looking forward to getting some news.

Sebastian

Sebastian W. Howard
Batchfilms
Sculpting Life Into Moving Pictures