[Sutharsan Bala]

I imported some AVCHD footage from my Panasonic TM-300 into FCP 6.0.1 today. Just opened “Log and Transfer” and imported the entire folder of .MTS files. The trick for me was to copy the whole thing onto my local drive (all the folders, not just the .MTS folder). Then import that folder in FCP and you’re good to go! 🙂

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” – A. Einstein

[Sutharsan Bala]

Would still be nice to get some views on the Q’s above.. 🙂

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” – A. Einstein

[Sutharsan Bala]

I’m going to shoot some stuff with my Panasonic TM-300 soon, which also shoots AVCHD. I’ll post my results back later. Good luck in the meanwhile. Btw, I read somewhere that copying your material to your hard-drive and then ingesting them in FCP may help. Try it if you haven’t already.. 🙂

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” – A. Einstein

[Sutharsan Bala]

Have you tried using FW instead of USB? Or maybe FW isn’t an option with AVCHD ?

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” – A. Einstein

[Sutharsan Bala]

Both types of clips are on an external SATA drive connected to my MBP via a Sonnet eSATA Expresscard adapter. This has a rather fast throughput. Faster than FW or USB.

I put these clips together in an HDV timeline. So the HDV clips play real time and the ProRes clips play ‘green line’ real time.

Thanks again,

Some more questions:

1). Did the clips play OK together? How about transitions and edit and how were render times? (I thought HDV clips had to render a lot when put on an HDV timeline, I thought that was the purpose of making them ProRes?).

2). Did you set the render to ProRes or HDV? What would you suggest here?

3).Will this work with FW 800 you think?

4). So I should re-capture the HDV material to native HDV?

5). If the clips play OK together on the same timeline, the only reason to downconvert the AVCHD material from ProRes to HDV would be to save space, right?

6). How / what should I output to? QT using conversion, or SD DVD using compressor – will there be problems during output due to HDV and ProRes (AVCHD) material on the same timeline?

Thanks for your help, I’m learning a lot!

-Sutharsan-

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” – A. Einstein

[Sutharsan Bala]

Thanks for the quick reply Neil,

I don’t have access to Final Cut 7.0, but something tells me I should maybe shell out for it.

I’ll try to make the problem(s) and questions as precise and concise as possible;

Background: I’m making a commissioned short documentary and I’m shooting on two different cameras. One Canon Legria HV40 (shoots HDV 1080i / 50) and one Panasonic TM-300 (shoots AVCHD).

I have – until now, only shot material using the Canon HV40, but will begin using the AVCHD camera soon.

After doing some research on postproduction workflow, it came to my attention (because of my previous questions and consequent answers to this thread) that the best route would be to import the HDV footage using the Apple ProRes HQ codec – as the AVCHD material (still to be shot) will anyway be converted to ProRes using L & T.

Yesterday, I started capturing the HDV material using the ProRes codec and was surprised over the immense file sizes. 2 hours of footage came to 76 GB of storage. I have a LaCie Quadra 2 TB drive for editing and at this rate, it’ll fill up quite quickly. So what shall I do?

1). Re-capture the HDV material into native HDV (making 1 hour = 13 GB) and L & T for the AVCHD material. Question: How will this affect the editing? Does AVCHD converted to ProRes edit well together with HDV native material?

2). Re-capture the HDV material to native HDV, then AVC HD to ProRes and back to HDV native (as suggested) = will there be a huge quality difference?

3). Staying ProRes all the way, but this is not really an option any longer as I don’t have that much drive space and I can’t afford more drives. IF I buy the FCP upgrade, will the ProRes LT codec be good enough for this project? How is the quality? Can I go up to ProRes HQ after editing with ProRes LT?

The end result master format is DVD and BlueRay.

Looking forward to your answers, the time is really short.

Thank you,

sincerely,

-Sutharsan “Sui” Bala-

[Sutharsan Bala]

Hi again,

Didn’t get any responses to my last questions, but I have some new ones.. :p

So; I started capturing some material today and I decided to go ProRes all the way with this – however, now that I’ve captured less than two hours of footage, I’ve used almost 75 GB of harddrive space (!) – I’m, as I mentioned, on a 2 TB drive as my scratch disk and at this rate, I’ll have used it up in no time.

Now my question is; can I leave the captured material as “ProRes HQ” and capture the rest in Native HDV? How will this affect the editing of the two on the same timline? Also, I’ll be starting to shoot using the AVCHD camera next week. How will this affect the Native HDV material on the same timeline + the converted ProRes material?

The captured material looks amazing, however, I’m sure there is not a BIG difference between the converted ProRes HQ material and Native HDV?

I have no clue as to what to do now – should I just re-capture the material in HDV native and delete the ProRes files? They’re after all HUGE and I know I can save a lot of disk space by doing this, especially as I’ll have AVC HD material coming in later which will eat up everything in no time.. 🙁

I’m on an Intel MacBook Pro 2.4 Ghz with 2 GB RAM.

Thanks!

-Sutharsan-

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” – A. Einstein

[Sutharsan Bala]

Thanks for your replies but Im a bit confused. I am worried about disk space because I only have a 2 TB Lacie Quadra drive for editing and a 2 TB Lacie Max disc as backup. If the AVCHD material will be six times bigger, then 1 hour of material would be something like 72 GB. Makes me want to shoot as much as possible with the HDV camera and leave the AVCHD alone.

Id love to edit on FCP 7 but I only have FCP 6.x.x with no possibilitty to upgrade (due to financial restraints).

Maybe what you suggested Tom – to shoot 1440×1080 and then going to ProRes and then to HDV using compressor is the best option? But how will this affect quality when doing two by-passes? And how will the HDV (from the AVCHD material) compare to the HDV-converted to ProRes material? Maybe conforming everything to HDV is the best option for editing this project?

Best regards,

-Sui Bala-

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” – A. Einstein

[Sutharsan Bala]

Why would anyone in this day and age have anything else than an Intel-based Mac? :p

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” – A. Einstein

[Sutharsan Bala]

Hi Tom,

So if I understand you correctly I leave the AVCHD camera’s settings to 1440×1080, instead of 1920×1080, thus making the aspect ratio compatible with the HDV footage?

-Sui-

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” – A. Einstein