A frequently asked question with NEX cameras (FS100, FS700, and others which use AVCHD) is how do you go about importing footage from the camera for editing. There are serious pitfalls here -- such as audio glitches in long clips -- so this guide is intended to help get past them.
This guide is not yet complete, and contributions would be most welcome.
Importing Footage with Direct Copy
You don't need to use any fancy utility to import your footage; you can just copy it directly from the SD card.
However, there is one very important caveat: you must copy the entire AVCHD folder -- not just the .mts or .m2ts files within the folder structure. The AVCHD folder contains a bunch of files, and those files are there for a reason -- they contain meta-data which (among other things) is essential for stitching together long clips which have been split into multiple files. If you copy just the .mts files and attempt to stitch them together by hand, your movie will contain serious audio glitches and who knows what other problems (lost timecodes, lost good/no-good markers, etc).
So, with that in mind, here's the recommended workflow. For each SD card you import:
Your folder structure should look like this:
Note that with Premiere Pro, I have been able to avoid creating the extra level of folder containing "PRIVATE"; I just rename PRIVATE to something useful, and that works for me. Other apps may have a problem with this, however, so if in doubt, follow the steps above.
For Premiere Pro
Premiere can ingest your footage directly, so there's no reason in principle to transcode it; on the other hand there may be some gain in editing performance if you transcode to an all-intra format like ProRes or DNxHD, though the process of re-compressing the footage will inevitably lose some quality.
The simplest method -- and which will likely work well in many cases -- is direct ingestion. In this case, do not move, rename, modify, bend, fold, or mutilate, any files within a footage folder in any way.
Done!
Transcoding will involve converting the clips to some other format, and then ingesting the converted clips. How this works exactly will depend on the conversion tool.
For FCP 7
{help wanted here}
For FCP X
{help wanted here}
This guide is not yet complete, and contributions would be most welcome.
Importing Footage with Direct Copy
You don't need to use any fancy utility to import your footage; you can just copy it directly from the SD card.
However, there is one very important caveat: you must copy the entire AVCHD folder -- not just the .mts or .m2ts files within the folder structure. The AVCHD folder contains a bunch of files, and those files are there for a reason -- they contain meta-data which (among other things) is essential for stitching together long clips which have been split into multiple files. If you copy just the .mts files and attempt to stitch them together by hand, your movie will contain serious audio glitches and who knows what other problems (lost timecodes, lost good/no-good markers, etc).
So, with that in mind, here's the recommended workflow. For each SD card you import:
- In your project folder, create a footage folder to hold the footage, named as something sensible that tells you what that SD card was -- like "Feb 7 card 1", or "Diner Scene", or whatever works for your workflow.
- Copy the entire "PRIVATE" folder, from the SD card as it comes out of the camera, into this new footage folder. One SD card per footage folder.
- Import this footage folder into your editor as described below.
Your folder structure should look like this:
Code:
.../Movie Project
|- Movie.prproj
|- Diner Scene
| |- PRIVATE
| |- AVCHD (containing stuff you mustn't touch)
|- Park Scene
|- PRIVATE
|- AVCHD (containing stuff you mustn't touch)
... etc.
For Premiere Pro
Premiere can ingest your footage directly, so there's no reason in principle to transcode it; on the other hand there may be some gain in editing performance if you transcode to an all-intra format like ProRes or DNxHD, though the process of re-compressing the footage will inevitably lose some quality.
The simplest method -- and which will likely work well in many cases -- is direct ingestion. In this case, do not move, rename, modify, bend, fold, or mutilate, any files within a footage folder in any way.
- In Media Browser, open up the footage folder (e.g. "Diner Scene"), and then open the "PRIVATE" sub-folder. (If you renamed "PRIVATE", open the "AVCHD" sub-folder.)
- Make sure that "View As: AVCHD" is set above the folder contents.
- Premiere will display the available clips as mini previews; long clips will be stitched correctly.
- Select the clips you want, right click, and "Import".
Done!
Transcoding will involve converting the clips to some other format, and then ingesting the converted clips. How this works exactly will depend on the conversion tool.
For FCP 7
{help wanted here}
For FCP X
{help wanted here}
Comment