AVCHD compared to SxS?

[Shaneo]

I have an EX-1 and I am looking for a little palm camcorder as a second "perspective" camera and I wanted to keep everything tapeless. Has anyone used AVCHD (popular amongst the tapeless Sony camcorders). I am on Mac/FCP 6...From what I understand, AVCHD takes FOREVER to download and convert...you can only convert it to ProRes 422 for FCP which then bumps the file up 10X it's original size which eats up your ram and slows down the whole system...Exporting takes even longer... Is this accurate? Wouldn't this COMPLETELY defeat the whole purpose? Someone PLEASE tell me they have found a way around this, I would LOVE to use the AVCHD camera but not with such a headache to ensue.
Thanks!
Shane O

 

[Barry_Green]

Yes it's correct, but that's what FCP does. Use anything but FCP and you'll find it much easier. Use iMovie, even, and it'll convert to AIC in realtime if you use the perian plug-in (don't know if I got that right, I'm going off what I recall David S. posting).

I think FCP's implementation of AVC-HD makes absolutely no sense and defeats the entire purpose. I can't imagine they'll stick with this goofy transcode-to-prores, take-up-10x-as-much-space approach. Especially when another editor like EDIUS can drag and drop the AVC-HD file right to the timeline with no conversion and no space increase.