AVCHD saga continues...

Kit_L said:
Yesterday I shot ~50' of footage to the Panasonic 16G card; it was about 9.5Gb in all.

Importing the footage to the third internal HDD took eight minutes. This was a simple copy from card to disk, limited by USB2 speed.

Opening the Log and Transfer window; all clips appeared (it sees the last drive/folder you pointed it at).

I selected all clips, dragged them into the Queue window, and FCP went to work immediately. Transcoding to Pro Res 422 takes about 40% real time as far as I can see; I went to lunch. I loged all clips in the afternoon; all are perfect.

My take is this: the workflow for me is absolutely fine as it is. Not a dropped fame to be seen; the transcoding is automatic; the files once expanded are about four times the originals in size. All audio is 48KHz, and the images are excellent.

From my POV, there are no problems with the FCP native transcoding, and no downside. My workflow involves keeping the original AVCHD footage (as it is compressed, it is already in an excellent form for storage). If I do whoot anything that might be able to benefit from a no-transcoding workflow later, it will be there in its original form. The expanded Pro Res files sit on my fastest external drive, and FCP seems to be completely happy working with it. Personally, I don't miss tape at all, and the transcoding reminds me of batch processing in Adobe Camera Raw: an opportunity to get something to eat, or to go for a walk. Way faster than logging and capturing tape, and no dropouts (did I mention that?).

if you don'y use FCP, there is either Premiere, which sees the AVCHD files natively, or the Panny transcoder (transcdes to DVCProHD, from memory). Seems like a very workable solution to me.
Click to expand...

Wonder if you could say what kind of computer you are using? I've got a MacBook Pro 2.2 (4G Ram, latest FCS) and would be interested in know whether that would produce comparable results with similar workflow. Thanks.
 
I have a Mac Book pro 2.5 , Intel Peryn early 2008 with 4 Gigs of ram. I transcoded about 95 minutes of 720p 24 to Pro res . It took about 63 minutes . I used a single Firewire 400 external drive . I plan on transcoding the same media again when my Raid 0 sata two drive chassis comes in . I'm curious to see wether there will be a speed difference or if most of the crunching comes from the Mac Book processor. I know the Sata drives will help greatly with editing once the media is transcoded.

Dave
 
Edweirdo said:
Cineform claims its lossless. Are they wrong, or is it lossless only when going from Cineform->Cineform. But lossy when going from AVCHD->Cineofrm?
Click to expand...
It's wavelet compression. Are they actually claiming "lossless"? That would be... well, by every definition I know of, that would have to be considered inaccurate. If they claim it's "virtually lossless" or "visually lossless" then that's one thing, but to claim actually lossless, that would imply that it reconstructs each frame bit-for-bit identically. Wavelet can't do that as far as I know.
 
"...lossless and easy to edit avi files..."

its right there on the product page: http://cineform.com/products/NeoScene.htm (twice)

virtual or visual.... I took the Neo avi and the original AVCHD and placed them over eachother in Vegas, set the preview to best-full, and then turned the avi track off and on so that I could compare the AVC underneath. The screen would not change- its like I was looking at the same clip continuously. So if it is loosing something- I cant see it.

I might invest in it as it also removes Canon's wierd pulldown from my HV20 during capture as well as converting any 60i stuff I have to 24p.
 
pd17 said:
I have a Mac Book pro 2.5 , Intel Peryn early 2008 with 4 Gigs of ram. I transcoded about 95 minutes of 720p 24 to Pro res . It took about 63 minutes . I used a single Firewire 400 external drive . I plan on transcoding the same media again when my Raid 0 sata two drive chassis comes in . I'm curious to see wether there will be a speed difference or if most of the crunching comes from the Mac Book processor. I know the Sata drives will help greatly with editing once the media is transcoded.

Dave
Click to expand...

Thanks - be interesting in seeing what your experience is after the Sata setup.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top