Best way to deliver raw footage to wedding clients?

J

jamesryanfilms

New member
Hello Gurus :)


I just recently upgraded to AVCHD for wedding work. I don't do any editing. I just shoot the wedding and give my clients the raw footage. I shot in SD up until this year and always gave my clients the tapes at the end of the day. Now, I’m trying to figure out what the best/most economical way would be would be to give them the footage.


I want to be able to deliver the footage so that my clients will be able to edit it themselves and also be able to give the original AVCHD files to a professional editor if they choose to do so. I don't know if I should give them them the files on a bunch of DVDs, an external drive or something else.


I’m concerned that my clients will have trouble playing back the footage on their computers if they’re playing from an external drive or if their computer is simply not equipped to handle the demands of HD (I’m on a late 2008 2.66 GHz Macbook Pro with 8GB RAM and the AVCHD files don’t play back smoothly for me). I’m trying to figure out what format to convert the files so they play back smoothly on most computers and be easy to edit in a program like iMovie or Sony Movie Studio - would it be .mp4? What would be the best software to use for easily converting the footage?


Also, when I connect my SD cards to my computer, the video doesn’t show up as individual files, it just shows up as one AVCHD file. When I open the file using Quicktime, it asks me if I want to open each individual clip. But, when I import the footage to Final Cut Pro, it lists each clip as an individual file. I don’t know if it’s possible to do a batch export from FCP so that it converts each file into .mp4 format or if I would need to just put all the footage on the timeline and export it as one big clip.


Finally, I’m wondering if I should deliver the footage on Blue-Ray as well. If so, what would be the easiest way to put the footage onto Blue-Ray?


My apologies for asking so many questions. You can see I'm way behind the times. Any advice would be so greatly appreciated!


- James
 
If you want to give them the AVCHD to edit then an external hard drive, flash drive, or burnt on a blu-ray DVD as data. If you want to give them something they can play back and watch then you have to convert it to a presentation format. Whether that's blu-ray, SD DVD or an h264 file is up to you. h264 on a DVD or flash drive is usually going to be the most practical for most clients but you might have to also burn blu-ray or SD DVD since not al clients are computer savy.
 
Thanks so much for your help, egproductions! Forgive me for being such a novice... I'm wondering - if I'm on a Mac, can I burn a blu-ray DVD with data that will be compatible with both PC and Mac? Would the best solution be to get an external blu-ray burner for my computer or to get a stand-alone unit? Thanks again!
 
Well here's a few thoughts:

I believe some consumer blu ray players feature SDHC card slots and can play footage files on SDHC cards from your camera. Give them the cards (or copies of the cards) and done.

On a Mac, an external blu-ray writer can burn data blu-ray discs that are the raw AVCHD (.mts) files that the clients could work with.

The video clips could be converted to another format using a number of different programs, but that would require more time on your part to do it.

I noticed that the AVCHD files will play on a windows 7 computer so they could in theory watch your clips. That being the case you could just give them the cards and they have to supply their own card reader. However as you pointed out, their machine may not be powerful enough for smooth playback
 
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