Doh! HMC file number is stupid

[booggerg2]

Why does HMC numbers the first file on a card as 000 but in playback mode on the camera, the first file is labeled as 001??? I know it's not that big of a deal - just decrement whatever number is indicated in the HMC whenever making a note on playback, but why the hell didn't they just make it consistent?

 

[modus]

If there is something I have found poorly designed on this camera (and there are very few things I dislike about this camera), it is this exact problem. I feel your pain, brother.

 

[booggerg2]

If there is something I have found poorly designed on this camera (and there are very few things I dislike about this camera), it is this exact problem. I feel your pain, brother.

Well IMO, the HMC's lens not able to manually focus in cold temperature is the worst problem... A potential deal breaker for many people.

Then followed by audio popping.. I just shot something last weekend and got the dreaded audio popping issue. PHUCK!

Lastly, the file number difference, not a big issue, but an annoying issue none the less... Why did Panasonic programmers not make the two numbering systems consistent? My guess is poor project management on the HMC project and engineers from different areas within the company were not in-sync with each other, hence we end up with this idiotic result.

 

[Barry_Green]

I love how you not understanding something leads to it being an "idiotic result."

Try something: delete a clip in the middle of your list. See what happens.

 

[whitecrow1]

Well IMO, the HMC's lens not able to manually focus in cold temperature is the worst problem... A potential deal breaker for many people.

Then followed by audio popping.. I just shot something last weekend and got the dreaded audio popping issue. PHUCK!...

The manual focus is an easy fix...i forget what the spray is called but its to loosen and remove excess friction on silicone cushioned surfaces. most camera lenses use an electronic mechanism (much like the one used to control the zoom ring) for the focus ring. though it was not tested in cold weather, it does have an overall smoother focus than most high def cameras in its league.

the audio popping is a result of the sensitivity. I had to turn down my manual audio controls almost to nothing (imbetween the first and second dot) on both channels. i shot a live production that had a lot of bass in their sound system and even though it showed a bit of peaking on the camera, i have no sign of popping on playback...just very flat bass lol.

 

[booggerg2]

I love how you not understanding something leads to it being an "idiotic result."

Try something: delete a clip in the middle of your list. See what happens.

jeez.. I'm talking about file000.mts being displayed as 001 in-camera. Why didn't they just make it consistent? The only thing a user has to go by in-camera is the number associated with the clip. It makes natural sense to have the numbers actually match up with the filenames.

Deleting a clip in the middle of the list shouldn't affect the in-camera display number of clips after that deleted clip. So If I do an in-camera deletion of clip 002 from a list of 001, 002, 003 and the remaining clips are displayed in-camera as 001, 002 (instead of 001, 003), then it's just another bad design.

In short, the displayed filename in-camera should match exactly what the actual filename is on the SD card regardless of whether any in-camera deletion was performed. Come on, this is not rocket science and Panasonic is not asked to reinvent the wheel here... Just follow how DSLRs does file management.

 

[whitecrow1]

yeah the whole file number thing is pretty lame though...it only really does this when you draw the clips manually from the card. using log and transfer in final cut seems to be the only method i found to not have this problem

 

[booggerg2]

yeah the whole file number thing is pretty lame though...it only really does this when you draw the clips manually from the card. using log and transfer in final cut seems to be the only method i found to not have this problem

Hmm so when you log and transfer in FCP, the clip names matches the numbers when viewed in camera?

Does FCP read from the metadata when naming the clips? So it's possible that the metadata reflects the numbering shown in-camera which is different from the actual filename..

 

[whitecrow1]

yeah when you log and transfer in FCP, it reads as Clip #1, Clip #2, etc. but before transfering you can log them as whatever names you want

 

[pailes]

Barry is right, you simply don't understand the reasons for all this. AVCCAM is AVCHD which is a subset of the Blu-Ray spec. That means the camera creates a playlist (the file with the .mpl suffix in the PLAYLIST folder) with a sequence of playitems and the index of those playitems reflect the numbering in the camera. This allows to delete a clip without renaming all the other files afterwards. One file becomes deleted and the playitem is removed from the playlist. In fact this is much more efficient, especially with lots of files.

 

[booggerg2]

Barry is right, you simply don't understand the reasons for all this. AVCCAM is AVCHD which is a subset of the Blu-Ray spec. That means the camera creates a playlist (the file with the .mpl suffix in the PLAYLIST folder) with a sequence of playitems and the index of those playitems reflect the numbering in the camera. This allows to delete a clip without renaming all the other files afterwards. One file becomes deleted and the playitem is removed from the playlist. In fact this is much more efficient, especially with lots of files.

Okay I stand corrected then. This was a naming scheme that applied to the blu-ray format, which is appropriate for a DVD based playback/distribution format. However IMO not appropriate for a capture device with fluid files on the capture medium.

So I guess the point is the best way to deal with the SD cards from the HMC is to log&transfer them thru the NLE so the order/numbering of the files will be consistent with what the camera indicates, as opposed to a straight up file copy.

 

[pailes]

Okay I stand corrected then. This was a naming scheme that applied to the blu-ray format, which is appropriate for a DVD based playback/distribution format. However IMO not appropriate for a capture device with fluid files on the capture medium.

Blu-Ray is not based on DVD. And AVCHD is very well suited for this kind of task when people stop messing with bare files manually and have proper software to view the entire AVCHD database as a whole. Users should not care how clip files are named internally.

So I guess the point is the best way to deal with the SD cards from the HMC is to log&transfer them thru the NLE so the order/numbering of the files will be consistent with what the camera indicates, as opposed to a straight up file copy.

Nobody ever claimed that a pure file copy would make any sense at all. That's what the entire AVCHD directory structure plus additional files are here for. From a high level point of view it's much more consistent to have a playlist, because then the naming scheme of the clips itself becomes meaningless.

 

[MadHMC150]

EHHHH

Vegas 8.0 pro is going crazy - I just copied the mts files over, then started editing! This worked great till I deleted a clip from the camera and then tried to copy over some new files...

I noticed the files just renamed themselves and it totally screwed up what files were all ready on my system. Vegas was VERY confused about the whole situation and the preview started playing short clips from random other clips (when they are not even in the timeline!) :crybaby:

I am familiar with FCP log and transfer ( and really liked it ). Im guessing the import / AVCHD Camera - is the same thing in vegas, and I'm trying that now...


Update:
Its pretty quick... No way to preview the clips you want to transfer? eh
Much better when imported, loads and previews much faster when done this way.

 

[booggerg2]

EHHHH

Vegas 8.0 pro is going crazy - I just copied the mts files over, then started editing! This worked great till I deleted a clip from the camera and then tried to copy over some new files...

I noticed the files just renamed themselves and it totally screwed up what files were all ready on my system. Vegas was VERY confused about the whole situation and the preview started playing short clips from random other clips (when they are not even in the timeline!) :crybaby:

I am familiar with FCP log and transfer ( and really liked it ). Im guessing the import / AVCHD Camera - is the same thing in vegas, and I'm trying that now...


Update:
Its pretty quick... No way to preview the clips you want to transfer? eh
Much better when imported, loads and previews much faster when done this way.

Wait, are you saying that the camera renamed actual files on the SD card after you did an in-camera deletion?

I don't really care what high-level file management abstraction the AVCHD format offers.. it doesn't matter and its useless on the HMC. The camera basically records individual files to the SD card and we edit with them. Any other management of filenames etc.. is simply an additional layer of complexity that is totally unnecessary. However, I suppose Panasonic had to follow the AVCHD spec when building out the HMC..

Blu-Ray is not based on DVD. And AVCHD is very well suited for this kind of task when people stop messing with bare files manually and have proper software to view the entire AVCHD database as a whole. Users should not care how clip files are named internally.

.

What is the point of a local AVCHD media database cataloging a bunch of sequential clips we shot with the camera? Pretty useless IMO. I don't understand why you think messing with bare files manually is undesirable because at the end of the day, when we start editing, we are still interacting with the individual MTS files.. To have entirely different representation of the clips at the logical level vs the physical file level is totally idiotic approach.

 

[MadHMC150]

Wait, are you saying that the camera renamed actual files on the SD card after you did an in-camera deletion?

Yeah pretty sure, I deleted a few files in the middle and then looked at the files on the SDHC card in the computer. There was no gaps in the number order.

I was trying to find the gap so I knew what files were new.

I also hate the fact that they all start from 0000 every time... Looks like when they are imported in vegas a unique HEX code is added to the file name ie. 0073-34E33A95.mts

 

[booggerg2]

Yeah pretty sure, I deleted a few files in the middle and then looked at the files on the SDHC card in the computer. There was no gaps in the number order.

I was trying to find the gap so I knew what files were new.

I also hate the fact that they all start from 0000 every time... Looks like when they are imported in vegas a unique HEX code is added to the file name ie. 0073-34E33A95.mts

File starts with 0000 but in-camera's playbck mode, it starts with 0001..

Are you having better luck with clip names using Vegas' transfer utility?

 

[Justyn]

It was a bit confusing in the beginning especially since on the HVX each clip gets a unique code which was nice.. but this system has a great functionality IMHO. You can rename when you are shooting but even cooler is to do it all in FCP. If you drop the clips into an existing folder then the numbers will just add onto the existing ones. So if I have clips 1-15 on my folder FCP will transcode the first clip of the new back to 16 and keep going.

I'm sure it might be a pain when doing something straight on the comp.. but in FCP it's awesome. I just rename if I want too.. or have it capture to a folder. Overall I've been so impressed with this camera for it's functionality and price.


People are also bitching about the audio popping and I've not run across that in over a 100 hours of live event stuff.. concert footage, exterior action sports, and interviews and such. I'm sure it's a level of the sensitivity and maybe some quality control issues but it's not across the board.

Things freezing up in cold weather is a nature of doing something outside of the extreme. It happens with lighting, it happens with gear in general but there's always a way around that stuff.

I remember back in the day when DV cams would stop working here in florida due to condensation and it would have to climateize and give you an aweful message.. but that's an extreme and not for all situations. I wouldn't condem the cam for that..

 

[booggerg2]

It was a bit confusing in the beginning especially since on the HVX each clip gets a unique code which was nice.. but this system has a great functionality IMHO. You can rename when you are shooting but even cooler is to do it all in FCP. If you drop the clips into an existing folder then the numbers will just add onto the existing ones. So if I have clips 1-15 on my folder FCP will transcode the first clip of the new back to 16 and keep going.

I'm sure it might be a pain when doing something straight on the comp.. but in FCP it's awesome. I just rename if I want too.. or have it capture to a folder. Overall I've been so impressed with this camera for it's functionality and price.


People are also bitching about the audio popping and I've not run across that in over a 100 hours of live event stuff.. concert footage, exterior action sports, and interviews and such. I'm sure it's a level of the sensitivity and maybe some quality control issues but it's not across the board.

Things freezing up in cold weather is a nature of doing something outside of the extreme. It happens with lighting, it happens with gear in general but there's always a way around that stuff.

I remember back in the day when DV cams would stop working here in florida due to condensation and it would have to climateize and give you an aweful message.. but that's an extreme and not for all situations. I wouldn't condem the cam for that..

I see what you're saying that if you deal with the SD cards entirely within FCP, then FCP acts as an abstraction layer for the user and the user never has to even poke around with the directory structure of the SD media.. I was doing manual drag n' drop of MTS files, which totally bypasses the logical layer of the AVCHD media. Perhaps this is a change we need to get used to.

the focus ring freezing issue - maybe 32-40 deg is extreme for you down in FL.. but that's nice spring temperature for us northerners..

 

[MadHMC150]

It was a bit confusing in the beginning especially since on the HVX each clip gets a unique code which was nice.. but this system has a great functionality IMHO. You can rename when you are shooting but even cooler is to do it all in FCP. If you drop the clips into an existing folder then the numbers will just add onto the existing ones. So if I have clips 1-15 on my folder FCP will transcode the first clip of the new back to 16 and keep going.

I'm sure it might be a pain when doing something straight on the comp.. but in FCP it's awesome. I just rename if I want too.. or have it capture to a folder. Overall I've been so impressed with this camera for it's functionality and price.

As I mentioned earlier, FCP does do a nice job... but what? you have to have a mac? bah

People are also bitching about the audio popping and I've not run across that in over a 100 hours of live event stuff.. concert footage, exterior action sports, and interviews and such. I'm sure it's a level of the sensitivity and maybe some quality control issues but it's not across the board.

With 100 hours of live events I'm surprised you never ran into this problem with say loud music and the crowd cheering... You using the onboard mics? Any experience with phantom xlrs?

 

[MadHMC150]

File starts with 0000 but in-camera's playbck mode, it starts with 0001..

Are you having better luck with clip names using Vegas' transfer utility?

Much, much better using the vegas import AVCHD feature...
I mentioned a unique HEX code is added to the file name ie. '0073-34E33A95.mts' - Guess I wont have to worry about having multiple 0001, 0002, 0003 mts files.