GH1 GH1 newbie question - simple converter software for OSX

T

tbirdparis

Member
Hi all,

New here. I'm a musician but have recently started trying out some video work. Not looking to change professions, just enjoying making some interesting video to accompany some of the music I do.

I just picked up a GH1 second hand, after my research it looked like by far the best choice for someone at my level.

At this stage I'm just looking to start importing and evaluating the footage I shoot. I don't have FCP (yet) and I don't really plan to do much editing myself - I have plenty of video pro friends who I'd rather work with. But what I do want to do is be able to quickly and easily batch convert the AVCHD files to whatever format is best for then taking it to FCP, and also a format that I can watch the clips and maybe experiment with some light grading (and I really just mean brightness, contrast and saturation) in QT pro.

I downloaded a demo of "Wondershare Video Converter" for Mac, and it seems to do the job. But before I pull the trigger on paying for it (to remove the demo mode watermark), I wanted to check in with people who know more about this than me.. just in case there is something far better for the job or even if there's a way to do what I want without buying anything at all.

The important features for me are:

1- The conversion quality should be as good as it gets - whatever I end up using has to give me good quality clips that I can take to my editor friends who use FCP, and they'll be able to ingest it right away and not laugh at me for having used some cruddy converter that turned the footage to crap.

2- I'd like to have complete control over the frame rate. Say I shoot in AVCHD at 720 at 50 fps (my camera is a european model so it does 50p not 60) - I want to be able to convert those clips to play back at 25 fps. Not with any kind of stretching or plug in effect - just simply have it play back at half speed so I can achieve a slight slow motion effect. Audio is not important to me as I'm only making visuals to use with music. I've read that this is a simple matter which you can do when importing in FCP, but since I don't have it, I need another solution.

Basically I just want a good workflow for getting my clips in, being able to choose the playback frame rate, and exporting to a format which I can then watch in QT pro and also take to my editor to work with later, without him yelling at me that I've brought him rubbish to work with. And I also really want to be able to play back stuff I shoot at 50fps at 25.

Thanks in advance for any pointers, take it easy on me, I'm just a musician... :)

btw I've got VLC and have been using it to watch the video as soon as I've copied it from the SD card. But the playback is occasionally aliased and choppy. At first I thought it was just artefacts from the camera, but when I converted with the demo version of Wondershare converter, it plays back perfectly. And in any case, I haven't found a way to convert the files to a better format for FCP with VLC anyway, so I think I need something else.

Cheers!
 
If your editors are going to be using Premier Pro (or the new FCX) the files will not need converting. If you just want to view files there are a number of programs you can use, including VLC (free) MPlayerX (free) or Toast Viewer.

Hope this helps

Martin
 
mshakeshaft said:
If your editors are going to be using Premier Pro (or the new FCX) the files will not need converting. If you just want to view files there are a number of programs you can use, including VLC (free) MPlayerX (free) or Toast Viewer.

Hope this helps

Martin
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input from both of you.

I downloaded Voltaic and tried it in comparison to the one I already tried (Wondershare). Voltaic was set to output Pro Res 422 with the 24p telecine pulldown feature enabled, and Wondershare had FCP selected as its output destination (not sure exactly what format it uses though). The Voltaic one seems to look a lot better to me, but I'm no expert. The trim functionality is much clunkier in Voltaic, but if it's actually giving a better quality result then it obviously seems wiser to spend the 39 bucks on it and not the other app.

Martin, the reason I want to be able to convert is because for some reason, playback on VLC of the clips is not clean on my machine. It occasionally breaks up, or has strange artifacts in the image every now and again. VLC works perfectly with other media, but not the stuff I'm taking with the camera (playing off the computer's hard drive of course, not the SD card). Also it doesn't let me jump through the clip by clicking along the timeline (it won't do it cleanly without compression garble), so I can't watch a clip and test out what some jump cutting would look like. And lastly, I might want to try out some light grading (HSL, contrast, brightness etc) on the clips to get an idea of the range of looks that might work, along with perhaps trying some off-line edit tests in imovie.

So I need a good, effective way of getting the AVCHDs into a work-friendly state, so I can do some test work and ideas development. And if the converter I use is able to output exactly what an FCP editor would use anyway, then I could also save them some time by pre-trimming and organizing all the clips before going in to edit.

I'll ask some of the editors I know to see what they reckon. But in the meantime, thanks for the input and if you (or anyone) has any other suggestions, go right ahead.

Cheers!
 
VoltaicHD and 24p pulldown

VoltaicHD and 24p pulldown

Hi there,

We implemented 24p pulldown for the GH-1 (and Panasonic in general) to give a top quality conversion result.

Apps like Wondershare and hundreds of others are just FFmpeg wrapper apps, so don't generate ProRes or do anything correct with 24p pulldown.

If you end up going with a FFmpeg converter, just use a free one like Handbrake rather than paying for the same thing.

Good luck with it

Justin
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top