How to organize AVCHD files? Metadata, trimming, etc.

C

Chris Lawes

Active member
I have an AF100 and I pretty much love the quality of the recordings I am getting. I edit the .MTS files natively in Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and even color-correcting everything comes out looking good. I am not a AVCCAM-hater, I love the picture quality and small file sizes.


However I do not know a good way to organize my clips. What I want to do is go through and "trim" out long pauses/unneeded footage and separate the clips into individual files. Then I want to name them and add metadata such as date, timecode, location, subject, shot angle, camera, etc. that I can search through using something like Adobe Bridge or PP's built-in metadata reader.


I want to do this WITHOUT transcoding everything into ProRes, because obviously that defies all the advantages of recording with AVCHD (except longer record times in the field.)




How do you guys organize your AVCHD files? I have almost 2 terabytes of "PRIVATE" folders with a ton of 00001.MTS files all with the same name that I am afraid to move/rename/etc. for fear of my spanned clips becoming screwed up. Your input is greatly appreciated!
 
with spanned clips I just use mts merger, no transcoding. just makes it one clip.
I hate being dependent and locked to crappy solutions and the folder strukture never gets to go home with me :)
I name everything and merge spanned clips.
 
If you are on a mac you can try using Clipwrap. This wraps the .MTS file into a Quicktime wrapper. Then you may trim the footage with Quicktime, but you'll loose timecode in the process and I believe you'll loose metadata too. There may be a way to add it back to the trimmed files, but I am not aware of this.
 
By the way, can you recommend an in clip metadata editor?

When I log the clips i like the information to stay with the clip, readable in premiere at least
 
Any more comments on this? I get errors sometimes with Clipwrap. Haven't tried MPEGStreamclip or VoltaicHD, Aunsoft Video Converter etc yet though.
What about renaming the files but keeping the folder structure, will the NLE like Premiere still find everything okay?
 
stevedocmaker said:
If you are on a mac you can try using Clipwrap. This wraps the .MTS file into a Quicktime wrapper. Then you may trim the footage with Quicktime, but you'll loose timecode in the process and I believe you'll loose metadata too. There may be a way to add it back to the trimmed files, but I am not aware of this.
Click to expand...

Clipwrap will maintain timecode, but yes you'll loose the additional metadata.

However, Dublin core, the built-in metadata reader (PrPro) is currently, well, borked... and it doesn't read the Panasonic metadata for User clip names (or anything else for that matter). But, in the end, the metadata is mostly useless when push comes to shove. (hold your horses :huh: - just my opinion) Why? Because if you need to reconnect physical clips... that is if you need Premiere to reconnect actual files... you'll still have the possibility of facing a a great number of different 00000.MTS (example) possibilities with no way to tell which one it is. This is my single biggest ongoing gripe with our AF100... at least with P2 there was a unique, if indecipherable, name!

Our solution to this issue was having an assistant editor diligently sort and label days/directories for each card in the project file structure and duplicate that within our Premiere Pro projects. It's a lot of organizational work, but it, well, works. If media needs to be relinked/reconnected, it becomes easier to find which of the 20-30 00000.MTS (can you tell it bugs me!) files is which and once one is reconnected Premiere can usually sort out the rest.

Back to Clipwrap, there's another major caveat for Premiere Pro users: Premiere will hand off video files to the appropriate "decoder" (not the correct word); with the MTS files, it's a known quantity and plays them back very smoothly using whatever the best option is. However, once they're wrapped as MOVs by Clipwrap, Premiere will hand of the decoding to the Quicktime engine... and it's dead slow when it comes to h.264 playback in an editing environment. We've done test after test (because we liked the Clipwrap possibilities, have a licence, and the company is stellar with support and updates!) but Premiere will choke on mov-wrapped 1080p AVCHD. Even on a 6+ core workstation with massive amounts of RAM and fast disk arrays it's shockingly sluggish after you've become used to the ultra snappy performance of the Mercury Playback engine with native files.

Sorry to be such a bummer, but I hope it helps.
 
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Chris Lawes said:
Any more comments on this? I get errors sometimes with Clipwrap. Haven't tried MPEGStreamclip or VoltaicHD, Aunsoft Video Converter etc yet though.
What about renaming the files but keeping the folder structure, will the NLE like Premiere still find everything okay?
Click to expand...

You can rename the files, but you'll again loose timecode and metadata.

However, if you don't care about timecode and/or metadata then you can do just that. Every clip will start at 00:00:00:00, but the names will be clear as day! ;)
 
Oh final post from me re: trimming. This used to bug me quite a bit; but once I got used to editing "native" the comparatively small file sizes of AVCCAM clips, when compared to the ProRes 422 HQ clips we used for most projects previous to the AF100, made me stop being for want of that ability. Your mileage will, of course, vary.

Still... it is file madness.... make it stop!

Please?!

(Or at least use some container format that keeps everything in a single file! Panasonic, I'm staring at you!!)
 
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