iMovie update today gives AVCHD support.

[admactanium]

I just got my camera a couple days ago so I have nothing to compare it against, but the update to iMovie 09 seems to have given it native support for AVCHD format. I can import from the card and I get a separate Video Import dialog box. Seems to work fine and I've edited some of the footage. I'm not very well-learned in video editing, so others can review it and tell us if it's a decent workflow. Just wanted to let people know.

 

[saaby]

I don't want to be a party-pooper, but I'd double check...iMovie has worked with AVCHD all this time, whether you insert a card or hook the camera straight to the computer. You don't cut in AVCHD, however...when you import it transfers to...Apple intermediate codec.

In fact if you make a disc image and copy the files from the card to the disk image, you can mount the disk image later and iMovie/Final Cut will see it as the card. I use this to store my original footage, since the AVCHD footage is quite compressed and the Apple Intermediate footage is quite...uh...uncompressed?

The neat thing about Final Cut is that you can then just wipe out your capture scratch when you're done with a project, and then if you need it again for some reason "Recapture" the footage from the disk image.

In fact this is new to me and I bet other people have been doing it for ages, but I'm going to finish my thought anyway.

I made an empty sparse disk image that will go up to 8 gb (The size of P2 cards I shoot when, when I shoot P2) . Then I hit "Get Info" in Finder and checked "Stationary Pad." Voila! Whenever I open that it replicates itself. It's like an endless supply of disk images.

 

[admactanium]

Interesting. I actually have Final Cut Studio since I was much more ambitious a few years ago about learning all of that to shoot a commercial director's reel. But I never really delved too far into FCP.

 

[QTI]

From my personal experience with GH-1 and iMovie, iMovie does not accept clips in AVCHD Lite 720p format.

The update seems to specifically address this:

"iMovie now supports 720p AVCHD Lite cameras and camcorders and some other issues."

I look forward to seeing how it works when I get back to my Mac tonight. See if I can manage to compare a direct import vs importing a clip converted from Neo Scene.

 

[saaby]

"iMovie now supports 720p AVCHD Lite cameras and camcorders and some other issues."

Wah wah wah...(That was like when somebody loses on a gameshow)

That's what I get for thinking I knew something.

 

[admactanium]

From my personal experience with GH-1 and iMovie, iMovie does not accept clips in AVCHD Lite 720p format.

The update seems to specifically address this:

"iMovie now supports 720p AVCHD Lite cameras and camcorders and some other issues."

I look forward to seeing how it works when I get back to my Mac tonight. See if I can manage to compare a direct import vs importing a clip converted from Neo Scene.

It seems to work fine but I'd invite someone who is more nuts-and-bolts technical to tell us what it is doing well or doing poorly. Seems to work fine for me.

 

[QTI]

Seems to look fine to me too. I tried converting a 720p clip through Neo Scene, import into iMovie and then export, and compared the export with the same clip imported directly into and exported from iMovie. Visually they look the same to me (as a beginner amateur).

The clips will import fine if you are importing from the camera directly. A problem I am having is that iMovie refuses to accept some .MTS files that I already moved to the harddrive for storage. I normally would just move the whole PRIVATE folder from the SD card to the harddrive. iMovie would recognise some of them as "camera archive" and import the clips, but wouldn't recognise the others. Am really puzzled about this strange behaviour. So I may still need a converter just in case? I don't see myself importing all my clips into iMovie as the AIC files are huge.

Any idea?

 

[Martti Ekstrand]

saaby's idea up there to make a sparse image of the entire card should work. I don't have the cam yet so can't try myself.

In fact if you make a disc image and copy the files from the card to the disk image, you can mount the disk image later and iMovie/Final Cut will see it as the card. I use this to store my original footage, since the AVCHD footage is quite compressed and the Apple Intermediate footage is quite...uh...uncompressed?

 

[AdrianF]

Seems to look fine to me too. I tried converting a 720p clip through Neo Scene, import into iMovie and then export, and compared the export with the same clip imported directly into and exported from iMovie. Visually they look the same to me (as a beginner amateur).

It seems to me that here you loose the advantage of working with Neoscene. As I understand it, Neoscene works around it's own codec, for robust use with NLEs such as FCP etc. When you ingest any material with iMovie it will be converting it to AIC. So the footage you import directly from the camera, will basically look the same as material converted with Neoscene and then converted to AIC. If you get my drift?

The problem with the individual files and organisation on a mac only seems to me to be addressed by the Shedworx apps Voltaic and Flamingo HD. Maybe you could get in touch with them and see if they can help you iron out any problems?

 

[QTI]

Thanks Martti - will try the disk image method and see how it works.

Many thanks for your advice Adrian. I thought only the AVCHD clips would be converted into AIC, and clips converted from Neo Scene would be directly imported (and would not be converted into AIC) since its already a .MOV? I certainly might be wrong as I am not familiar with how video works.

I did another test - I converted a clip with NeoScene and played it on Quicktime to compare with the two iMovie exports I mentioned above. It plays much smoother. I examined the "metadata" using Quicktime Pro and noticed that the movies exported from iMovie using the "share -> HD" function are in 25fps, whereas the NeoScene converted clip has a 50fps (and a higher "bit rate"). If I chose "export with Quicktime" instead of "share -> HD" in iMovie, and set the fps to 50, the exported movie would look quite similar to NeoScene converted clip (there may well be differences obvious to trained eyes (which I don't have ).

Thanks for the suggestion. In fact I have tried Voltaic. It still has the slow-mo problem with 720p clips so I am waiting for the next version to test it more thoroughly. I have not downloaded Flamingo yet but from the website it looks like a great idea for managing the MTS files.

 

[QTI]

iMovie would recognise some of them as "camera archive" and import the clips, but wouldn't recognise the others.

Answering my own question - it appears that if you delete any clip under the PRIVATE folder after you have moved the folder to your harddrive, iMovie will not be able to recognise the folder an camera archive. I will probably need a converter after all.

 

[AdrianF]

Answering my own question - it appears that if you delete any clip under the PRIVATE folder after you have moved the folder to your harddrive, iMovie will not be able to recognise the folder an camera archive. I will probably need a converter after all.

Yep, if you want to work with individual files on the mac outside of the folder structure, at the moment there aren't many alternatives. You could try doing something like Saaby suggested and creating archives of your private folder on a back up drive ( not a bad practice anyway ) and then when you want to work with individual files, just import in imovie from your archive, then export to whatever codec. It really depends on what you want and need to do.