Is there anything I'm missing with AVCHD?

M

MemphisMourns

Active member
Hi guys, let me start this off by saying that I am, by no means, an expert filmmaker. I make a living as a writer. However, I have owned the Canon xha1 for a few years and shoot quite a few scenes with actor friends and etc. I then use a handheld HDV to log and capture the tapes into FCP and edit from there.

This is how I have done it for a long time - and I do not wish to learn any new tricks. I am even still using FCP 3! But, I love it.

If I was to buy the GH1 - is there anything that would require me to spend massive amounts of money on gear or upgrade my FCP version? I am hoping that I can just log and capture the videos either through the cam or a memory card reader and go from there...

Am I sorely mistaken? Thanks for "dumbing" everything down for me - I am hoping to get more into stills and quite sick of lugging the big xha1 around.

Best,

Memphis.
 
Last edited:
If you shoot 1080p24 you have to remove pulldown with an extra step. Read the 'workflow' section for more. I believe there are free programs that work well with Mac. I would also be surprised if older versions of FCP support AVCHD, but someone else will have to answer that one.
 
So I just discovered that to edit AVCHD in Final Cut Pro - you need to have an intel based mac. Unfortunately, my workstation is a G4... so no go with that.

With the free software that comes with the GH1... can this be used nearly as well as FCP? If so, I could just load it up on my macbook and go from there?
 
On a G4 you will definitely have to transcode the footage to another format for editing - either ProRes or Cineform. I'm not sure of the FCP workflow for AVCHD, but my guess is with on older version you will need to do the transcoding in another program first BEFORE you import into FCP. Cinfeform NeoScene is the standard software to do this on a PC but there may be other options on a Mac.

The software that comes with the GH1 will not be good for much more than importing the files off the SD card.
 
MemphisMourns said:
So I just discovered that to edit AVCHD in Final Cut Pro - you need to have an intel based mac. Unfortunately, my workstation is a G4... so no go with that.

With the free software that comes with the GH1... can this be used nearly as well as FCP? If so, I could just load it up on my macbook and go from there?
Click to expand...


For me, even with an Intel processor, I don't see the benefit of maintaining the AVCHD format for editing. In my case, I use FC Express, but I also have CS4 Premiere, which does 'support' native AVCHD... it is slow, jerky, and from what I read, requires that I upgrad to some higher performance Intel processor.

So, I transcode. Once transcoded into a more edit friendly codec, I've not had too many problems, other than 'storage' issues related to HD... but that's a different story...

In the case of using a PPC based Mac, you'd have to get a tool that would transcode the AVCHD to something usable, but as noted above, I'd recommend that anyway...
 
Hi, thank you so much! This is all super helpful. I was very close to purchasing something like the Olympus EP-2 instead of the GH1 - just because of all the confusing AVCHD issues (and potential purchases), but would really love to stay with Panny. Also, I love dvxuser - no olympus forum would ever compare =)

So, not to make this confusing - but I also have a white macbook. It's quite a bit newer than my G4 FCP workstation and has an intel processor. It doesn't, however, have FCP on it. If I bought some sort of 'transcoder' software - could I just edit and be happy with imovie? Or, do you think I would miss Final Cut Pro? Or, is there another fairly inexpensive option that I could just install on my macbook? This way I could just avoid my old G4 all together...
 
Wait a minute... If you have a MacBook, then why are you still using a G4 at all? The MacBook should be much faster than the G4, making your workstation totally obsolete. So my advice would be to sell the workstation and use the money to buy better editing software. Even Final Cut Express (which does like 90%+ of what FCP does) will be better than your old copy of FCP. Transcoding will still be necessary, and Cineform NeoScene is a great choice for that task.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top