Question from Barry's book

ramkuma

ramkuma

Well-known member
In the section on "Offloading Cards" it says, "...don't go deleting any individual clips or files, as that can impair your NLE's ability to work with the remaining clips!" I don't know at what point this is referring to. Does this mean don't delete clips once they are uploaded to a folder on your hard drive? while you are transferring? Does this imply that if you want to delete unwanted clips you need to do it from the SD card before transferring the files? Thanks.
 
Don't delete individual clips from the cards.

Don't delete individual files from the folder you copied the card to.

Always format the card in the camera.
 
Yeah, unfortunately a lot of NLEs will flip out if the metadata in the card structure isn't consistent with what clips actually exist. So if you need to give a client just certain shots.... well, I haven't even figured out how to do that. You need to keep the entire folder unchanged if you want every NLE to be happy with it.

That said, some NLE's like Premiere will happily accept a single .MTS file, though I'm not sure if the metadata will follow it. Others, like FCP I think, will refuse to import single .MTS clips without the entire folder structure.
 
Fahnon said:
Well... That was "Exact".
Click to expand...

;)

One more thing. If you are using an NLE such as FCP that needs the card data to be intact, but for some reason it's not (it's happened to me a couple of times out of about 80 cards) then use a program called ClipWrap (google it) to transcode the .MTS files to ProRes 422 (or LT) for you, then simply drag the (ProRes) files to the FCP project browser.

If you are using an NLE that can work with native files (such as Premiere CS5) then ignore most of the above and simply drag the MTS files in to the CS5 project.
 
Exact said:
Don't delete individual clips from the cards.

QUOTE]

So don't event delete clips while you are shooting? I thought that was a great thing about the digital file format, is that you could free up space and delete unwanted clips while shooting. Thanks in advance for the clarification.
Click to expand...
 
ramkuma said:
So don't event delete clips while you are shooting? I thought that was a great thing about the digital file format, is that you could free up space and delete unwanted clips while shooting. Thanks in advance for the clarification.
Click to expand...

Yes you 'can' do this, but it's safer not to if you are using an NLE that needs the entire file system intact for ingesting.
 
I always delete clips in-camera during a shoot. I've never run into problems. (Then again, I never edit native AVCHD). I never alter the card's data outside of the camera.
 
You're perfectly safe to delete clips while shooting. What you don't want to do is delete individual clips via computer, by just going into the directories and deleting files.

AVCHD has a complex interrelated file structure. If you just delete a .mts file, it may screw up the file structure to the point where your NLE may not recognize the card structure anymore. However, if you delete via the camera itself, the camera will automatically update the file structure appropriately so that everything still works.

If you must delete files on the computer, and you want the file structure to remain intact, you'd need to use a computer program that understands AVCHD. Offhand, the closest I can think of would be AVCCAM Viewer, but I don't bother with it and don't know much about it. I'm not sure that it lets you delete individual files, I think it only deletes groups of files.
 
modus said:
I never alter the card's data outside of the camera.
Click to expand...
This here is the wisdom.

Unless you can find a computer program that is 100% AVCHD-aware and plays and deletes individual files. Again, AVCCAM Viewer might do that, but I haven't spent more than 10 seconds on it so I don't know for sure.
 
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