Viewing and Editing PAL AVCHD

timbook2 said:
I want to convert from a folder not by attaching the camera to FCP and do logging. I have several cards and need to copy them while the other continues.

So for now I guess Voltaic is my only choice even though they seem to be based on ffmpeg..
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Toast 10 converts AVCHD .mts files to any QuickTime codec you have installed and is pretty fast compared to Voltaic. Also unlike any other option I've found the frame rate can be set to 25 (or 29.97) thereby reducing the converted file size by half. Then just go back and redo those you see you want to do slo-mo on when editing. Just beware it has a tendency to make a few freeze frames of the first frame so you need to slip audio the same amount on the timeline. Oh, it plays previews without glitches or frame drops with a included video player which can be used as stand-alone and works much better than VLC.
 
von Mutius said:
You need no script for this because avanti has a batch modul where you set once path and compression system and then it does convert all files, one after the other, it basicly keeps the orignal file names just as m2v or avi or mov.
Click to expand...

Avanti sounds like it should be the perfect (free) solution, but I'm having real problems getting it to work. I can't get the batch mode to work - I'm having to load each file in separately. Maybe I'm being dumb:Drogar-Angry(DBG):
A bit of a step by step guide would really help.

I'm also finding that depending on the codec I use the resulting files won't play. For instance when I make mjpeg (either AVI or MOV) it all seems to work fine but the resulting file is unplayable. The only format I've got to work reliably is mpeg2 in .mpg format. Any tips much appreciated.

Nice film by the way.
 
avanti

avanti

Hi there, well the first step will be to click on the 123 symbol which opens the job control where you can choose all files to be batched, then as always in avanti press F1 and read the help file ;-) or set your destination path by right clicking in the fields as well as choosing a template. These templates can be from the standard list or you can create your own by setting one in the normal avanti interface. Next in the job control manager save your joblist and hit the process job button. The system will start working....
Because my preferred file system for Avid Chrome is m2v and wav I like avanti very much. I set it to 100.000 kbits and max rate 150.000kbit with a buffer size of 4650. I choose 2-pass encoding and everything else same as source except of Framerate which depends on the fact whether I have important sync sound or not.
with sync I do 25fps without I choose 30fps and change the file to 25fps later letting it be a 80% slowmotion. this can be done with the avanti MPEG/AVI Tool where I use the PAL Re-Flag Tool. Only problem here. this does not work as batch process, or I am to stupid to make a setting for the batch mode...

Ciao Matthias
 
After playing around with various options I think I've got a workflow that works (for me anyway). I just couldn't get avanti to work very well, so I decided to go down the avisynth/virtualdub route.

I followed the advice on this thread -
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=171230


It looked a bit daunting but the instructions are very clear. I wasn't sure how to remove the 3:2 pulldown step (not needed for PAL models) so I just changed the number in the line "(width^(v_in^)==1920^)" .
By changing 1920 to 9999 it ensured that step was never activated. Not pretty I know but seems to work!

The result is great. I've done two batch files - one that goes to the right directory on the card and converts all the files there, putting the resulting files on my hard drive (for when I want to transcode the whole card). Another that will just take MTS files in the current directory and convert those (for when I just want to look at a few files).

I could post them up if anyone is interested in them but you're best off following the instructions since they need to be slightly tailored.

I've set virtualdub to use FFMPEG to reencode, so I can set my codec in virtualdub.
I've had best results going to MJPEG with quantisation set to 1. Seems to have very little loss in quality but will play back easily and I can edit them in real time.

This is all trial and error (rather than based on any deep understanding) so I'd be interested in any comments.
 
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