avchd on a mac

Jeff_Smith wrote on 4/20/2010, 6:15 PM
I was sharing a raw avchd.mts file from my new tm700 with a friend who using fcp and he said he could not read it. I did a quick google to find that this is to be expected. Any suggestions on the best way to collab. Should I render out a different file format or should he use a converter. He does not need any editing from my end just my footage.
jeff

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 4/21/2010, 6:49 AM
Since AVCHD footage is recorded directly to disc by the camera, there should be no difference if you give your friend a disc with AVCHD footage on it. While FCP cannot edit native AVCHD like Vegas can, it does have the ability to ingest it if you know what you are doing. I found this in the Apple knowledge base:

Final Cut Pro 6.0.1: About transferring AVCHD footage

I would not convert the footage because you will loose quality. Tell your friend to learn how to ingest AVCHD into FCP. If they really can't figure it out, then you could render to Sony MXF and they could use the MXF import for FCP.

~jr
Paul C wrote on 4/21/2010, 10:51 AM
I had a mac with Final Cut Express for a while, and found I could ingest AVCHD only when it was in it's native folder structure, i.e. from the camera card.

As I used to copy the clips off my card onto the hard drive, I found I couldn't import them directly to FCE.

As FCE has to transcode AVCHD to Apple Intermediate Codec to edit it, I used to use 'MovieConverter Studio' to do this conversion, then import the AIC files into FCE.

Paul