Importing video into Vegas

impact wrote on 1/17/2010, 3:37 PM
Recently upgraded to Vegas Pro 9. My Panasonic HC TM300 camcorder does not have ieee output. I'm not able to get AVCHD video from the cam using supplied Panosonic HD Writer software. What are others doing to "capture" AVCHC video and then importing it into Vegas? I apologize if this topic was addressed previously.

Comments

ingvarai wrote on 1/17/2010, 3:58 PM
What format does your camera write to?I have a Panasonci HMC 151 and I just take the SD card out and put it in a card reader and copy the MTS files to my harddisk. Or I copy the whole folder three.
I tried the supplied software from Panasonic, but it is so picky about folder structures etc. so I do not use it anymore. It also is so awkward when it comes to user friednliness, so I uninstalled it.
Ingvar
impact wrote on 1/18/2010, 2:17 PM
The TM300 has 32gb built in memory. I was trying to transfer that to my external hard drive using the Panosonic software. Is there an optional program that others are having success with?
ingvarai wrote on 1/19/2010, 12:22 AM
Does the camera have an USB port? If, you can probably drag - drop files to your harddisk. You somehow need to connect your camera with your PC and USB is a common way to do this. You then probably do not need special software for this to happen.
The Panasonic software I tried is a nice to have but not must have. Although it wasn't even "nice" to have..
Ingvar
Marco. wrote on 1/19/2010, 12:28 AM
You could also try using the build-in Vegas Device Explorer when your camera is connected via USB. In the Device Explorer window click the camera which should be listed on the left side of the window to read out the AVCHD media and then import into Project Media or directly into the Timeline.

Marco

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objectcentral wrote on 2/10/2010, 11:16 AM
Use the Vegas Device Explorer to import AVCHD. It has a couple of big advantages over any direct drag/drop - specifically, it will rename the files to include date and time so you don't get the default 00091.mts, but a file name with a date.

But note - the Device Explorer copies to AVCHD files somewhere - you can tell it exactly where by right clicking the avchd device names.

All that given, here's the work flow I'm adopting for AVCHD.

1. Get an external HD disk to archive the untouched AVCHD files directly off the camera. I copy the camera's AVCHD directory w/ subdirectories that have the thumbnails, etc. to an informatively named directory on the archive disk. For example, copy the /PRIVATE/AVCHD directory to x:/avchd-archive/2010-02-15/.
Don't think you need the preserve the PRIVATE directory, so just copy the AVCD directory to the dated directory on the archive disk.

2. Now, use Vegas Device Explorer to open the AVCHD driectory on the archive disk and import to your project working directory on your main machine. Now you have copies in two places, and you can feel comfortable deleting them from the SDHC card (or whatever media you camera uses). The file names imported by Vegas will have had the date and time added, but the base 00nnn will remain.