Results tagged “avchd” from Final Cut Studio, Avid, Adobe, and Video Streaming

Nero, creators of liquid media technology, announced expanded Nero Move it mobile device support and feature enhancements. These updates to Nero Move it will further the ability for consumers to quickly and easily convert music, videos, and photos across an extensive range of compatible portable devices - regardless of file format.

Available at no additional cost to current Nero Move it users, this update adds support for the new T-Mobile G1 phone, and for new models of the popular Apple iPhone 3G, iPod touch and iPod nano. New support for the widely used BlackBerry smartphones currently includes T-Mobile Blackberry 8800 and Blackberry Pearl 8100, and O2 BlackBerry Pearl 8120.

Using AVCHD has become very popular, and there are a couple practices that make it more streamline in Final Cut Pro. First of all when ever possible transfer the contents of the AVCHD camera to a folder on your Mac. This will free up your camera to get back to work, or at least not be on. In the field this would be good battery budgeting, Transfering the contents of the camera hard drive to a folder will also increase the responsiveness in the Final Cut Pro Log and Transfer, since it will not be communicating thru the USB. Oddly enough I have not noticed a dramatic difference in the ingest time when the hard drive contents are accessed directly from a folder on the hard drive of my Mac.

The transferred contents of the cameras hard drive can also be a great way to archive the media. Since the media as it comes of the camera is compressed, it is very possible that the entire contents of the compressed media will be significantly less than what is captured. Especially when you are ingesting the contents without setting in and out points. For example if you were to ingest the entire contents of a camera that totaled six minutes, it would be four times larger after it was ingested.

What is AVCHD?, and what exactly is HDD? 

AVCHD is a combination of AVC (Advanced Video Coding) and MPG2.  Some of the newest cameras now support AVCHD which records to a hard drive.  You may see the term HDD, which simply refers to (Hard Disk Drive).

To simplify, this technology records High Defination Video within an MPEG-2 transport stream directly to a hard-drive.  In fact, the Sony HDR SR12 is completely tapless!  It contains a 120 gig hard drive, which is enough storage to record over 20 hours of high defination footage without stopping.  It also has the ability to take 10 megapixel still images.

 

User's of Final Cut Pro can use the Log and Transfer tool to bring these clips into their editing system.  You must have one an intel based MAC, and you must be running the latest version the Final Cut Studio software.  The conversion process is close to real-time, but it can be automated. 

Also, Final Cut Studio converts the video stream to Pro Res 422 which is approximately 4 times the original size of the file(s) that sit on the camera.  To make sure you have sufficient space on your hard drive before ingesting the media.

Unfortunately, users of Avid Media Composer will have to convert the footage using a third party software product.  I am hopeful Avid will adopt AVCHD technology in their Media Composer product line soon. As a professional alternative,  Media Composer supports P2 media in it's native format.

GeniusDV teaches the AVCHD workflow in it's Final Cut Studio 5 Day training class.