[rynoesco2]

this is the computer that I have:
Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
4GB (4x1GB)
500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
2 x ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256Mb
One 16x SuperDrive
Apple Cinema HD Display (23" flat panel)
Apple Mighty Mouse
Apple Keyboard

[haim_vital]

Well, you have an Intel...so down with theory #1.

I did some research on Apples site and it appears if you have any SD material on your camera you must have it erased before you can import the HD material. (Again, this may not be your issue, but who knows...worth a shot.)

Hope you get your camera up and running.
Im interested in this camera as well, and not cool hearing that someone is having issues like this with the camera.

Peace

dAlen

[vulpine]

I have to admit I'm puzzled by this "twice as long as tape" import method. It seems to me you should be able to transfer the file directly to the computer's hard drive and import to iMovie/FC almost instantaneously. I know it works this way with a Panasonic HD camcorder into Windows on a Mac. The translation prospect doesn't come in until after you have edited the video and format for output, whereupon the video is encoded for whatever output media you're going to use and does take twice as long.
Now admittedly, Panasonic uses proprietary software (or a demo to a commercial application) to display and edit in Windows; but that means that their file format is NOT AVCHD, correct? If AVCHD is a standard and iMovie/FC can view that format, something is seriously non-standard.

[tallscot]

Apple doesn't support that codec natively. So what they do is they encode it into another codec that their software supports. That's why it takes twice as long. You encode it when you import it, edit it, encode it for output. The whole process takes way too long for my tastes.

It really is a shame that this isn't getting more press. Here we have an article about tapeless camcorders and they make no mention at all that it's mostly a sham on the Mac. Apple should be publicly exposed for this crap.

[vulpine]

haim_vital said:

I did some research on Apples site and it appears if you have any SD material on your camera you must have it erased before you can import the HD material. (Again, this may not be your issue, but who knows...worth a shot.)


dAlen

Now THIS is a very interesting piece of info. In most cases, the still-image data is not HD as the video is. iMovie can pull the stills off the Panasonic I just mentioned with no difficulty, but apparently until those images are erased, the video can't even be seen as a file.

As Arte Johnson used to put it.... "Veeeeery Interesting!"

[whiz100]

Transfer speed: You can read the harddisk and copy all the files you want from it. In that case the transfer is as fast as any other external harddisk. I've been using disk utility (from the utilities folder) to create an image of the mounted folder.
The performance hit comes when you do the import into Imovie ( I also use Final Cut Express but I've never performed an import using it).

If anyone;s interested in looking at 720p output from this camera I've uploaded a small video to vimeo. The address is
http://www.vimeo.com/1315872

note it's only 720 whereas the video was recorded in 1080.

[tallscot]

whiz100 said:

Transfer speed: You can read the harddisk and copy all the files you want from it. In that case the transfer is as fast as any other external harddisk. I've been using disk utility (from the utilities folder) to create an image of the mounted folder.
The performance hit comes when you do the import into Imovie ( I also use Final Cut Express but I've never performed an import using it).

If anyone;s interested in looking at 720p output from this camera I've uploaded a small video to vimeo. The address is
http://www.vimeo.com/1315872

note it's only 720 whereas the video was recorded in 1080.

That's not close to being seamless, as the article states. It still takes 2X to import it into iMovie. It's really a joke. On Windows, it transfers at hard drive speed into your movie editing application and then you can start editing and then output out to disc in the native codec. The Mac method is incredibly time consuming and tedious and the older technology is actually desired because the new technology isn't fully supported.

[teacee]

If I am not miststaken, you you need an Intel based mac and leopard OS X 10.5.

[vulpine]

tallscot said:

>On average it takes about double time to import as play time. i.e. if the clip is 10mins long it will take 20mins to import it (approx).

That is completely unacceptable to me. What's the point of having a hard drive-based camcorder if it takes longer to import than a tape-based one?

In this area, Windows is far ahead of the Mac. It's a shame too.

I've been working with the AVCHD format for a little while, and I have to admit I'm puzzled by the need to change formats, but I now understand what is happening. In this case it is not that Windows has an advantage per se, but rather that the Windows-based software provided by the manufacturer actually does all the editing in the native format, not requiring a conversion during the importing process. This alone speeds up the importing to playback rates or even faster. You can directly copy the files from the card through a card reader without going through the camera, making the actual transfer almost instantaneous. Then you're only limited by the software itself and the speed of the computer. While iMovie and Final Cut can import the files readily enough, the applications still need to convert them to Quicktime before you can do anything with them. I hope this issue is addressed with future versions of those apps.

[tallscot]

The issue is there is no AVCHD codec in QuickTime, which is why it has to be transcoded into something else. I realize that Windows itself doesn't have AVCHD support, but that's not the point. The point is in regards to Mac OS X vs Windows PC, the Windows PC has the better solution right now for editing movies with the AVCHD camcorders. The Ulead software costs less than iLife, for example, and has a complete end-to-end AVCHD solution that requires no transcoding, even on export, whereas iMovie requires transcoding on import and then transcoding on export.

[vulpine]

For those of you using Macs (I will assume an Intel-based Mac since that is what I use) working in the HDCHD format is annoying, but far from impossible. As I stated in the comment directly before this one, I can only hope that iMovie and Final Cut (all versions) can be made to work in this format natively as compared to the current need to convert for editing and reconvert for burning.

What I've discovered is that, as one person pointed out, any still images need to be imported and deleted from the memory card before any video is even recognized. Why? I don't know ( Third base! ) Once you've done this, in all honesty the most reliable way to import the video is to first transfer the raw files straight to your hard drive and import them to your editor from there. Going through the camera or importing through a card reader directly tends to introduce errors that make subsequent clips unreadable.

The nice thing is that iMovie '08 can import them fairly easily from there, though as everyone has already noted, it tends to be slower than actual playback from the camera. This is, of course, due to the format change. On the other hand, it seems the most reliable method to import to Final Cut Express (and probably Pro and Studio as well) is by the "Log and Transfer" method. The advantage is that it gives you an immediate thumbnail of the clip with the ability to select which clips you wish to actually import. While this may be unimportant to some, this can be very useful for others. Even so, the import rate is near or a little over the Playback rate, at least in standard NTSC mode; faster, but not instantaneous as Windows-based applications seem to be.

Overall, while I'm not a fan of having to wait any more than the rest of you, it seems that selecting the right import method is just as important as selecting the right camera. I have been quite impressed with the quality of the imagery both in and out. And even in NTSC mode, an HD video looks much, much better than what I get off of my old tape-based Canon ZR70.

[vulpine]

tallscot said:

The issue is there is no AVCHD codec in QuickTime, which is why it has to be transcoded into something else. I realize that Windows itself doesn't have AVCHD support, but that's not the point. The point is in regards to Mac OS X vs Windows PC, the Windows PC has the better solution right now for editing movies with the AVCHD camcorders. The Ulead software costs less than iLife, for example, and has a complete end-to-end AVCHD solution that requires no transcoding, even on export, whereas iMovie requires transcoding on import and then transcoding on export.

If I appeared to be arguing that point, I apologize. I was merely attempting to describe my discoveries. As you said, it's not Windows, but rather the application that is editing AVCHD natively. It is my hope that Apple gets their tail in gear and does the same thing. Even so, it seems odd that despite this limitation, a number of HD science programs choose to edit in Final Cut rather than some Windows app. This may make convincing Apple to support AVCHD natively more difficult.

[tallscot]

No need to apologize, I was just clarifying my point so there wasn't any confusion. :)

In regards to how many people use FCP, I'll simply point to Quark and say that having a large base doesn't mean you can neglect them without consequence. Right now, Apple is totally blowing the professional crowd off, in my opinion. I keep reading, "Apple is more interested in selling iPods and iPhones than to pro consumers" in the messages boards for FCS. There are way too many bugs in their software that hasn't been fixed and it's pissing a lot of people off that Apple is going to probably put out version 3 before fixing bugs in FCS 2 when it shipped.

My GeForce 8800 card is useless in FCS and I need to go out and buy an off-the-shelf card from ATI to solve the problem since Apple has ignored it and even made it worse with 10.5.5 (halves the speed of the GeForce 8800 in CoreImage apps).

In regards to the pro software, I don't need to switch to Windows, I can switch to Adobe and with CS4 I may do that.

In regards to my home movies, I may boot into Windows on my Mac and use Ulead for my editing and then use my PS3 to stream the AVCHD to my TV, something that Apple TV can't do. That's a much better solution that what Apple currently offers me.

[teacee]

If the Sony HDR-CX11, HDRCX12, HDR-SR1, HDR-SR7 and HDR-SR12 cameras contain both HD (AVCHD) and SD (MPEG-2) content, iMovie '08 can import the SD (MPEG-2) content. However, to import the HD (AVCHD) content to an Intel-based Mac, you must first erase the SD (MPEG-2) content on the camera.

And far as taking twice the time, I have owned the Pansaonic HDC_SD1, The Canon Hv10 in which I both sold, for the Sony HD SR11, and I have found the sony AVCHD clips import a lot faster then either of the previous cameras. You must have a 2 core Intel or faster computer runninging Apple Leopard OS x 10.5 or higher nad iMovie 08 not any of the previous Imovies. I am importing to my the latest Mac Pro 8 Core 2.8ghz with 8 gb of ram, So you can import the AVCHD format with any problems if you meet this criteria. If you are running Tiger ox X10.4 it will not work. Maybe with the Two core its a stuggle but I have no complaints whatsover.



http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1014#1