17" MacBook Pro 2.93 and imove 09 + Sony HDR-SR11 = Happiness

[DooDaaDame]

I have been struggling along with my G4 powerbook for a year now, filming with my Sony HDR-SR11, downloading the .mts files, converting with voltaic, (a great program, but on the G4 it is eternally slooooow), and then editing in imovie HD. I used to spend my evenings setting up my powerbook to convert files overnight, (and sometimes all the next day). It worked. I was happy.
Today I got my new 17" Macbook Pro 2.93 MHz with a 1TB 7200RPM external eSATA scratch drive. I hooked up my Sony via USB, fired up imovie 09 and was surprised to see a dialog asking me if I wanted to import my footage. Of course I said yes, and there were my movies, not only with preview, but I could actually PLAY the preview. I was shocked-pleased-amazed! I picked my files to import and it took SECONDS, not minutes...SECONDS to import my movie footage and convert to .MOV. I am pleased. Very Pleased. Tickled. I imported at full resolution to my external scratch drive, opened one up and it played. Yes, it played. No stuttering, no dropped frames, full majestic HD.
This is a good day for a movie maker.

 

[Mr. Monsieur]

Enjoy!

Fellow Mac-based videographer here...just wanted to share in the joy of your new workstation.
I'm still working with a slower system and look forward to the day I can upgrade to the 17inch MBP...

 

[DooDaaDame]

Hello Fellow Videot!

I just rendered a 3.5 minute HD movie in 20 minutes. Yes, I said 20 minutes. Holy Smokes! Took me about ten minutes to migrate to 09. Easy to figure out. Final Cut is in my future, but in the meantime, I'm having fun. FUN.
Get a MacBook Pro as soon as possible, the time you save rendering alone will make a new person out of you!
Absolutely beautiful interface too....
Still love my G4, using it to cruise the net while MBP grinds away....

 

[SpitzerCR]

AWESOME.....

.. and DARN YOU.. makes me want to get a new mac...

 

[DoctorMacbook]

Yes, but have you noticed that it eats up your hard drive?

25mins of 1080i footage in AVCHD (4GB) is turned into 20GB Quicktime

Is there any way of reducing the size back to the original?

-------------------------------------
Im using a macbook (not pro), and am a novice. I really just use this for home movies, but would love to retain the HD quality

 

[DooDaaDame]

Disk image your Sony HDR-SR11 files to see them later!

Hey, sorry I'm so long in answering, but I've been looking for this solution myself. Short answer...no.
Only sony Vegas works with mts files and keeps them that way, as far as I know, and it only works on windows.
Other than that, there is a cute way to archive your original footage in mts format without having to keep them on your camera in order for imovie or FC to see it.
Move your entire folder from your camera to your desktop, including the stream files and everything else in the hard drive folder if the camera.
Make a disk image of the folder...I will shortly include detailed instructions, but just realized they are on my other computer and I'm too lazy to start it up and file share right now.
By making a disk image, imovie will see it as if the camera is still attached, or as another HD. Please test this out before erasing your camera.
The best thing about this is it's a great way to archive your original footage without taking up alot of space. The downside is you can't archive your edited footage this way...sorry. AIC or MOV files will be huge and continue to be so until someone writes a native editing program for MAC that works with mts files.
Thanks for the question, kept me up nights researching an answer...was glad to discover the disc image trick for myself, this way I can download my camera, yet access the at my leisure instead of having to convert them to store them.
Shedworx has two softwares worth mentioning that will see your mts stored files and convert them, Voltaic & Flamingo....
Also VideoPier HD does the same thing with the additional ability to play/preview your mts files before actually converting them.
All of these programs are still new and a bit buggy. proceed with caution using them, backup before installing.

 

[foshizzle]

congrats...and a question

What about HD editing plugged into an external display? Let me explain. I use FCE4 with my AVCHD camera and have a MBP 2.2 Ghz from mid-2007, 4gb ram, 7200 RPM HDD. When I plug in an external display for editing in full screen, i get awful stuttering on the video displayed on the external screen. Full Screen on the laptop screen is fine, although at some points decompressing makes it stutter. I'm really tempted to save up this summer for a 2.93 15" but something makes me want to wait and see what comes in the next year or two of 4 core laptops. But I really enjoy video editing as a hobby, especially with the quality the Canon HF10 gives me, it makes it quite fun to have such detail to show off. The only thing is that rendering to export takes forever on this machine and it uses so many resources while doing so, and this is really the only good reason I'd have to upgrade my laptop.

BTW, I know iMovie is nice and works well but you should look into FCE. If you've worked with iMovie then the full suite won't be necessary, and FCE is a great way to get your feet wet. Especially for just AVCHD editing, you wont need all of the codecs, etc. that come with the suite.

Enjoy your machine, what a great piece of hardware it must be.

 

[DooDaaDame]

What about HD editing plugged into an external display? Let me explain. I use FCE4 with my AVCHD camera and have a MBP 2.2 Ghz from mid-2007, 4gb ram, 7200 RPM HDD. When I plug in an external display for editing in full screen, i get awful stuttering on the video displayed on the external screen. Full Screen on the laptop screen is fine, although at some points decompressing makes it stutter.

It would depend on your external display and how it's connected. Is it fully digital, (progressive) or interlaced? How are you connected? Is your footage progressive or interlaced? Incompatibilities in this area could be causing problems. I am no expert in external monitors but I know there can be problems in several areas unrelated to the power of your computer.

The only thing is that rendering to export takes forever on this machine and it uses so many resources while doing so, and this is really the only good reason I'd have to upgrade my laptop.

This also could be helped by setting up your MBP with external eSATA drives. Your MBP is powerful enough to handle most HD files, but you should have your internal HD set up with just applications and your video files and libraries saved to fast external drives. This frees up your internal HD to work harder by keeping open space on it for virtual memory and faster by not burdening it by writing/reading constantly to itself.
I would recommend buying a PCI eSATA card that loads in your expansion slot and drives external 7200 RPM 500GB-1TB SATA drives. Move your iphoto and imovie libraries to these drives as well as your FCE video footage and also get an external USB drive for backup. This is a relatively inexpensive way to really maximize your MBP potential and when you do get your new 17" MBP you can just move the external drives over.

BTW, I know iMovie is nice and works well but you should look into FCE. If you've worked with iMovie then the full suite won't be necessary, and FCE is a great way to get your feet wet. Especially for just AVCHD editing, you wont need all of the codecs, etc. that come with the suite.

I am looking at FCE, but haven't had the time to fully research it yet. I have heard there are problems with orphaned files when moving them to be archived, but I think this is just poor planning on the operators part. Back in OS 9 I worked in Adobe Premiere and Director, so I am acquainted with higher end video editing, just can't make my mind up which way to go yet...thank you for your input on this!

Enjoy your machine, what a great piece of hardware it must be.

It is awesome! It is fast and ....elegant.

 

[foshizzle]

the displays are either a samsung LCD computer monitor (1440x900, interlaced) plugged in via DVI or a Sharp Aquos LCD TV, (1920x1080 progressive) DVI as well. I do a lot of editing with the video on a FW800 dual-drive raid0 setup with two 7200RPM drives. For one, I need the space because of the large file sizes I get and the amount of projects I store. I also have done editing from my 4TB file server I built, which gets 80Mbps read/write over Gig ethernet. This works fine with no dropped frames or stuttering, but i've never tried with an external monitor.

I think the main issue would be my video card - GeForce 8600M GT 128Mb - which is the card with all the issues first off, but second off only 128mb ram is probably an issue. I have a feeling that with the new nVidia cards with 512mb ram, i'd notice a difference. Plus the newer processors with faster bus and faster memory would probably do a bit here and there.

I think for now I'm going to stick with it. I can upload files to my web hosting server then convert them with ffmpeg on their clusters to any format. The only catch there is the uploading takes hours over the internet because of the raw .mov file exported from FCE. But from there they're already on the 'net so I can link them to my site.